Toronto One Thirty Eight | 144.05m | 31s | Cityzen | BBB

Don't know about that, but there is a public consultation coming up on January 22 at the Hyatt Hotel across the street.

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arvelomcquaig said:
With the new rules for cladding, can a proposal as glass-covered as this be accepted?
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They don't mandate the amount of "glass" used, it's the amount of vision glazing. Which means that there will still be plenty of window-wall towers going up, just with more spandrels.
 
Toronto Development politics at its best lol, public/community consultations unfortunately mean nothing if the developer chooses to take their case to the OMB.
 
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The new portion of the podium looks horrendous but I'm so glad to see the older buildings/facades being kept. But the courtyard within them is the gem and what should be kept to truly preserve the character of Yorkville.
 
I actually think the inclusion of the heritage buildings has resulted in a more interesting and "weird" looking podium, as well as a slightly less "normal" rectangular shape to the tower itself as it thins at the base and expands out. Obviously that's solely my aesthetic opinion but I like it myself. The houses being saved is great as well. Too bad the courtyard won't be kept but tbh keeping that would probably have meant not getting the building and, while maybe ideal, won't happen in density-obsessed Toronto.
 
Nice to see the retention of the round windows along Avenue, along with the laneway access just north of that building. The loss of 41 Avenue is a wash – I hate to lose those additional round windows that carry on the motif, but getting rid of those steps and that concrete platform that narrows the sidewalk is a definite win. The podium buildings on Yorkville on the east of the site feel pretty placeholder-ish and perfunctory, though I like the tree-shaped support for the courtyard roof. The new courtyard is much less charming than the current one, and lacks the cozy enclosed feeling. On the other hand, this is far more accessible to the general public - part of the reason York Square currently feels cozy is that a lot of people don't realize it's there, or that it's public.

I don't know. There's some good and some bad in this.
 
Ugh, I personally am disappointed. While I like the tower portion much better in this second iteration, I see the podium treatment as a very sad, sad, sad compromise. What was the point of saving that Frankenstein kangaroo of a building, half Victorian half po-mo hair salon extravaganza, only to gut it and treat is as a very compromised portion of the facade of a podium which was clean, coherent, structurally expressive, powerful and bold in it's previous incarnation. Blegh. I'm not sure Kristyn Wong-Tam has anything to celebrate right now, except perhaps trademarking a "made-in-Toronto" style of ugly.

Don't get me wrong, I'm often a bleeding heart type of person who rarely puts high brow architectural moves above the feelings of the render-plebs. But in this case, holy shit.
 
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M.R.Victor said:
Don't get me wrong, I'm often a bleeding heart type of person who rarely puts high brow architectural moves above the feelings of the render-plebs. But in this case, holy shit.
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The issue is not the retention of the facade so much as that they didn't retain enough. Without the courtyard spaces in and around the saved buildings, it really takes away from the whole point of saving them in the first place; the spaces themselves.

The walls just contain the space and give it some form. But ultimately it's the space itself that is interesting and needs to be saved for future enjoyment.
 
From Sunday

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This project has just appeared before the City's Design Review Panel for the first time. The project has progressed since we last had images for it, but you can consider the changes to be refinements. I will seek out the digital files.

There was a fair bit of time spent by panel members lamenting the loss of the existing York Square, but ultimately a recognition that the new design shows a lot of attention paid in regards to the pubic realm in the new square being proposed. There were several suggestions by panel members for further tweaks to the design that they would like to see considered. I am not sure to what degree of detail those suggestions will be reported in the minutes, but when this project returns for a second appearance, we shall see what stuck.

The vote was 8 for refinement, 0 for redesign.

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