Name this architectural "style"

[Redroom Studios]

That's Waterloo City Hall.

yep, I thought that looked familiar... lived in Waterloo from 94 - 02. Nice place, but I dont miss the German influence. Now I am back to my roots in Italian Catholic Central, Niagara Falls. (meaning thats where I grew up, personally I am a Scottish Atheist)

As for the buildings, the Rose Theatre and Waterloo City Hall are examples of modern/efficient done right. Good scale and styling cues, built with quality construction and materials. You'll notice that the Rose Theatre uses over-sized bricks (blocks if you will) which definitely brings it into the higher end of the scale imo.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Okay, Innis and the Waterloo City Hall don't count, but there is plenty of LoPo in Waterloo region to go around:

 

[JasonParis]

Curious, what would you folks consider this building across from the Supreme Court of Canada (the green one behind the church)? I don't think it's LoPo, but maybe it's CraPo?

 

[unimaginative2]

I've had a soft spot for that building ever since I was a little kid. I thought it was so cool to have a copper roof on a modern building.

 

[JasonParis]

It's not real copper though. Or is it?

 

[simply Dan]

No it isn't real copper - it is cheap green metal.

 

[unimaginative2]

I think it's real copper. I was 8 years old so my memory may be playing tricks, but I distinctly remember seeing it copper-coloured.

 

[Urban Shocker]

Waterloo City Hall was by Bang and Croake.

Brampton's Red Rose Teabag theatre, or whatever it's called, has good acoustics apparently.

Mississauga City Hall was a brief stylistic interruption in the long reign of post-WW2 Toronto Style architecture. When KPMB won the competition to design Kitchener City Hall shortly afterwards, the brief flirtation with PoMo lost steam and neo-Modernism never looked back.

Talking of KPMB: K and P and M and B all worked for Barton ( Innis ) Myers, and their roots are showing still.

I kinda like "LoMo" ... which sounds like part of a very rude Cantonese insult I know.

 

[Archivist]

Rose Theatre says to me "A grain silo f**ked a church".

This is so perfect. Every time I see an image of that building I'll think of it.

 

[MisterF]

"Lopo" - I like it. It's the kind of style you tend to see from two bit engineering firms that have an architect on staff. I don't know what architects learn in university but it seems that architects who work for these firms have forgotten all of it. To make buildings interesting, they rely on two tone brick, arches, and other features collectively known as "heritage elements". The fact that the materials, proportions, and stylistic cues are all over the place seems to be lost on them. The style is popular for public buildings in suburbs and small towns across the nation.

A few more examples - Northumberland Hills Hospital in Cobourg - note the brick stripes. I could imagine they're the architect's solution for some committee's instructions to make it interesting. It also has the low slung collonades Hipster Duck talked about.

These two were designed by Greer Galloway, one of those two bit engineering firms I mentioned earler. The firm actually has these on its website.

But for the worst example of this "style", I nominate the Brock Township municipal building in Cannington. You almost have to admire an architect who's capable of making something this bad.

 

[p5connex]

^^Couldn't agree more Mister F.- yet, funny enough they get to build a lot, unlike some of their colleagues who may practice a more interesting form of architecture- if we can refer to the examples posted in this thread as architecture. Also, what is their fascination with applying those minaret like elements on the tops of every bloody strip mall, bank, school etc.??

It blows me away that architecture has for these sad saps, essentially been reduced to a matter of 2 or 3 rather uncreative moves...I know its a simple and efficient system for banging out buildings and designs on time, on budget, etc.- but what then is/are their motivations?
p5

 

[lawsond]

how about po' mo....as in po' boy.
the apostrophe makes all the differnce.

 

[ProjectEnd]

Wow, that last picture is particularly egregious!!!

 

[Urban Shocker]

The "minaret" elements are, surely, a visual shorthand intended to evoke some sort of comforting, nostalgic Ye Olde Worlde historicist associations - whisk me back to the pre-industrial, pre-universal suffrage days before machines and Modernism ruined our lives, that sort of thing.

Look at the soothing, balm-like sets of arches on that municipal building; look at the dormer windows divided by a faintly clerical cross; look at the faux metal crown of pointy-uppy whatsits on the roof; look at the paired "supporting" doodads all over the place. It all seeks to evoke something-or-other from simpler, happier days when artisans whittled things out of wood in cottages all day long and nobody worried about Armageddon.

 

[adma]

Yet I can see the point about the thread opener: take away the cheeseball roof and window arches and faux brackets and beltcourse, and it *could* pass for an Innis College diminutive...