Toronto 522 University Avenue | 232.35m | 64s | IA Financial Group | WZMH

[70Challenger]

It’s so clean now, from one of the worst proposals to one of the best.

Someone at WZMH had a dig through the archive:

 

[goodcitywhenfinished]

impressive

Haven’t seen something this good from WZMH in a while

 

[interchange42]

Now this is much more like it! Kudos to all involved! Rather than saving 60% of the original building, they could easily have gone the standard route of facadism(similar to the United Building). At any rate, it's certainly a terrific example of how the DRP process need not be adversarial. Here's hoping that the 'c' word, ahem, 'collaboration', becomes the rule rather than the exception in cases like this!

I'm slow to want to complain about the gutting of the United Building; they are spending more on retaining the heritage walls there than any other private project this city has seen. This is a newer building than United was, and maybe just that much easier to retrofit than it was that they can make the numbers work. To me, where this easily surpasses United is in the strong likeness of the original building in its residential offspring above.

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[Doppleganger]

I'm slow to want to complain about the gutting of the United Building; they are spending more on retaining the heritage walls there than any other private project this city has seen. This is a newer building than United was, and maybe just that much easier to retrofit than it was that they can make the numbers work. To me, where this easily surpasses United is in the strong likeness of the original building in its residential offspring above.

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I'm pretty certain that what United's developers are spending today will be fairly well reimbursed when their units are all sold. Regardless of how much money a developer might spend, when we designate a building and then allow only a few external walls to be preserved, we lose any historical or architectural context that the building might have had. At the end of the day, a building, heritage or otherwise, is always more than its four external walls. When we gut a building, particularly one that has retained a great deal of its original interior, not only are we deceiving ourselves by calling it preservation, but we're shortchanging our future. European cities like Paris, Brussels, Berlin et al., with far greater stock of heritage structures than us, have understood this for years, and it is well reflected in their city centres.

 

[Lenser]

Well said. It's incredible what Toronto has knocked down over the past six or seven decades in the breathless rush toward modernity. We had some good'uns in the core - real architectural gems.

 

[interchange42]

I'm pretty certain that what United's developers are spending today will be fairly well reimbursed when their units are all sold. Regardless of how much money a developer might spend, when we designate a building and then allow only a few external walls to be preserved, we lose any historical or architectural context that the building might have had. At the end of the day, a building, heritage or otherwise, is always more than its four external walls. When we gut a building, particularly one that has retained a great deal of its original interior, not only are we deceiving ourselves by calling it preservation, but we're shortchanging our future. European cities like Paris, Brussels, Berlin et al., with far greater stock of heritage structures than us, have understood this for years, and it is well reflected in their city centres.

This is the wrong thread to get too deep into the United Building... but while I believe that we have to do much more in regards to preserving embodied carbon for environmental reasons, and we should preserve interiors that are notable… without knowing its particulars, I have to satisfy myself that Toronto Preservation Services did not find attributes of the United Building's interiors there that they insisted on retaining. I certainly don't remember any outcry from the city's architectural community at the time that it was going to come down that we were losing anything out-of-the-ordinary. Maybe there were some attributes of its interiors that raised it above the nondescript, but they failed to tip the scales for the group making the decisions then. Failing heritage designation, building owners have to weigh the costs of preserving a building solely for its age, if they can no longer afford to maintain it.

In the 522 University case, the ownership have come 'round to believing that saving what they propose to of it will make business sense for them, and thank goodness, as they've got a plan that preserves most of the embodied carbon, preserves the architectural expression, and celebrates it will a sensitive addition to the top.

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[JasonParis]

It's rare when proposals improve, but here we are. Although, I suspect it will still get a cheapening at some point too.