Toronto U Condominiums | 183.79m | 56s | Pemberton | a—A

Agree, but...

I have to agree with you about the price. It is simply way too expensive. However, when I look up the floorplan, I have to say U condo brings one of the best design among many products currently under selling and construction.

First, it has no bedroom without a window, for both one bed and two-bed room. The smallest unit, with 542 sqt though, is a decent one bed room with balcony.

Second, all two-bed room coming with a TRUE open concept. There no LONG and NARROW corridor being sequeed into the unit to stealthily maximize the total square feet.






We are straying way off the point here. The issue is that the smallest unit in U is 350K without parking and locker. The larger units (around 900 sq ft) are 600K without parking and locker. The largest units are 700 and over.

They are not allowing customization. The plans are sub-standard, the appliances are minute, the finishes are average.

Where is the value? Its the embodiment of the late-bloom condo mentality that developers adopted.

Looking forward to the return of the consumer to the driver's seat! (Its almost here, guys!) Our money is valuable, and we need to be treated as such.
 
Price appears to be comparable to other recent projects to the south in what i would consider similar or inferior projects including Burano/Murano and Aura. Views to the south and west should outstanding and the tower's architecture is very impressive IMHO. I would take the aA look for this location over more mundane arch. any day. Critiques of the floor plans seem to be nit-picky when compared to other similar projects. Linear kitchens don't appeal to some but i am a fan of the space that is opened up and the natural light from the expansive windows...
 
agreed, there is a ton of sour grapes and competitiona mong architects in this city.

i'd have to disagree with you on murano, and burano for that matter. the designs look stunning in their renderings, but to me, the plain glass looks, well, plain. the grey steel that serves as the buildings' frames also is unappealing to me.

woodsworth resodence on the st. george campus is particularly modest for me. i'm sure clewes had to work with budget constraints but the design on that building falls under the cookie cutter mold for me. also, i feel its plaza and most of the st george street redesign will go out of date in the near future.

also 42, you seem to imply that PoMo buildings are inherently unappealing or immature. correct me if i'm wrong.

i myself enjoy PoMo architecture, even though i find it hard to define.
 
agreed, there is a ton of sour grapes and competitiona mong architects in this city.

i'd have to disagree with you on murano, and burano for that matter. the designs look stunning in their renderings, but to me, the plain glass looks, well, plain. the grey steel that serves as the buildings' frames also is unappealing to me.

People rave about these ordinary look-a-like boxes,meanwhile down the street College Park is one of the most critizised projects to date. Figure that out.
 
I think they selling point of Aura is to be near the center of downtown and universities (close to eaton center, dundas square, ryerson and U of T and steps away from financial core, entertainment district, from china town). Also it may possibly be the tallest residential building in Canada if they get the added height approved. Also don't all new floor plans have rooms with a window? It wouldn't be a room if it didn't have a window. It would be a den.

I think I also remember seeing long corridors in the design. I don't quite recall but it might have been a corner unit where there's a long diagonal hallway. I'll need to recheck the floor plans.
 
Barrytron, I find there is very little PoMo in the GTA of any merit. Mississauga City Hall is likely the greatest PoMo building in the country. In Toronto there are a couple of good PoMo libraries - Lillian Smith branch on College east of Spadina, and Barbara Frum branch northwest of the plaza at Lawrence and Bathurst. Scotia Plaza is good PoMo, although it's just barely Po, more simple Mo.

Anyway, yeah, most of the PoMo is undisciplined crap, most of it featuring slapped on cornices and mouldings here and there, fussy balcony grates, pretentious pedimented roof lines or arches, all manner of embellishments that scream more is more. University Plaza is a good example of a building with a bunch of these stupidities. If you already have a handsome building, why do you need all that stuff tacked on? If the design doesn't work without that stuff, does the stuff really fix it?

42
 
I'm looking at the floor plans and I don't see what's so great about U Condo floor plan.

1) The 4 corner units have a long diagonal corridor.
2) The shower and laundry room is angular. How does one make use of the space?
3) The 1+1 is similar to other floor plans. The only plus is the den also has a sliding door.
4) Kitchen is linear (island is optional)
5) Victoria and Woodsworth suite is 2 bedroom. 1 bedroom has no window.

The only one decent I see are the 2+1. The kitchen is L shape, there's a walk in closet. Every room including den has a window.
 
Two vicious yet well-worded posts from 42. For all its Fascist tendencies, citing Mississauga City Hall as one of the best examples of Po-Mo in the country is well justified. Might we also include the CBC building in there, if only for architectural chameleon's (Johnson) involvement?
 
Unlike Mississauga, though, it shares with Modernist buildings a lack of historicist references. And buildings that are playful, pure shapes ( the Crystal, OCAD ... ) can be great sculptural fun. It presents a colourful face to the city.

Still, unlike the Crystal - where, as you walk around inside, you sense a structure of vast planes that corresponds to the exterior shape - what the CBC's exterior promises ( those angled boxes with dynamic red grids plunging through the blue outer skin ) isn't reflected inside the building. A number of compromises ( a lack of interior windows allowing employees to look into the atrium, for instance ... ) were apparently made, blurring the original design.

Also, Johnson gave snazzy design haircuts in whatever fashionable style happened to be of the moment - he was going through a deconstructivist phase at the time of this one - and I think there are dangers to abandoning sound Modernist design principles for the sake of giving a snazzy new hairdo.
 
Barrytron, I find there is very little PoMo in the GTA of any merit. Mississauga City Hall is likely the greatest PoMo building in the country. In Toronto there are a couple of good PoMo libraries - Lillian Smith branch on College east of Spadina, and Barbara Frum branch northwest of the plaza at Lawrence and Bathurst. Scotia Plaza is good PoMo, although it's just barely Po, more simple Mo.

Anyway, yeah, most of the PoMo is undisciplined crap, most of it featuring slapped on cornices and mouldings here and there, fussy balcony grates, pretentious pedimented roof lines or arches, all manner of embellishments that scream more is more. University Plaza is a good example of a building with a bunch of these stupidities. If you already have a handsome building, why do you need all that stuff tacked on? If the design doesn't work without that stuff, does the stuff really fix it?

42

regarding clewes, let me just summarize my argument and end the discussion (for now) because we probably won't ever agree. i feel his work is repetitive and very much predictable now, even though he has some stunning structures, namely the spire and the pier 27. that aside, i feel his success has subdued his innovative ambitions. also, he often uses the same overly modest techniques and materials to design his buildings (often concrete, plain glass, and grey steel).

ok you make good points, but in any well-structured philosophical argument, let's define the terms first. generally speaking (thanks to wikipedia), "functional and formalized shapes and spaces of the modernist movement are replaced by unapologetically diverse aesthetics: styles collide, form is adopted for its own sake, and new ways of viewing familiar styles and space abound."

this is a very broad definition. indeed, scotiabank plaza, i feel one of toronto's best skyscraper's, falls under this category. but let's be honest, the rom, the ago, and ocad, with their expressionistic and bold style, also fall under this definition.

i'd like to think that the "upside down" sears office building on jarvis south of gerrard, while imposing, is terribly interesting.

these buildings to me, are noteworthy and triumphant. most importantly, i find they are fun, dynamic and iconic. 42, i agree there is bad postmodern architecture, but equally, there can be bad modern architecture. let's not suggest that preference of one style determines any objective truth.
 
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I'm unconvinced that we're living in a Post Modernist design world; the principles of clarity, legibility and directness are still relevant in imagining homes, offices, factories and cultural buildings. If anything, in the present economic and social climate, there's more of a fin de siecle feel about the styles that were supposed to bury Modernisn - even the term Post Modernism betrays reactionary roots - and the craving for high-fashion starchitecture, Dubai-like spectacle, and novelty building shapes that have been so heavily promoted of late.
 
Also, Johnson gave snazzy design haircuts in whatever fashionable style happened to be of the moment - he was going through a deconstructivist phase at the time of this one - and I think there are dangers to abandoning sound Modernist design principles for the sake of giving a snazzy new hairdo.


Such is exactly what I recall: CBC was being upheld as Johnson doing for Decon what he did for Pomo at AT&T. Yet it never gained the latter's landmark notoriety, perhaps because Decon was such an utter fashion-of-the-moment--and besides, purer Decon stuff like Eisenman's Wexner Center in Columbus was already in the picture by then, leaving CBC looking like so much ungainly window dressing.

I used to call it the fancy gift box that Place Bonaventure came in.
 
This building is hardly PoMo, it's all glass and it holds a consistent shape. On the other hand, the Mississauga sity hall is the ugliest building on the continent (behind the Boston City Hall LOL), with its really wide base and the random balcony on the front. What is that for, anyway?? For Hazel to hold her speeches?? At least the gardens are really nice, and the inside is beautiful, but whoever designed this, and whoever chose it to win the competition must have lost their goddamn minds.

BTW, apparently it's supposed to look like a farm??
 
^Um, duh! Mississauga was a rural farming community for longer than it's been a "city." Miss city hall is the best looking post-1980's building west of Dufferin St in Ontario. Period.

well duh it was rural, that's not my point. My point is that it completely fails at looking like a farm, and is an insult to farms everywhere.

mississauga.jpg


The problem i have with this building is that the "barn" is soooooo wide. And those tiny windows, ugh. And the colour, it's just so beige.
 

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