Toronto Peter Gilgan Centre for Research and Learning | ?m | 21s | Sick Kids | Diamond Schmitt

Sept 5th:

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The horizontal bands on the protruding glass portions look awkward. I don't understand why one of them spans the entire wavy wall (2nd section from the bottom), yet the rest only cover 1/4, 1/3. I think it would have looked better to have omitted them from the design--minus the bands at the top and bottom of each section.
 
The bands reflect the balconies on the interior of the atrium. I guess they could have used a black spandrel to hide it better, but the colour also accentuates the curve in the wall/glass
 
This is by far my favourite building of this era. The glass actually looks high quality and I love the sharpness of the corners. Those corners could peel potatoes.
 
D+S never got that cultural memo: Curvy staircases belong in Mtl.
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urbandreamer, what does this mean?
are you happy for the architecture in Toronto to remain unadventurous?
do you like straight lines only?
are you from Mtl?
expand please, your comments do not form a full critique, they seem only to be full of anger and snide asides.
 
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urbandreamer said:
21 September 2012: What a ghastly beast this building is! For example:
D+S never got that cultural memo: Curvy staircases belong in Mtl.
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little man said:
urbandreamer, what does this mean?
are you happy for the architecture in Toronto to remain unadventurous?
do you like straight lines only?
are you from Mtl?
expand please, your comments do not form a full critique, they seem only to be full of anger and snide asides.
Click to expand...
urbandreamer is as much entitled to his/her tastes as any of us, although a vociferous dislike of this building of all buildings means he/she's verging on self-parody.

I hope it's fair to say that in general urbandreamer could classifiable as a quote-unquote "Toronto style" fundamentalist: loves modernist glass in simple rectilinear forms (not at all alone in that opinion), and on top of that has a fairly naArrow definition of which buildings quaAlify for membership in good standing in that "Toronto style" category versus others that cannot demonstrate the appropriately sacred apostolic succession from Mies/Pei/Stone/etc. Read this recent piece by William Thorsell, think the exact opposite, and you're more or less in his/her head.

Anyway, the great glass box wars occur here at a pretty good clip and there's no use having another one. Where I get a little astounded is this insistence that only buildings adhering to this Toronto-style design language, however widely or narrowly defined, "belong" here. Shangri-La has been derided as "Vancouver style" and thus a blight on our fair burgh's architectural purity for the crime of some disjointed crypto-pomo whimsy involving its base and facade articulation. Now SickKids has curves, thus is "Montreal style", and ought not to be here either.

I much prefer to live in a city and not a centrally-planned theme park. Juxtaposition of architectural styles is a good thing, no matter how great the single most dominant style is. This sort of purity obsession gets increasingly ridiculous when you realize how tenuous minimalist modernism's claim for being a naturally Torontonian concept is. Unlike other large North American cities that have skylines built gradually through many architectural eras, Toronto's tone-setting skyscraper boom happened in a relatively narrow time window in the late 60s and 70s fuelled by the collapse of anglo Montreal, and so we got a handful of bank towers that snapshotted the trends of the time. I take no pleasure with agreeing with Conrad Black on this, but those were basically clones--very good clones--of other work by Mies, Pei and Stone from around that same period. The idea that a box is quintessentially Torontonian really does have its roots in historical fluke. And the idea that every other building in this city must match them perfectly or be a failure? Yikes.
 
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urbandreamer said:
As for the muted glass tones? Yeah that's totally UHN green uniform approved!
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The UHN scrubs are blue! And I didn't think Sick Kids was part of UHN?


This building is massive. I felt it's heavy presence as I was walking by and actually felt a bit spooked (I don't know if that makes sense)....so I'm not liking the building right now. Maybe it will seem less overbearing when the sidewalk is opened up again.

My favorite downtown hospital-associated building is the one across from St. Mike's, connected via the beautiful pedestrian walkway overhead. I really enjoy the contrast between the shiny new glass building and the gritty red-brown brick of the older main hospital.

Haven't been to the Western lately, so can't judge the new addition there yet.
 
Platform 27 said:
urbandreamer is as much entitled to his/her tastes as any of us, although a vociferous dislike of this building of all buildings means he/she's verging on self-parody.

I hope it's fair to say that in general urbandreamer could classifiable as a quote-unquote "Toronto style" fundamentalist: loves modernist glass in simple rectilinear forms (not at all alone in that opinion), and on top of that has a fairly naArrow definition of which buildings quaAlify for membership in good standing in that "Toronto style" category versus others that cannot demonstrate the appropriately sacred apostolic succession from Mies/Pei/Stone/etc. Read this recent piece by William Thorsell, think the exact opposite, and you're more or less in his/her head.

Anyway, the great glass box wars occur here at a pretty good clip and there's no use having another one. Where I get a little astounded is this insistence that only buildings adhering to this Toronto-style design language, however widely or narrowly defined, "belong" here. Shangri-La has been derided as "Vancouver style" and thus a blight on our fair burgh's architectural purity for the crime of some disjointed crypto-pomo whimsy involving its base and facade articulation. Now SickKids has curves, thus is "Montreal style", and ought not to be here either.

I much prefer to live in a city and not a centrally-planned theme park. Juxtaposition of architectural styles is a good thing, no matter how great the single most dominant style is. This sort of purity obsession gets increasingly ridiculous when you realize how tenuous minimalist modernism's claim for being a naturally Torontonian concept is. Unlike other large North American cities that have skylines built gradually through many architectural eras, Toronto's tone-setting skyscraper boom happened in a relatively narrow time window in the late 60s and 70s fuelled by the collapse of anglo Montreal, and so we got a handful of bank towers that snapshotted the trends of the time. I take no pleasure with agreeing with Conrad Black on this, but those were basically clones--very good clones--of other work by Mies, Pei and Stone from around that same period. The idea that a box is quintessentially Torontonian really does have its roots in historical fluke. And the idea that every other building in this city must match them perfectly or be a failure? Yikes.
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Excellent post Platform 27. Well written and informative. Thanks for the link to the Globe article too. Interesting read. I think the William Thorsell has got it exactly right.
 
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