Toronto OCAD U: 100 McCaul | 39.4m | 9s | OCADU | Morphosis

interchange42

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With OCAD gearing up to expand and renovate their main building at 100 McCaul Street, it's time to get a new thread going to watch it unfold. A dataBase file has been established and linked up top, with the one concept rendering posted in it.

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Can't say I'm crazy about the huge blank box. If it has to be there then maybe they can get students to do a mural on it or something?
 
Yea I dunno. I don't love it. As someone who has spent too much of their life standing where this glass box is... I dunno. It felt cramped at street level already. I guess a canopy for smokers is considerate and the glass will keep it as bright as possible. the addition is needed, I guess sometimes you have to work with the limited space you have.
 
Can't say I'm crazy about the huge blank box. If it has to be there then maybe they can get students to do a mural on it or something?
That "huge blank box" is not part of the project; that's the McCaul Street entrance to the AGO without any detail (doors/windows/anything) on it.

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It's D+S... huge blank glass boxes are what they do. :/
That glass box—if it makes it through to the final design—has both creased fronts on it and "active solar shading" which will tint various panes of glass as the sun moves across it. You'll see both yellow and blue tints in the renderings…

but I'll also reiterate what the front page article states: this is only a concept rendering at this point, and there's still the detailed design work to do, which may or may not end up on Diamond Schmitt's plate.

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The Alsop addition works because it's above a heritage(ish?) property, slapping on a DS glazed box really ruins the aesthetic along McCaul. I think a better way forward with a renovation would be to have the school address Grange Park - a new grand glazed entry to the park could do a lot of good.
 
I appreciate that the DSAI renderings are only concepts, but everything about that glass box says wrong.

For one, it messes with the very simple dialogue between the original structure and Alsop's brilliant addition. It obfuscates the original building and, thus, the school's history, working against one of the obvious purposes of the Alsop design. It requires the destruction of about 5 tall, mature trees (by far the largest ones on the block). It replaces an important bright, open communal space that is always jammed with students (not to mention hundreds of at-capacity bike parking spots) with a deadened space underneath the box.

I like that OCAD wants to do something with the area between it and the AGO that right now serves as little more than a loading bay. I also do appreciate this is all very preliminary and that I may be tilting at windmills. But I'd hope that whatever design emerges will give this important landmark a great deal more sensitivity than a DSAI box. The last two major additions to the block were Alsop and Gehry. Diamond+Schmitt, frankly, aren't in their company.
 
Toronto’s OCAD University may boast another city landmark

"OCAD announced Tuesday that its new “Creative City Campus,” a series of renovations and additions to its campus on McCaul Street, will be led by the Southern California architects Morphosis.

The project includes an addition to OCADU’s main building of about 55,000 square feet and a renovation of about 95,000 square feet. And with the engagement of Morphosis, led by the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne, this building could redefine the university’s relationship with the city, and perhaps provide the city with a new architectural landmark."
 
It is for sure, though I can't quite square the details of this announcement with the previous announcement of the renovation of the building on the SE corner of Dundas and McCaul; is that building going forward as previously envisioned as a part of this project or did that proposal die?

Super excited to have Morphosis involved now, though.
 
It is for sure, though I can't quite square the details of this announcement with the previous announcement of the renovation of the building on the SE corner of Dundas and McCaul; is that building going forward as previously envisioned as a part of this project or did that proposal die?

Yeah I am totally confused. The website quoted a budget of 40M with multiple components - I think Thom Mayne once said (over the Grad House at U of T) the kind of budget he was given is what you'd get for parking garages in LA...

Reference - UT interview with Stephen Teeple (!!) - http://urbantoronto.ca/news/2012/06/interview-stephen-teeple-part-1

What do you mean by ‘crafty Canadiana?’

It’s that classic Canadian approach of using expensive woods and really overworking every little detail. We tried to get beyond that and take in the big picture of the building’s organization and the spatial sequences. The skip stop section for example, is not an invention of ours – it has been a part of architecture for nearly 80 years – but we took the concept a step further to a triple skip stop where you enter into two living rooms and move up or down to four bedrooms. In some ways I think you can achieve a higher level of success thinking that way especially when there's the challenge of a lower budget. Graduate House was supposed to be 73 dollars per square foot and even when we were able to get it down to 85 dollars, Thom kept telling us that that was ‘less than a parking garage in America.’ You see that approach right up into our Perimeter Institute addition where it’s not just about the small details, it’s about the bigger picture creating a high quality of space for researchers to work together exploring amazing ideas. It’s got standard baseboards, but it still looks pretty hot! Grad House was an inspiring experience that is still strong in the memory of many people still working for us.

AoD
 
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