Yes...and I just can't wait for you to utter that phrase for the 23rd time. Because this is all about....you....right?
If it were possible for you condense your giant self-absorbed, paraphrased posts into a point, that resembled a sentence (somewhat relevant to the topic)...what would it look like I wonder?
Maybe not as "condensed" as you'd like, but read the rest of the paragraph you snipped from, re "proceed cautiously". It's absolutely relevant, in a way that condenses and mediates among
all sides.
Look: "proceeding cautiously" worked for Gehry at ROM, and it didn't mean his having to torture himself over the more overinsistent demands of a Ceta Ramalamadingdong.
I'm gonna have to ask you to stop inventing all these completely absurd personal characterizations based solely on my opinion of the heritage value of a couple of nondescript warehouses. I know you're just working your way down a long list of fallacious argument techniques...but try to show a little dignity in the process.
Under the circumstances: dignity, schmignity--sometimes, it takes a jester, a fool, to frame and highlight the truth.
And beyond that: yeah, the problem may be in
how Toronto handles its heritage/listing/designation process, which leads to all these tripwires (it would have been better if Toronto had a more thoroughgoing letter/colour-coding system rather than the crude listing/designation system it's been coasting on for some 40 years). However, even there, I reckon said warehouses would be deemed inherently valid as heritage properties
anywhere--which, perhaps, may say more about heritage norms across the board in 2012, than in Toronto in particular. And if you disagree, it's a reason why your sort tends not to be on heritage bodies, as opposed to deputing against them. Like, within such a realm, you'd be received as the equivalent of someone arguing against affirmative action because "its job is done: time to move on".
Aside from that being a baseless statement, it's a poor example, as anyone who's met Margie Zeidler will attest....she's not very "gurly".
Yeah, and that's why, from a heritage standpoint, I'd gladly endorse her to rip the testicles out of your configuration of "heritage worth";-)
But it's worth reflecting upon 401 Richmond and Ryrie as representing interesting poles of heritage reuse approach.
In the former case--I mean, if you're one to attack oppressive and street-deading warehouses, that's the most oppressive and street-deadening of them all (and the net effect of the Richmond one-way widening in the 60s didn't help matters). And it wasn't even on the inventory, much less designated, until 2007! That is, when Margie Zeidler tackled it, it had
no official heritage status whatsoever. Yet the Zeidler approach was to respect the inherent properties of what existed, treat the raw materials available in inherently "heritage" terms, and make it into something much richer--something that doesn't need the assent of "heritage bodies", it just requires a good intuitive sense of everything. (Though yes, it helped that there was the subtext of 401 Richmond already having been an ad hoc hive for artists--to some degree, the Margie mythology "piggybacks" off all of that. But, no matter.)
In the latter case, we're dealing with something that *was* officially deemed "heritage" once Context entered the picture--it was listed back in 1973 (though never designated)--and aside from the loss of the Silver Rail (I'm reserving judgment on that one), Context only addressed the obvious "reasons for listing" stuff: external envelope, ground-floor lobby, etc. Pro forma, but in the best way possible (luckily enough, there are firms like E.R.A. capable of making the most of heritage lip service out there). The result was a "splendidly restored" envelope and all, bringing a neglected landmark into the present, bla bla...but it was only skin deep. Only "as much as necessary". And as a result, the kinds of magical internal contents which a Margie Zeidler would have respected and made a "selling point"...were trashed. Because they were "unrecognized". (You have to remember that listing/designation has often beeh hampered by either the values of a moment--back in the 70s, interiors and other such subtleties weren't typically "recognized"--or by the whims of whatever shoulder-tugging municipal or outside parties endorsing the listing, designation, et al.)
In this case, in terms of 2012-grade raw heritage values, this isn't apples and oranges, nor is it a straw man argument. Viewed through a heritage-positive prism, one approach
is clearly superior to the other. And if you seek to argue otherwise through various bits of slippery-slope or apples-and-oranges logic...you don't get it.
But re the "gender issue": I do feel there's something subliminally "gendered" about it all...it's no accident that historically, so many thoughtful defenders-of and configurers-of and reflectors-upon and arguers-for existing built form and existing conditions have been female. Architecture (and a lot of other artistic creation) has historically been a pretty virile and male-centric realm. Other than a few mavericks, women long played a subservient role--sort of like picking up and cleaning up after the men. Yet through that, they developed an oddly sensuous, even creatively possessive or devastatingly critical worm's eye upon that which surrounded them. Remember how the preservation movement was long (and often contemptuously) characterized as a "little old lady" pursuit...and there was a point there. Consider, in the 60s/70s/80s, Jane Jacobs, or Ada Louise Huxtable, or Phyllis Lambert--maybe not all having the same values (or the same hypothetical stance re a Gehry-Mirvish or what it's proposed to replace). And, etc etc...and somehow, intuitively, Margie Zeidler's approach to 401 Richmond falls into this "gendered" lineage, too. (And if I may be magazine-article-profiler for a second, she may not be girly-girl, but I'd characterize her more as earth-motherly--indeed, that persona imbues all her projects.)
Now, I don't feel we should put everything in one side of a gendered pot--however, when it comes to urbanity, what I'd characterize as that "female way" IMO has always been a necessary corrective, an equilibrium-setter. (Likewise, Spacing-style urbanism has always been multigendered--and as such, truly a product of a generation where the gender divides of old no longer pertain. It's "blended".) The principle of "proceed cautiously" is multigendered; subjecting everything to "proceed boldly" is about as female as Ayn Rand.....
