Toronto Forma | 308m | 84s | Great Gulf | Gehry Partners

MetroMan said:
Well said.

It really is a shame that the twilight of Gehry‘s life has coincided with the boom of Toronto’s.

The AGO was just an appetizer and I wouldn’t have been satisfied with that. These towers and their contribution to street life and the public spaces they’ll create on Mirvish Way and King are really fantastic and will transform this city by breaking that height barrier and showing us what’s possible with beautiful architecture and fun whimsical spaces.

That said, at the risk of sounding greedy, I would have wanted pieces of Frank Gehry all over the city in the way Gaudi is seen in Barcelona. A dancing house over here, an auditorium over there, a park further down, sculptures sprinkled around.

Gehry was born here but LA is really his home. I don’t blame him for spending most of his life there and not building more in Toronto but I have my fingers crossed that he’ll spend more of his final years leaving a legacy in this city.
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We'll almost certainly never get another Gehry, but at the very least I hope it inspires greater architecture and more civic pride for future generations.
 
I like that the design didn't change too much, it just ended up being proportionately bigger. These are beautiful towers and they deserve to get built. They are certainly a statement piece and I hope the city realizes what they will do for Toronto's image.

Now looking forward to this plan making its way through the system and seeing what comes of it. I'm confident it'll get through and they'll be able to start sales in no time at all.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
We'll almost certainly never get another Gehry, but at the very least I hope it inspires greater architecture and more civic pride for future generations.
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While I might have come across as a pessimist, Gehry is 90 years old but having seen him not too long ago, he looks much younger than his age and seems healthy. He’s shown no signs of wanting to stop working. If anything, it feels like he’s accelerated his output.

I have a glimmer of hope that we may see more of him in Toronto. Something funny happens when an architect works in a city. They spend time there, they network, they have serendipitous meetings. In fact, that’s exactly what happened here. While building the AGO, Gehry met Mirvish and that eventually lead to the towers we’re talking about now.

If Gehry oversees this project in person, he’ll be spending a lot of time in Toronto. At this point, all I’d ask for is for a cultural building of some sort. There is potential for something like that on the waterfront in the East Bayfront as per Waterfront Toronto documents designating that intention.
 
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raptor said:
The canopies on Ed Mirvish Way look amazing

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I love the building, same as everyone else.

But this, this is going to be the part that is the real gift to the vitality of the city's public realm. The foot of Duncan Street (Ed Mirvish Way) is going to be fantastic.

Animated with restaurant, cafes and retail, hotel lobby fronting onto Duncan, and OCAD's space, the synergy and urban life here will be incredible. The canopy is interesting and I look forward to how that also transforms the space. I sorely hope that a street-light at Duncan and King is included in this proposal. The devil is in the details however. I want to see what kind of materials are proposed for the canopy (and also dutiful attention paid to winter design guidelines), and that adequate attention is given to the pavement.

Also can we have more discussion on what an immense move for Toronto to have a hotel at this vital location? I was shocked when I read the detail on the revised application, and immediately made smitten at how genius a move that is. Not just for planning reasons (replacing saleable sqft and residential unit density for hotel use while also increasing height is just SMART), but also the hotel location, target demographics and hotel market is perfectly positioned at this prestigious location and development.

I'm blown away. With GG backing this project (so very confident it will proceed as hoped), I am hyped.
 
Justifying this monstrosity based on increased “animation” and “public realm” is puzzlingly sycophantic.

King West is animated enough! It’s vibrancy comes from the patios, restaurants, clubs, and beautiful red-brick architecture. It doesn’t need “animation” any more than Queeen West.

Every condo proposal along it (with the exception of King-Portland center and BIG) kills vibrancy along with sunlight. I wish everyone in Toronto could take a trip to a great city like Barcelona to see what great Human-scale architecture could look like.
 
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Not to piss anybody off that loves skyscrapers because I do too. But why does this developer have the right to have to super tall structures in an area that they're only are allowing buildings half the height in that area being close to the CN Tower. The buildings like the YSL and Chelsea towers located on Yonge and Gerrard area, half to shrink and change they're looks.
 
dsouzaman said:
Every condo proposal along it (with the exception of King-Portland center and BIG) kills vibrancy along with sunlight. I wish everyone in Toronto could take a trip to a great city like Barcelona to see what great Human-scale architecture could look like.
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Yes, except Sagrada Familia....

AoD
 
The Parisian core offers a similar vibe in terms of comforting, human-scale architecture which remains nonetheless visually impressive and historically rich. I take the point that Barcelona or Euro-style street animation is indeed a wonderful thing but we have long ago moved toward more the NYC or Chicago-style urbanism in Toronto's core. That said, I hope to see a lot of medium-rise densification along Toronto's arterial roads in the years and decades to come - and the kind of cafe/patio vibrancy which tends to accompany it.

Can't wait to see these twins rise. They are going to possess stunning profiles on the Toronto skyline.
 
Lenser said:
The Parisian core offers a similar vibe in terms of comforting, human-scale architecture which remains nonetheless visually impressive and historically rich. I take the point that Barcelona or Euro-style street animation is indeed a wonderful thing but we have long ago moved toward more the NYC or Chicago-style urbanism in Toronto's core. That said, I hope to see a lot of medium-rise densification along Toronto's arterial roads in the years and decades to come - and the kind of cafe/patio vibrancy which tends to accompany it.

Can't wait to see these twins rise. They are going to possess stunning profiles on the Toronto skyline.
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And even Barcelona - outside Ciutat Vella and L'Example isn't all that much of a purist to this sort of built form (nevermind that Cerda's vision of L'Example turned out quite differently from what actually transpired save for general block arrangement in response to development pressures). Off the top of my head, Washington DC is the only large North American city that tried to apply such a uniform height constraint to a similar scale - to mixed effect.

AoD
 
WislaHD said:
I love the building, same as everyone else.

But this, this is going to be the part that is the real gift to the vitality of the city's public realm. The foot of Duncan Street (Ed Mirvish Way) is going to be fantastic.

Animated with restaurant, cafes and retail, hotel lobby fronting onto Duncan, and OCAD's space, the synergy and urban life here will be incredible. The canopy is interesting and I look forward to how that also transforms the space. I sorely hope that a street-light at Duncan and King is included in this proposal. The devil is in the details however. I want to see what kind of materials are proposed for the canopy (and also dutiful attention paid to winter design guidelines), and that adequate attention is given to the pavement.

Also can we have more discussion on what an immense move for Toronto to have a hotel at this vital location? I was shocked when I read the detail on the revised application, and immediately made smitten at how genius a move that is. Not just for planning reasons (replacing saleable sqft and residential unit density for hotel use while also increasing height is just SMART), but also the hotel location, target demographics and hotel market is perfectly positioned at this prestigious location and development.

I'm blown away. With GG backing this project (so very confident it will proceed as hoped), I am hyped.
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Let's not forget that M+G will presumably coincide with a revitalization of King Street, as the King Street transit priority project is installed permanently. We already see how the vibe of King Street has totally changed, for the better, with the transit priority project (feels more like a tourist destination, and less like a run-of-the-mill street), and that will get so much better with a Harbourfront-style revitalization of King beautifying and animating the street

We also have the Yonge Street revitalization, which should start just a few hundred metres to the east. Also proximate are Toronto's biggest tourist attractions, including Queen Street, TIFF, Kensington Market, Chinatown, AGO, OCAD, CN Tower/SkyDome/Ripleys and Harbourfront. With the new hotel, M+G and the King Street revitalization could be the anchor of a wonderful tourist district in the city. I'm actually really eager to get to walk tourists around
 
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With Gehry’s tower and BIG’s King project just down the street joining Roy Thomson Hall which was ahead of its time, King Street is really starting to become an architectural tour. Theatre Park is another beauty on King. I hope that this sparks developers to be more daring and hire world renowned architects to design their buildings.
 
Nice to see a decent size hotel is now part of this project! The top floor is going to have some killer views!
 
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