Toronto East Harbour '1B' Office Tower | 218.55m | 44s | Cadillac Fairview | KPF

A Torontonian Now said:
This is a good point.

However, now that it is a mixed-use development, I feel like there could have been a creative solution turning it into loft apartments + retail at base. To the degree the floorplates are too large, the demolition is showing a sturdy concrete structure and I expect it could have had an atrium cut out of the centre without affecting the integrity of the building.
Click to expand...
Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, who were the Pritzker Prize Laureates in 2021, would no doubt agree, their practice being built around the adaptation of existing buildings for new uses once the original purpose has been deemed obsolete. That's why they were awarded the Pritzker Prize, in fact, and I should have added a note about this option in my previous post. That Prtizker was meant to be a wake-up call to landowners around the world about another option being open to them that they should take more seriously and think more creatively about.

42
 
To chime in here, on the subject of preservation, my real concern here is architectural variety/diversity, including across time periods, to avoid the sterility that often accompanies modern buildings designed/built together or in close temporal proximity.

To the extent that the site could not be commercially leased in its current form; and that it wasn't suitable to residential without alteration; my first instinct would be to go for @A Torontonian Now 's suggestion of some form of adaptive re-use with alteration.

My second would be to consider full/partial facade retention, with a new build featuring identical ceiling heights; and my back-up position would be recreation. Show me you can mimic the style/material pallet very closely, and I'm not utterly wedded to preservation.

Of course, if this site still had OMA up top, or had shifted to Allies and Morrison, I think we all might be a bit better able to accept the loss here, because we had some confidence that the replacement would be worthwhile.

Most of us, I think, lack that confidence in CF.
 
Last edited:
To also chime it.

Hopefully the smaller two buildings and water tower will be retained. We can still hope for that.

I was part of what I thought was a good design for that building when First Gulf owned it and we were keeping it, but I think the flooding and Flood Protection Landform ultimately killed saving the building as it is in the flood plain and where this FPL is supposed to get built. It is possible the foundations weren't up for the challenge and with needing to be beefed up would trigger what TRCA said way back was if you touch the building foundations they wouldn't let us rebuild in that location and had to move outside the FPL footprint.

If you look at the FPL on the north side of the rail tracks you will notice almost the entire BMW building sits where they are building it and will also eventually be torn down. I like that building also. Matchbox/Hot Wheels cars anyone?

Many possible reasons.

The Floor to Floor actually wasn't too bad for a conversion of space, to comment on a previous post.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top