Toronto The Well | 174.03m | 46s | RioCan | Hariri Pontarini

Sept 8, 2021

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neo said:
All the people whining about how this is some low quality green glass standard box project are gonna be eating crow soon. I think this is gonna be spectacular
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Well...I'm still whining about the green glass. But thankfully it hasn't distracted too too much from the over quality and goodness that has gone into this project, IMO. I am particularly taken back with how well the residential towers are turning out...to which is far above my expectations of them originally.

...and no, I won't be eating any of my corvid friends as I won't be needing too here. As this project is turning mostly out the way I predicted it would and them some. /shrug
 
Logan said:
It's unfortunate they didn't use a darker shade for the west facing vent/grills near the top. They really stand out and not in a good way.
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I think all of that will be covered by the building next to it anyways (the residential rental)
 
The view west to The Well along Front Street (taken from one of the images above) is an example of a lost opportunity to contribute to a terminating vista ....perhaps having the small cantilevered glazed box here rather than further north on the facade (though a bolder feature would be even better). There are limited streets that have terminating vistas; another nearby one is looking north along Peter where the recently built Mountain Equipment Co-op could have had a vertical feature at its south/east entrance to hide the chimney stack further north while giving itself much more prominence. Not too far is the view looking north along John street, where the terminating vista is a portion of the glazed facade of Gehry's AGO.....you wonder if the exterior winding stair would have made for a good focal point by just moving it east a handful of meters...... Compare this to the opposite view looking south along John, where one sees the large X from the John Street Pedestrian Bridge. Program and/or budget limitations could be to blame but you wonder if these visual opportunities were even considered. When starting these projects, one of the first drawings in schematic design should have been a context plan, which combined with photos etc should have readily identified these as unique opportunities to contribute to the streetscape. Of course there are cases where vistas were acknowledged, such as the nearby tower of St. Mary's church at the west end of Adelaide street but one would think that almost all buildings would go out of their way to benefit from such locations, including the unobstructed view facing out down an open street. Last but not least, another example is the view west where Richmond turns south slightly to go around Sweeny's Queen Richmond Center West: as much as I like preserving elegant old brick structures, the modern-day architect's contribution is much bolder than its predecessor's and having one of the big 7-storey Delta Frames right at the corner would have been really powerful (of course the frames exist to preserve the old building but once conceived they should have been given the most prominence - would have involved removing all the bricks and relocating the old footprint north - in this case purposely resorting to facadism, which would typically be a last resort).
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