Mississauga Absolute World | 169.77m | 56s | Cityzen | MAD architects

Thanks jasonzed for the latest pics. Both towers are gorgeous but I am not too happy with the top of the first one. It reminds me of an open bottle with its cap missing especially now after the red construction planks have been removed. For my taste they should have kept the top as wide as the upper floors. Now I will be always looking for the cap!
 
I'm so happy they went with such a tasteful design for the top! It's a very pertinent and handsome conclusion to the building, and just like the renderings showed us to expect.
 
from today
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Notice how the balcony glazing has been installed on the 50th floor where the topping-off will be celebrated on Friday...

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Why? I'm glad to see Mississauga building interesting skyscrapers. A thriving city next to Toronto rather than a sprawling suburb will be good for us.

... and we're getting L tower by the same developers. An equally ambitious and unconventional tower.
 
Move over Dubai ... Here comes Mississauga

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View from the top. The 56-storey Absolute Community building that has come to be known as one of the two "Marilyn Monroe" towers, was officially topped off today. Checking out the skyline, from left, Ping Jiang, architect MAD, Sam Crignano, President of Cityzen, Danny Salvatore, President of Fernbrook Homes and Mayor Hazel McCallion. Staff photo by Rob Beintema


http://www.mississauga.com/news/article/905902--move-over-dubai-here-comes-mississauga
Joe Chin| Nov 19, 2010 - 8:48 PM


It’s the structure that drew global attention and is about to become a signature icon on the city’s skyline.
This afternoon, Absolute Community’s “Marilyn Monroe” condominium celebrated its topping off. That’s when construction crews, builders and civic officials get together to celebrate a job well done.
That means move-in day for residents of the 56-storey structure, located at the corner of Burnhamthorpe Rd. and Hurontario St., is only months away.
But first a horde of media and dignitaries got to taste what will surely become a fish-bowl existence for the residents.
“I’ve been watching it go up the past few years and, boy, it’s been exciting,” Mayor Hazel McCallion told the crowd of about 500. “This is a great day!”
McCallion praised developer Danny Salvatore, president and chief executive officer of Fernbrook Homes, for bringing the building to her city.
“He’s a Streetsville boy,” she noted.
As Salvatore tells it, his company was just going into the high-rise business and wanted to create something iconic, something it would be recognized for.
“The corner where it’s located, which is the major intersection in Mississauga, looked like a good fit. And we also wanted to make sure, in a competitive market, that we would succeed,” he said.
That prompted his firm to launch a design competition. It marked the first time in 40 years that an international design competition was held by a private development group for a building in the Greater Toronto Area, after the Toronto City Hall competition. Ninety-two submissions were received from more than 70 countries.
The competition was won by MAD Inc., a Beijing-based architectural firm. Yansong Ma led the design team.
Fernbrook Homes and Cityzen Development Group joined forces to bring his design to life.
Interest in the first tower was overwhelming: inquiries flooded in from 7,000 prospective buyers. The response prompted the addition of a 50-storey companion, which will be topped off next spring with occupancy set for the fall.
“The design absolutely helped sell it,” said Salvatore.
According to Anthony Pignetti, of the Dominus Group, which directed construction of the building, the condo broke the mould on status quo.
“Each floor is egg-shaped and fanned out, like a deck of cards, from the centre of the building. The angle of difference between one floor and another ranges from one to eight degrees,” he explained.
Since it was the first building of its kind in Ontario, it was essential to find out how a non-rectangular building would be affected by the elements.
“The wind tunnel tests showed we had to build heavy – underground and the first 25 floors above ground,” said Pignetti.
He estimates that Marilyn Monroe’s base is about 20 per cent stronger than a traditional
high-rise of the same size.
There were other challenges: while in a traditional condo tower each unit’s kitchen and bathroom are directly aligned with those above and below it, that isn’t the case with this building. That presents a challenge for the plumbing, electrical and HVAC (heating, ventilating and air conditioning) workers. Orienting the six high-speed elevators was also a head-scratcher.
“Sure the building has curves, but you can’t run elevators at an angle. There has to be a perpendicular core,” said Pignetti.
The two towers are Ma’s version of yin and yang. While the first has a distinctly feminine silhouette, the second tower will be more rugged and will also have a twisting shape, he said.
Ma also says the towers will “talk to each other and harmonize with each other.
“There is a synergy between them, an aura which transcends each of the individual buildings to create a totally unique and original urban space,” he said earlier.
That McCallion can attest to. Whisked to the 50th floor of Mississauga’s tallest building, she ventured out onto the vertigo-inducing balcony and soaked up the view.
“It’s just fantastic...it’s really something,” she whispered.
jchin@mississauga.net
 
http://www.yourhome.ca/homes/hometype/condos/article/893963--hume-mad-makes-sense-of-mississauga

Hume: MAD makes sense of Mississauga
November 19, 2010

Christopher Hume

STAR COLUMNIST

They may be MAD, but they’re certainly not crazy.

The Beijing-based architectural practice, known for its striking designs and innovative approaches, has risen to international prominence in recent years thanks largely to a project in of all places, Mississauga.

That would be the 56-story condo tower at Hurontario and Burnhamthorpe, and its 50-storey counterpart. Nicknamed the Marilyn Monroe for its curvaceous exterior and unexpected sensuality, the bigger and earlier of the two buildings represents an architectural coming-of-age of a city that had steadfastly refused to grow up.

On Friday, as the tower was topped off at an afternoon celebration, MAD’s Ping Jiang talked about how the project, which beat 92 other submissions in a global competition, put his firm — and Canada’s sixth largest city — on the international map.

Until it appeared, neither was of much interest to the larger world. True, Mississauga’s altogether extraordinary city hall has attracted a certain amount of attention, but MAD’s towers take architecture — and with it the city — to a whole new level.

Gone is the rigid orthogonal geometry that has ruled architecture since time immemorial. Instead, these two buildings are about movement, and how a floor plate rotated around a central axis can create a sense of motion. The towers change as you walk around them; from every perspective they become something different. There’s a visual drama to these buildings that makes them impossible to ignore. This is architecture that appeals to kids and connoisseurs alike.

Even Santiago Calatrava’s famous Twisting Torso apartment tower in Malmo, Sweden, doesn’t achieve the same sensuality. By comparison, MAD’s design has an organic quality and anthropomorphic form. There’s nothing mechanical about it.

“The idea is that this is a project for a city looking for a new identity,” Jiang explains. “It reflects the dynamics of a city.”

Though most Chinese have never heard of Mississauga, the towers are well known in that country.

“Everyone in China loves them,” Jiang reports. “The biggest response has been that Chinese developers started to believe in us. There was a lot of doubt before, but now they see that our designs are do-able.”

There was a lot of doubt here, too. “We were criticized for what we did,” says developer, Sam Crignano, “but the facts speak for themselves. We’ve proved that good design improves the bottom line. It doesn’t just add to the cost.”

According to Crignano, both towers sold out in days. And, he adds, although no one can move in until March, units that sold for $450 per square foot are now fetching $550.

Whether you love or hate them, the fact is that no other building in Mississauga has achieved anything like this degree of fame. It’s not only unlike anything else built here, but anywhere else. Indeed, it’s among the first examples of a new kind of contemporary architecture, one whose rounded and changing exteriors are enabled by technological advances.

The result is a building that seems to pulsate with life. Now the tallest tower in Mississauga, it rises on the suburban skyline a premonition of what lies ahead. Only in a Mississauga, which remains largely a blank slate, would such an adamant, iconic, structure feel as at home as it does here.

Were such a tower to appear in Toronto — unlikely because of our more restrictive by-laws — the issue would be contextual appropriateness. In Mississauga, it is the context.

The underlying paradox of MAD’s towers is that despite their unprecedented sophistication, they feel simple, effortless and somehow inevitable. Like Marilyn herself, they just are.

Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca
 
Checking out the skyline, from left, Ping Jiang, architect MAD, Sam Crignano, President of Cityzen, Danny Salvatore, President of Fernbrook Homes and Mayor Hazel McCallion. Staff photo by Rob Beintema

Checking out the skyline, from left, Ping Jiang, architect MAD, Danny Salvatore, President of Fernbrook Homes, Sam Crignano, President of Cityzen and Mayor Hazel McCallion.
 
It's not like Mississauga isn't "Toronto" in the grand scheme of things. All the hand-wringing in this thread over Absolute's location is pretty silly.
 
I'm a T.O boy through-and-through, but I am really happy that 'sauga got this building. Besides, we're all a big urban family anyways. This is sort of like their CN tower - a defining point that puts them on the map and makes them distinct and gives them recognition.

Way to go Mississauga !

This building is really spectacular!
 
Were such a tower to appear in Toronto — unlikely because of our more restrictive by-laws

What, by-laws in design and beauty..dont get it.:confused:


There's some merit to this ... there's no specific bylaws ... but think about it - a lot of the decisions made at the city level are based on how something fits in with an area.
So with that you could maybe reach the conclusion you'd never see this east of downtown (st. Lawrence market + further east) ... king / queen west - upper Yonge / new waterfront area.
You could possibly see it in the cityplace area ... maybe bloor and yonge.

This can't be said for other areas such as NYCC or SCC. But for downtown yes, this sort of tower would likely only be allowed in certain locations ... and there's nothing particularly wrong with that to a certain degree.
 

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