Toronto Aura at College Park | 271.87m | 78s | Canderel | Graziani + Corazza

Wow, looks great so far! It'll be interesting to see what this will look like when the entire podium is clad in it.. We'll get a better look at whether it was done well or not.
 
The awkward spacing on the south side bothers me too. Fortunately, it's unlikely that will be carried up the tower, but it is bothersome that it'll be quite noticeable to people at ground level. Seems sloppy/messy. The glass itself looks ok. Not top quality but certainly not the lowest quality either.
 
I'm definitely in the not-feeling-it camp as well. It looks a lot worse at night when it's lit from within and the mullions are more obvious. The design of the podium is already so overwrought (sloping wall here, cutout there, projection over there, random balcony here, etc) that is really doesn't need any more confusion coming the execution of the facade. I think it's going to look even more sloppy once they add the panels and signs and other random doohickeys all over the place.

And to repeat the earlier point, this isn't about the quality of the cladding, this is about the usage of the cladding. It just doesn't look like any thought has gone into it
 
Save me a seat by the fire at the not-feeling-it camp. I think the cladding looks like it divides inside from outside and that's about all there is to say about it. The glass may be high-quality, but I think urbandreamer is right that there appears to be little artistry in its application.

At least the building is going to be really, really big! Right? Right?
 
Dec 03
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Here are a couple of relatively simple but much more interesting applications of glass here in Toronto:

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Here you see a bit of play with proportion, transparency, variability - and this is all in surfaces that are just as flat/planar as Aura's.
 

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Oh, so every building needs to have patterns on their glass?

On Aura, a patterned or fritted glass would most likely look too busy. They could have added a very simple frit but it probably just wasn't worth it. The design features will be the stone and the "flying buttresses" that will stick out from the podium, especially along College Park. The glass isn't meant to take all the attention here.
 
Call me crazy but I'm going to guess that the few smaller panes of glass are going to line up with another element further up the tower... I think it's looking good, but no one can judge till we see it built up a bit further.
 
SP!RE said:
Oh, so every building needs to have patterns on their glass?
Click to expand...

I'm just hoping that the retailers in this building will be required to treat the glass as a feature of their stores, and not as a wall, the way that Future Shop does at 10 Dundas East. The backsides of Future Shop's displays plastered along the windows makes that crappy hunk of junk building look even worse. Hopefully Canderel has worked something into the leases to prevent that from happening here.

Otherwise, a patterned frit to help hide what's behind it, or translucent (but not transparent) glass, would be preferable to what is going up here at Aura. Like I said though, I'm hoping Canderel has taken care of that already.

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