Toronto Nathan Phillips Square + Spirit Garden | ?m | ?s | City of Toronto

Dandy Horse said:
Is it architectural sacrilege to say that the walkways above on the east and south should be removed? because they should be.
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To you and brockm...yes, it is architectural sacrilege. And message-board-posting amateurs like you were factored out of the equation more than half a decade ago. Sorry.
 
"To you and brockm...yes, it is architectural sacrilege. And message-board-posting amateurs like you were factored out of the equation more than half a decade ago. Sorry."

Cool. But tell me: what is it like to be an elitist prick? Is it comfortable? How are the mornings?
 
To you and brockm...yes, it is architectural sacrilege. And message-board-posting amateurs like you were factored out of the equation more than half a decade ago. Sorry.
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I've never quite understood why people take such a dogmatic view about this sort of thing, when it is clear to them that people "in the know" seem to be unanimously of a different opinion. I mean, if I had a particular negative opinion about something which I understand little about, and all the "informed" people thought it was fantastic, I'd be interested in finding out why, as I clearly am ignorant about something.

The entire site is one cohesive sculpture. It was designed by a very talented architect who trained under Alvar Alto, and is a masterpiece of Finnish design. He died young, just before City Hall was completed. This is his swan song and magnum opus....and we are the lucky inheritors of this.

So to offhandedly suggest ripping parts of it down with such ignorance is a sign of extreme civic disrespect.


On a happier note...the last two pics, although still full of construction, are beginning to show the wide expanse of NPS originally designed. I'm liking it. Although I don't understand why they have barriers around The Archer...what's the point?
 
I agree it is architectural sacrilege - but there is no need to be rude about it adma. Besides, the walkways was an issue that had been raised before.

AoD
 
AlvinofDiaspar said:
Besides, the walkways was an issue that had been raised before.

AoD
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Which is part of my "more than half a decade ago" point. Essentially, the remove-the-walkways Cinderella carriage became a pumpkin long ago--though yes, modifications are proposed as part of the present renovations; but that's not the same as removal. (And the fact that they're still in pre-modification state--except for the west side in progress--might artificially skew the present-day picture for casual beholders.)

The only way now how the walkways'll be removed is if a Ford dictatorship gives it a so-called "taxpayer"-endorsed stamp of approval over the heads of the taxpayer-disrespecting elites, if you get my drift.
 
rdaner said:
IMG2476-L.jpg
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Great shots of our soon to be great civic square. But imagine if the building in background was the Temple Building, not the ho-hum Thomson Building. With this rise in faux-heritage cladding of new towers, I would like to see an EXACT REPLICA if the Temple Building as a podium for something. Then let them built eleventy-four stories of glass box on top if they like.

I mention this not just to be grumpy but because OpenFile has a new blurb on the Temple Building: http://toronto.openfile.ca/blog/2012/past-pieces-toronto-temple-building. (But there's better shots of it here: http://torontothenandnow.blogspot.com/2011/02/19-temple-building-at-bay-and-richmond.html)
 
k10ery said:
Great shots of our soon to be great civic square. But imagine if the building in background was the Temple Building, not the ho-hum Thomson Building. With this rise in faux-heritage cladding of new towers, I would like to see an EXACT REPLICA if the Temple Building as a podium for something. Then let them built eleventy-four stories of glass box on top if they like.

I mention this not just to be grumpy but because OpenFile has a new blurb on the Temple Building: http://toronto.openfile.ca/blog/2012/past-pieces-toronto-temple-building. (But there's better shots of it here: http://torontothenandnow.blogspot.com/2011/02/19-temple-building-at-bay-and-richmond.html)
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I've always though that the Thompson Buildings, with a better base and a few doodads/setbacks thrown in at the top would have made an excellent rendition of some of the buildings at the Rockefeller Centre.
 
I've always though that the Thompson Buildings, with a better base and a few doodads/setbacks thrown in at the top would have made an excellent rendition of some of the buildings at the Rockefeller Centre.
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Can't really see that.

But I think if they put up a single much larger building, instead of two, it could have made a decent impression of the GM Building.

It's quite funny when you think Ken Thompson built this thinking it was his answer to TD Centre.
 
jje1000 said:
I've always though that the Thompson Buildings, with a better base and a few doodads/setbacks thrown in at the top would have made an excellent rendition of some of the buildings at the Rockefeller Centre.
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Actually, as-is and without doodads/setbacks, it's already an "excellent" rendition of the contemporary Rockefeller Centre West aesthetic...
 
I think we've got a reasonable representative sampling of surviving hefty Husky Boy late Victorian or Edwardian buildings ( Confederation Life, Old City Hall, the Gooderham Mansion ) without much regretting the loss of the Temple Building.
 
Though when it comes to commercial office buildings of such scale...Confederation Life is all that's left, and it's but a shell.

Reading that OpenFile piece and esp. of its final days housing such things as the Toronto Pop Festival braintrust, I'm now really wondering about the final days of the Temple Building less as an objet (i.e. the typical heritage/architectural-conoisseurship approach of the 1960s) and more as an organic-hive-of-activity; sort of an atmospheric cross between the Chelsea Hotel and an incipient MargieZeidlerism...
 
Urban Shocker said:
I think we've got a reasonable representative sampling of surviving hefty Husky Boy late Victorian or Edwardian buildings ( Confederation Life, Old City Hall, the Gooderham Mansion ) without much regretting the loss of the Temple Building.
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I'm afraid I can't agree. Even if we had enough when the preference for parking lots over heritage ended, they are now getting drowned in glass boxes. Just as the Wrigley Building makes looking at Trump Chicago bearable, having the Temple building back would make our Trump look like ... well, a weak palimpsest of the Temple building, come to think of it.
 
I can accept the loss of the Temple building as a simple matter of economics (and facadisms were not in vogue in 1970). Had Toronto decided to focus its new office towers elsewhere, we would have a lot more of it left (unlike say, Montreal). But when it's replaced with something equally as good, it tends to dull the pain. We lament over the Temple Building, because while Queen-Bay Centre is an improvement in terms of income for its owner, it's not an improvement from an architectural point of view.

We don't lament so much for Carrère and Hastings Bank of Toronto building, because we got Mies's TD Centre in return.
 
Adma: I was being facetious, obviously I know that its important. What I meant to address was that it is actually pointless (fine by me), and Bay street in this area is a complete mess and has no sidewalk on the west side (not fine).
 
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