Toronto 45 The Esplanade | 128.85m | 39s | Republic | Arcadis

...I think it's okay, but far from spectacular or inspiring, IMO. But it's not "Design" Haus yet, thank goodness.
 
UtakataNoAnnex said:
...I think it's okay, but far from spectacular or inspiring, IMO. But it's not "Design" Haus yet, thank goodness.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm not quite at 'hate'; but I am at disappointed.

The towers would be bearable if only they removed the glass section linking the two into one giant blob. That's so suburban office park.

The balance of the tower design is still forgettably generic, and could be so much better, but I could (and would) look the other way.......

The podium has real potential, but the weird handling of the grade level openings; (the pseudo-arches) makes no sense to me at all; do not like.

The glazing in general is meh.

It's more of a 'C' grade building than an F; but the potential for a 'B' is there if only a few things were tweaked.
 
It would look a lot better if the east "tower" cladding was red instead of white, continue the theme of the podium. Last thing our skyline needs is more bluey grey glass. The approach on the Lakeshore East GO train is welcomed by an amorphous blob of blah these days.
 
I dislike it intenslyI Why bother to try to make it seem as though it is two buildings when it is one disjointed extended uni-block.

I've always liked the 'old world' logia of the existing structure. I can't tell does this have a logia along the base?
 
don't trust those renders - everything shown as a smooth curve is actually chamfered. This is an overly fussy design that I doubt will be executed to the degree it requires in order to be successful.

Nix the oversized arches on the ground level. Simplify the tower expressions so that they can be elegantly constructed.


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How will they arrange the parking? 25 The Esplanade has a shared parking lot with 45 The Esplanade, with P1 being public and hotel parking, and P2/P3 being private gated parking for 25 The Esplanade.
 
@Bibi L

Good question. It won’t be shared anymore. All the existing parking will have to be for the residents of 25 and the commercial units for 35 The Esplanade. There is a legacy contract to make available 244 monthly spots but after the parking lot is severed there will only be 118 spots left under 25 proper. With 571 condo units, the 244 guaranteed spots have never been fully used to my knowledge. There is also day “office crowd” monthly parking rentals too which will have to become obsolete.

There is perceived value to the condo owners even thou this is a rental parking lot owned by the Silver Group Hotels.

They will be in breach of the contract someday.
No more event parking unless they really want a bigger claim with the residents.

Maybe 45 The Esplanade will take in the event parking in place of their 40+ “visitor”/hotel parking. Haha.
 
Three new retail units will be a great enhancement to this stretch - let's remember that The Esplanade is a premier restaurant magnet of a strip, and the current Novotel is a boring, elongated hotel lobby/cafe. Additional pedestrian activation will be good for the 'hood. In the long term, multiple restaurants vying for patio space on this stretch could mean the city considers streetscape redesign/traffic calming measures to expand that patio space and pedestrianize the road even further.

The podium does have a small bit of dialogue with the colonnade on 25 The Esplanade, while being different enough to be architecturally unique. I don't hate it, and I think the architects did the best they could given our city's inane planning direction. I just don't think the Ace Hotel style arches work as well as the architects do at this scale though. The Ace arches were very human scaled and approachable, these are a bit leviathan and imposing in comparison. They could do with a scale-down.

As for the tower(s), yeah pretty clumsy. Fortunately Toronto just isn't at a place where curved glass is feasible (because we'd be at NYC new build $/SF prices, which, as someone trying to own a home eventually, blegh); I just wish development teams would stop trying to incorporate curves if they all well-know that they'll be executed poorly. Sure, they look sexy in the sales renders and that's all the marketing team cares about, but as someone who lives in a space with a curved balcony, it's an incredibly annoying space to design around. Very little care for the end-user, very maximal care for how good the model will look in the presentation centre. Hopefully that middle section actually does wind up being curtainwall and not getting VE'd. Even more hopefully, they take the tower back to the drawing board and make it more cohesive now that they know it's a one-er, not a two-fer.
 
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