Toronto The One | 328.4m | 91s | Mizrahi Developments | Foster + Partners

The hysteria from some of the posters about the "ruined" design is baffling. Do people not know how design in large-scale firms work, or have they not seen the evolution of designs in other markets all over the world? Designers come up with an ideal concept, then, as they start to notice the problems or issues with the design, they modify it to take into account feedback from affected parties or the practicalities of construction. It is not "Toronto," is not "small minds," it is the difference between ideas and reality. Personally, I find it fascinating to hear about how this actual design process is evolving.
 
The problem is they should never have revealed that design until they were pretty much ready to go. Having said that I still expect something great. Still a Foster.
 
I think you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Here, they did, and they got a ton of attention, and now that it's in the middle of redesign, they're getting crap back from people who don't want to read carefully enough to see that the final design will still have to do something special because of the unique engineering issues.

If they hadn't bolted out of the gate with something special, they would have been pilloried from the start, been met with contempt, scorn, and worse—boredom—and few would care now about how this was playing out. They wouldn't be getting anywhere with retailers either. With no momentum, a huge project like this would have stalled with no gas to get moving again.

I'd rather have the problems associated with the damned if you do method.

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I disagree. Let's use an example. If Apple came out with iPhone 7 marketing in August, and then the next month provided something completely different, it would not be acceptable. This is obviously not the same, as this is a semi permanent structure on our skyline at a very important intersection in the city. We are not to be tooled around with.
Bottom line, you don't market something you're not going to actually bring to market.
 
They haven't started marketing any suites. They are not offering any units for presale with particular specs. All they're marketing at this point is the lifestyle and retail amenities that they intend their final product to offer.

Just about every building that goes up on UrbanToronto debuts at an early stage of the planning process. That's not new with this building. They usually morph along the way. We are careful with the front page articles to use the conditional tense at early stages: This building would have 8 storeys of retail if built as proposed. is basically how we word these things.

No building gets presented for the first time as a fait accompli. We demand to know as soon as there's an application in to the City's Planning Department, so we first see buildings at an early stage. Apple isn't required to consult the public about their designs and ultimately get approval from City Planning and Council. It's totally different.

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Parkdalian said:
The hysteria from some of the posters about the "ruined" design is baffling. Do people not know how design in large-scale firms work, or have they not seen the evolution of designs in other markets all over the world? Designers come up with an ideal concept, then, as they start to notice the problems or issues with the design, they modify it to take into account feedback from affected parties or the practicalities of construction. It is not "Toronto," is not "small minds," it is the difference between ideas and reality. Personally, I find it fascinating to hear about how this actual design process is evolving.
Click to expand...

The denial of some posters is equally baffling. The frontier-town development market in Toronto is blemishing the city with a lot of poorly designed, cheapened and banal end product. I can't wait for this building cycle to come to an end!
 
No design is complete until its built. This is life. Problems and issues creep up in every stage of construction that cannot be anticipated in the design stages. To imagine that designs are anything but proposals is not reasonable.

Also, a building is a public good, not a private consumable, like an iphone. A building should be presented to the public as early as feasible so that the needs of the city can be taken into account in the design of the building. Some people think Toronto is filled with non-functional eye-sores - it would be much worse if designers didn't take into account the public and the city's concerns.

Whether there is a design deficit in Toronto's buildings - a debatable judgment - the solution is not to ignore feedback from interested parties. The solution is that designers and developers need to correctly integrate the feedback they receive into their designs. Some designers and developers are good at this; some are not. And some good designers and developers make bad buildings because everything has gone wrong on that particular building. Foster and Core are generally good, but they are capable of throwing up a turd - that is life.

Excessive amounts of money usually solves these issues, but Toronto is not London or New York - we are not the centre of financial empires. We just have to muddle it out the best we can.
 
khristopher said:
I disagree. Let's use an example. If Apple came out with iPhone 7 marketing in August, and then the next month provided something completely different, it would not be acceptable. This is obviously not the same, as this is a semi permanent structure on our skyline at a very important intersection in the city. We are not to be tooled around with.
Bottom line, you don't market something you're not going to actually bring to market.
Click to expand...

Except that Apple doesn't need anyone's permission to launch a new product. A developer does, which changes the dynamic and timing.
 
Parkdalian said:
The hysteria from some of the posters about the "ruined" design is baffling. Do people not know how design in large-scale firms work, or have they not seen the evolution of designs in other markets all over the world? Designers come up with an ideal concept, then, as they start to notice the problems or issues with the design, they modify it to take into account feedback from affected parties or the practicalities of construction. It is not "Toronto," is not "small minds," it is the difference between ideas and reality. Personally, I find it fascinating to hear about how this actual design process is evolving.
Click to expand...

You nailed it.
Seems like people have forgotten the design evolution of iconic buildings like One WTC. Yup, that happened in NYC, first class city and blah blah. Shocker, eh?

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source: New York Times

BUT BUT WHY CANT WE HAVE AN ICONIC DESIGN!!!111! OH MY GAWD THIS IS SO TORONTO!!!!1111!!11
 

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I think the bottom line as we all have different opinions of what is "beautiful" or "ugly". I've always openly admitted that before joining this sight, I knew squat about the design process. As a Heath care worker, it's a forgein world to me, but I have learned a great deal from all of you. I've always had a great interest in skyscrapers, but there's so much to learn. That said, my lack of knowledge or not, I still know what I like. I know there are many redesigns before the final project, and I know why, just sucks that in this one particular case, I really fell in love with the very first publicized rendering, knowing full well it probably wouldn't look anything like that once built. It's all simply a matter of person taste, and while I truly am thrilled we're finally getting a real super tall, I'll be the first to admit that lately, I've grown tired of the generic look of many new towers, just steel and concrete square frames, completely covered from top to bottom with blue or green glass. Any building that shows something a little different, maybe a few curves, and a little colour...just think it would add more to our skyline then just another blah condo.
 
Yes the World Trade Centre and many other buildings evolved over time design-wise. But they weren't placing full page ads in the paper promoting a design that would soon change. That's the weird part.
 
We've seen many conservative and banal designs for condo towers in the past 15 years. Developers have rarely given architects the opportunity to do anything creative beyond arranging mullions or balconies into basic patterns. But we'll probably see better landmarks with time. Real estate is getting more expensive, there's more competition in the market, and developers are raising the bar with projects like L Tower and the Mirvish-Gehry development. Regardless of what this tower looks like, the future is bright.
 
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