Urban Shocker
Doyenne
Its massing is another thing I enjoy. Skinny relative to its neighbours, the tower stands out in its projection of height while being quite different from the built form of the adjacent towers. Postmodern setbacks rise in stone from the concrete of the street and taper into glass - mirroring the history of the city. Stone reaches upward into the sky in the material of glass, the great symbol of the contemporary - despite the 80s appearance of the tower. This philosophical application is one of the reasons postmodernism appeals.
Well, Trump's height isn't much different from that of the buildings that surround it, so I don't think it'll stand out much at all. And the setbacks are mostly illusory, except on the east side of the building where they are strongest though still modest. Mostly ( and I noticed this earlier today, looking across at Trump from the 54th floor of the TD Centre boardroom ) the setbacks on the south and west sides are the result of changes in materials cladding the surface. Basically, Trump is a box with a prehensile roof feature. If you want to see nice setbacks go a few blocks west and look at the three cubes that form the Richmond Adelaide Centre. Or, better still, go north on Bay to the new Four Seasons Hotel. In both cases the setbacks are expressions of genuine volumes rather than the sort of dithery surface decoration we see at Trump. Philosophically speaking, I find the retro PoMo aesthetic of the Brookfield Place ( formerly BCE Place ) towers more engaging - their setbacks are both more pronounced and based on carving into the box to liberate new forms; done in a way that's modular and coherent, rather than being all over the place as if the builders were were making up the design of Trump as they went along.
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