Toronto KING Toronto | 57.6m | 16s | Westbank | Bjarke Ingels Group

"use of curtains or fritting of glass are not architectural solutions [but rather] indicate an architecture that is ill-conceived"
zing!
 
Orson said:
"use of curtains or fritting of glass are not architectural solutions [but rather] indicate an architecture that is ill-conceived"
zing!
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Bahahaha wait what? This is a panel consisting of Toronto architects with that type of tone? Their entire design language revolves around fritting balcony glass.
 
But seriously... How fragile are their artistic egos to have to unreasonably poo poo over some outstanding and unconventional architecture (which face it we desperately need more of). There are always valid points to make and refinements to propose without being unprofessional and condescending.

I really wish the DRP would just go away.
 
I don't know about unprofessional, but in architectural terms I don't find their language particularly condescending, especially having been through many a critique. They're grandiloquent perhaps, but condescending, no. ;)
 
interchange42 said:
That's impossible for me to state with any confidence, but the DRP's answer would be "no". They were trying to tell BIG "do some more thinking about these things, and show us the real genius of BIG here", so the DRP would tell you that they want it even more interesting. There were statements at the beginning of the meeting expressing their admiration for BIG's significant projects.

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I think what people (myself included) find particularly galling isn't so much that this was found to be in need of improvement, but that this was thoroughly rejected by the panel (7-0 redesign) while the Page & Steele rental tower was more successful (4-4 refine/redesign). I'm also told from some present that there was an almost venomous undertone of 'you're not from Toronto, you don't get us' in many of the panel members comments.
 
Sorry, that's an utter bullshit reading of the panel members' "undertone" that comes from complete tone deafness on the part of a listener with a vested interest. That was not the case whatsoever. Any attempt to smear the panel members here with an architectural xenophobia comes from a chickenshit unwillingness to take the comments at face value. It's the listener's attempt to paint the comments as coming from nothing more than professional jealousy, instead of actually dealing with the content. How gutless.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the 7-0 in favour of redesign did not mean "start again". It meant "work at this a lot more".

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Perhaps, but it seems that what you've been saying is that the panel was asking BIG / Westbank to work on (or 'refine') their idea vs. coming up with something new ('redesign'). It's unfortunate that because of the binary language, much of the nuance of the discussion is lost but in the end, words are words and they mean something. I know we will get a written report but perhaps these proceedings should be recorded and posted online so that more of the discussion is captured vs. a simple, two-choice vote.

My question then is: why were BIG / Westbank unanimously asked to 'redesign' their concept while Page and Steele were asked by half the members only to 'refine'?
 
The 591 Sherbourne project is of a typology that's practically ubiquitous in Toronto these days, so the changes necessary to make it work the way it should are pretty well understood. There wasn't much disagreement on the panel was to how to fix things there (the only one I remember was one architect didn't want the podium south of the 601 heritage building to ape heritage styles quite so much, whereas another was happy enough with its reinterpretation as already presented in renderings). The only real question there that led to the 4-4 split was about the semantics of the two choices: which word best described to amount of change we want to see here? Refine seemed to tame for four of them, Redesign seemed too much for the other four. Like I said, maybe the word Revise would suit the middle ground.

The BIG project is much larger in scope, on a more prominent site. There's no question that there's far more a stake for Toronto on King, so as the proposal—which anyone involved with will admit is innovative in nature and therefore somewhat untested—is being held to a high standard, as anyone who cares about King Street would want, so I'd advise the proponents to consider what they heard as "tough love", not rejection.

I will say there was unanimity that the proposal is too dense, something which I know a lot of people will scoff at out of principle, but the point was that the way the density is distributed by this topology, the peaks are too high to allow enough light at most times of the day into the courtyard, or onto King Street, and that the building encroaches too much on the heritage buildings. What no-one in the DRP can know is what the bottom line density is that the developer needs to justify this rather special building, or more specifically at what density points certain value engineering measures will have to be made to make it all still feasible. (Only Westbank and Allied will ever know the finer points of the numbers of course.) Everyone still wants this concept to be realized here, just in a way that treads more lightly on its context, and that was felt strongly enough for every panelist to make a vote that reflected the gravity of that desire.

Here, if Revise was an option—some word that didn't sound like it meant "start again" like Redesign sounds—it probably would have won the day: Refine just isn't a strong enough word to characterize the amount of work the panel feels was needed to get this design to the place it needs to be to show genius—and the word genius was used by a panel member in regards to other BIG work—genius that they want to see here too.

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July 11 - Soil Sampling Rig In Action

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I am quite drawn to this proposal in many ways, but I have to say that the DRP has given some very good and relevant feedback to think about. The lack of sunlight into the courtyard space, and the lack of privacy on the terraces are two matters that I'm glad they were very direct about.

Why bother with a courtyard space if it won't have enough light to ever be a pleasant space?
Why create all these "cool" terraces if nobody actually wants to use them because they lack any sort of privacy?

Architecture should address these concerns, not carry forward without reflecting on them because it would change a cool or interesting form.

As attached we are to the first iterations of projects like this when we see them, it's completely normal and a net positive for a schematic design to evolve to serve its end goals better. And there's no reason the final iteration can't keep its whimsy and cool factor or even improve upon it. Just my two cents.
 
modernizt said:
As attached we are to the first iterations of projects like this when we see them, it's completely normal and a net positive for a schematic design to evolve to serve its end goals better. And there's no reason the final iteration can't keep its whimsy and cool factor or even improve upon it. Just my two cents.
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Agree, and we should should expect that an architect as talented as BIG would be able to respond to this feedback while retaining a high standard of design and substantially improving function.
 
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