Toronto Southcore Financial Centre & Delta Toronto | 159.71m | 45s | GWL | KPMB

There's a certain quality that modernist built environments have - like Simon Fraser University's quadangle. I was reminded of that watching the Planet of the Apes marathon last weekend on TV - The 4th of the series - "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes" was shot in a largely sterile built environment that exuded "futuristic".

The primary location was Century City, Los Angeles, that had previously been part of the 20th Century Fox backlot and translated well the bleak future with monochromatic buildings in a sterile ultramodern style.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquest_of_the_Planet_of_the_Apes
 
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DtTO said:
Please go to South Loop in Chicago and tell me how that is any better architecturally than Southcore, Cityplace, or contemporary Vancouver architecture.
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So because there's an equally depressing area in Chicago magically makes them all appealing? All I can say is thanks for the warning about South Loop, I'll avoid it like the plague.

Btw, if you think Southcore is the only option if you want modern and clean you're dead wrong. Some people have greater aspirations for Toronto than a homogenous expanse of glass boxes for 3 city blocks. If this were Oshawa it would be fine, but big global cities deserve better.
 
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isaidso said:
So because there's an equally depressing area in Chicago magically makes them all appealing? All I can say is thanks for the warning about South Loop, I'll avoid it like the plague.
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You have to realize that the trend is more people living in highrise buildings. Can you realistically expect newer neighbourhoods, made up mostly of "middle class buildings" to compete (architecturally) with older neighbourhoods consisting mostly of $1b office buildings? Good urban planning can be just as good for a city, if not better, than good architecture. For that reason, even if you were to discredit Southcore's architecture (which I would not agree with), it is still a very successful addition to the city.

Edit: Equally depressing? Like I said earlier, you need to visit South Loop to understand just how successful Southcore is. Had Southcore been even remotely similar to the disaster that is South Loop, I would not be promoting it.
 
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I don't need to travel anywhere to recognize an appealing modern urban area. I'm fully capable of coming to that conclusion by simply visiting it and looking around. What I expect from all neighbourhoods is for architects and developers to acknowledge that there exists a myriad of materials other than glass.

I have nothing against glass; it can do wonders for a neighbourhood. What I don't want is one glass box after another for block after block. It can't get any more insipid than that. I'm hardly alone in the growing backlash to all this glass. That reddish coloured condo proposal on Sherbourne is a direct response to it.

What I find baffling is the contention that all glass facades is the only option if we are to build modern and clean high rise buildings. Maybe in North York that is what people think, but one just needs to peruse skyscraper threads around the world to realize that it just ain't so.
 
The argument is not with Southcore's planning, though, it's with it's architecture. The unavoidable, omnipresent and repetitive banality of it's architecture.

Southcore does well at street level, which is wonderful. Almost a miracle. That doesn't let it off the hook for the timid, pallid, conformist, unimaginativeness of it all. Really, there shoulda been a law. It looks like the set of Tati's Playtime down there.

Even a cursory glance at what is being built around the world is tremendously exciting, and thoroughly available here. We've blown an opportunity to do something wonderful for no reason at all, which is inexcusable in my books. Southcore - the front of the city - a cowardly ensemble, playing it safe. Future generations will no doubt be looking at it puzzled that in the time of computerized structural calculation, cross-cultural mixing and intellectual and aesthetic fireworks in our new computer age, that we've permanently built such a huge show of our own imaginative deficit there.
 
isaidso said:
I don't need to travel anywhere to recognize an appealing modern urban area. I'm fully capable of coming to that conclusion by simply visiting it and looking around. What I expect from all neighbourhoods is for architects and developers to acknowledge that there exists a myriad of materials other than glass.

I have nothing against glass; it can do wonders for a neighbourhood. What I don't want is one glass box after another for block after block. It can't get any more insipid than that. I'm hardly alone in the growing backlash to all this glass. That reddish coloured condo proposal on Sherbourne is a direct response to it.

What I find baffling is the contention that all glass facades is the only option if we are to build modern and clean high rise buildings. Maybe in North York that is what people think, but one just needs to peruse skyscraper threads around the world to realize that it just ain't so.
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Southcore really isn't as bad as most people here make it out to be. In fact, it is probably in the top 10% of the best looking contemporary "middle class" highrise neighbourhoods (maybe even top 5%) globally. I do agree that a larger variety of materials should be used for variety, but there is a difference between architectural variety and urban planning. You referred to Southcore as "soul sucking" and "sterile," terms which I don't think describe Southcore at all. Even at the heart of the neighbourhood (Bremner/York), the similarity of cladding material is not immediately apparent in a negative way. Ironically, the only "soul sucking" areas in Southcore are those that have yet to be developed (parking lots), and those that were built long before the name came into use (Harbour Castle, etc.).

CanadianNational said:
Even a cursory glance at what is being built around the world is tremendously exciting, and thoroughly available here.
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If you have a magical recipe for getting multi billion dollar office complexes built on our waterfront, feel free to share it. We'd all love to know! Don't you find it odd that you're comparing middle-income housing to billions of dollars in public and corporate funding? You want to see banality? Go look at middle-income housing in other cities. Please, feel free to share examples in Seoul, Singapore, Tokyo, Shanghai, etc. A "cursory glance at what is being built around the world" does not give you a true representation of what is happening. By that judgment, the only thing the world sees Toronto for is Absolute, and maybe L Tower. Exciting, aren't they? Sadly, they don't represent the average (nor should they).
 
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Please, feel free to share examples in Seoul, Singapore, Tokyo, Shanghai, etc.
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Some snowy night in front of the fire.

No need to go so far afield, nor so high in price. Gehry's buildings, for example, come in at less than 10% higher than conventional right-angle post-and-beam type construction, because technology has upgraded - though the buildings we're speaking of are made and promoted as though it's 1959. As I noted in a different post, the proposed Selby condominium development at Sherbourne and Bloor has more moxie than what we're seeing in southcore. Same for Saucier and Perrot's River City and Pontarini's Massey Tower and 1 Bloor.
There's no need to defend a lack of imagination in architecture, when it could cost even less than what's being built there and provide more pleasure. Or, if one need edit, corporate and/or residential distinction.
 
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Looking great so far. The "zipper" colour difference was more noticeable in person. This is the kind of cladding I was hoping for on the Ritz, but it ended up looking weak. This 4 star could possibly upstage their 5 star.
 
A quick snap this morning on the way to the Toronto FC game - looking sharp

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Hahaha - I'll get my geek on tomorrow
 
As nice as it looks in photos, I think this looks even better in person. The differences between the dark and light glass are less pronounced in photos (especially the transparency).
 
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