Look at that wall of glass, on the first 2 floors. It seems like every new tower going up is doing the exact same thing in practically every building. Just like the grey spandrel thing, the ubiquitous use of flat, glass walls will not be good for the city. It seems like once a design trend is established in Toronto, every developer has to do the same. Why would they want to do what every other developer is doing? Don't people in this city value creativity and unique design features? It drives me nuts when everybody wants to conform and developers give us the same bland, wall of glass retail, over and over. With this building boom we are missing a huge opportunity to build great buildings that make our streets livelier and more interesting visually. We might not have this great opportunity again in our life time, yet we're practically throwing it away. Yes, we have a few nice buildings but we could have had a collection of great architecture to distinguish the city.
We need to really look at how our buildings meet the street. Yes, it's nice that we are getting lots of new retail to animate our streets but all glass walls have no character. They are just flat, featureless windows that all look the same. Where is the variety of textures, colours, materials and design? It's such a half-assed attempt to create anything interesting and it's happening all over the city. It's so god damned frustrating!