Toronto Toronto City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square | ?m | ?s | City of Toronto | Perkins&Will

If you went to OCA in the fall of 1971 we may indeed be the same person.

I give smart little design haircuts here at the salon.
 
In all honesty, there *is* a significant local ramp-removal-in-the-name-of-urbanism precedent--the Ross Building at York U.

But look; to use Ross as an alibi for judging City Hall is like using Ike Turner as an alibi for judging Picasso. You might as well hire Duany + Plater-Zyberk to give the United Nations or Brasilia or Chandigarh a beyond-recognition extreme makeover...
 
If the success of our most famous PUBLIC square which is anchored by City Hall and paid for with PUBLIC money isn't judged by popular reaction then how should it be judged?
Click to expand...
But be careful about "popular reaction" being funnelled into tyrranies-of-the-majority (cf. the Voice Of Fire controversy)--besides, I'd suggest the more common "popular reaction" is relatively contented indifference. Paradoxically, the most popular reaction might be de facto non-reaction: "it is what it is", etc.

And conversely, re the impulse to find fault, remember: this is fundamentally a modernist-era design abstraction. Which means, by that overly strict gauge, is there anything *right* about the design, or at least its exterior aspect? Maybe it's our gee-whiz provinciality that still hails our City Hall as a masterpiece, rather than condemning it as a disaster a la Boston City Hall?

Tread carefully.
 
Maybe it's our gee-whiz provinciality that still hails our City Hall as a masterpiece, rather than condemning it as a disaster a la Boston City Hall?
Click to expand...

Or maybe our city hall is actually elegant and attractive while Boston's is a massive hulking oaf.

012306_city_hall.jpg


bostond4.jpg
 
If we relyed on public reaction for every decision everything we wouldn't even have the City Hall we have now. The Revell proposal was actually rejected by the jury until a late arriving Eero Saarinen pulled it back out and champoined it.
Certainly the public opinion is part of the process but as the power of NIMBYs prove, often the public is opinion is wrong. That's why we have experts, and we put experts on jurys.

If you want to start picking apart City Hall, there are many other 'flaws' that don't make much practical sense but are essential to the architectural idea. We have to accept the design for what it is.
 
Another thing to keep in mind (and I am going to sound mightily elitist by suggesting it) - does one necessarily trust the tastes of the masses that voted for the likes of French Quarter as the best building of the year? I know I wouldn't.

AoD
 
I don't see anything elitist in delegating responsibility to professionals to make decisions in the area they are qualified to represent. That way, you minimize "taste" and "fashion" and deal with pure design.
 
Although design professionals are just as prone to be influenced by taste and fashion as anyone else.
 
Are we sticking with our original choices? Has anyone changed their mind over the past week?

I've increasingly come to like Baird Sampson Neuert's solution - which seems to be a more restrained intervention, and more in the spirit of the original design, than Plant's. The others can go pee up a rope.
 
I am slowly becoming more in favour of Plant's proposal, but the "high-tech hobbit hole" design still has a number of proposals I really like, cheap Algonquin Park camp fires and Muskoka Chairs notwithstanding.

Zeidler and Baird can piss in the wind.
 
NPS Design Competition

Nipissing in the Square - a new prestige development by Great Gulf Homes.
 
I've increasingly come to like Baird Sampson Neuert's solution - which seems to be a more restrained intervention, and more in the spirit of the original design, than Plant's. The others can go pee up a rope.
Click to expand...

I'm with you. I didn't get to go see them in person, but I have seen some pics taken. Based on my limited exposure, I find the Baird Sampson Neuert proposal to be keeping in the spirit of the square. Plant's is also nice. The other two aren't really on my radar...I find the enroachment on the square by Roger Marvel unacceptable.
 
The BSN scheme puts too many new buildings onto the square proper to maintain the spirit of the original NPS. Also, their propsal to extend the colonade of the Hall is just plain wrong. Leave City Hall the way it is, fix the square.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top