Toronto The Goode Condos | 111.4m | 33s | Graywood | a—A

Huh. Only a month and a half after the Preliminary Report, they come back with a Refusal Report. Very efficient! My take on the report is that something about ⅔ this size might be acceptable to the City. With new studies, the City has new ammunition that they didn't have back when the 49 storey proposal new door a 31R Parliament was settled on, but I don't know if it's enough to bring something down as low as 30 storeys here as they suggest (plus a less bulky podium).

At the same time, we have a front page story up with more background on the design, and its reception at the DRP.

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A very heavy-handed design that has little to do with the architecture of the Distillery District beyond the brick colour. IMO- another instance of Aa Sametecture that we've seen throughout the area recently.

It needs some touches of levity- breaking down the massing into more human-scaled elements and maybe incorporating some vernacular elements like the arches (i.e. like at the King Portland Centre) might help.

I also still hold that demolishing the 1920s-era storehouse (Rackhouse M?) for Clear and Pure Spirits was a bad move that reduced the integrity of the architecture ensemblage.
 
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jje1000 said:
A very heavy-handed design that has little to do with the architecture of the Distillery District beyond the brick colour. IMO- another instance of Aa Sametecture that we've seen throughout the area recently.
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I'm going to suggest that the podium designs for the aA projects in the Distillery are quite sophisticated, carefully massed and detailed, and introduce another layer of design language to the area so that instead of a "museum", it is a space where modern ideas co-mingle with the old. What was designed in the Distillery in recent years is contextual in a way that is far above "throw some arches in there". That may be what designing to context means to you, but I'm glad that the designers felt differently.

As for scale, I'm genuinely surprised you don't consider this human scaled, but to each their own. The massing is very articulated between extruded single-storey entrances, heritage elements, and narrow podium "wings" that extend from the tower and define courtyard spaces.

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The new project may look "heavy handed" to you right now, and I agree that the tower itself needs work, but you need to remember that often there is shockingly little time to produce a design for a rezoning application. This is a first-pass, and the expectation is that should the client allow time and cost for it, the design will see much further development and articulation.
 
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