Toronto Velocity at the Square | 122.52m | 40s | HNR | P + S / IBI

I still think the "banality" knocks are overwrought.

And on the whole, better something like this strategically, neutrally "set off" from Hermant/HNR, than something more jazzily extroverted that maintains Hermant/HNR as nothing more than facadectomy veneers...
 
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I hope the suites facing the square come with triple glazed windows and pre-installed blackout blinds. It's going to be very hard to be sympathetic to the people that buy into this location if they start complaining about the noise and lights coming off the square in a few years time
 
I still think the "banality" knocks are overwrought.

And on the whole, better something like this strategically, neutrally "set off" from Hermant/HNR, than something more jazzily extroverted that maintains Hermant/HNR as nothing more than facadectomy veneers...
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True, a facadectomy veneer would have been a cruel fate for HNR, but the protruding tower itself looks like it was designed 15 years ago and tacked on top as an afterthought. It is hard to describe the tower portion in words other than banal - a couple of precast strips filled in with grey spandrel leading to a tacky crown - none of which has any real aesthetic relation to HNR. I would argue that something "jazzy" - the precise aesthetic that the art deco building itself evinces - would indeed have been preferable. If art deco embodies all the excitement and energy of the transformative 20s, this neo-modernist add-on screams of the accounting department.
 
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agoraflaneur said:
but the protruding tower itself looks like it was designed 15 years ago and tacked on top as an afterthought. It is hard to describe the tower portion in words other than banal - a couple of precast strips filled in with grey spandrel leading to a tacky crown - none of which has any real aesthetic relation to HNR.
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I agree, this thing does not complement anything around it....its butt-ugly and id rather not have it built
 
Automation Gallery said:
I agree, this thing does not complement anything around it....its butt-ugly and id rather not have it built
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Yeah, but if I was a developer, and I saw the crap that outer developers who want to do something special (10 York, Gehry, Oxford, Massey) go through with all the controversy from preservationists, NIMBYs, and planners -- I'd go from inoffensive and banal, too.

If this proposal was anything approaching interesting, the busy bodies would come out of the woodwork.
 
agoraflaneur said:
True, a facadectomy veneer would have been a cruel fate for HNR, but the protruding tower itself looks like it was designed 15 years ago and tacked on top as an afterthought. It is hard to describe the tower portion in words other than banal - a couple of precast strips filled in with grey spandrel leading to a tacky crown - none of which has any real aesthetic relation to HNR. I would argue that something "jazzy" - the precise aesthetic that the art deco building itself evinces - would indeed have been preferable. If art deco embodies all the excitement and energy of the transformative 20s, this neo-modernist add-on screams of the accounting department.
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Then again, "jazzy" could just as well be a formula for cheese that's even more of a 15-years-dated travesty of what presently exists (cf. the Windsor Arms tower)

I guess judgment here depends upon where "banal" ends and "neutral" begins--indeed, the so-called "banality/neutrality" is why I, personally, can't see how this qualifies as 15-years-dated.

And above all, with consideration of how this is really going to be viewed by most people from any perspective other than the upper levels of Metropolis, it'll likely register less as "tacked on top" than as "attached to the rear"; and maybe more akin to some of those ancient side-street shafts (i.e. 1920s-version "products of the accountant") that have displayed party-wallish faces in the direction of Times Square or similar nodes over time...
 
Im sorry but I just don't get this one. nor do I get raving over it like its a work of art... its just a fill in building and looks like it should be in city place area not here. It is deffinetly nothing to write home about or even waste battery life of a camera on. Im all for a building here and even its height, but what are they thinking with this. And for its location to. I saw a nice curved version of this not long ago. and it was superbly nicer and sculptural like L. what happened? Have they lost their creativity. I say use the same materials but change the design. add a nicer crown to it or details or something. even the slightest hint that canadian arcutecture can be just as well thought out as other world cities.
 
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Interesting points adma. We would have to flesh out a theory of the banal to properly use the term. In all likelihood you would be correct in your more attuned usage. And I certainly wasn't going for "jazzy" in the sense of "in your face", I would just like something that is well thought out in its relationship to the heritage building - not heritage shlock a la Windsor Arms. It seems to me that this is a poorly practiced and understood aspect of contemporary architecture, where the shocking and newly wrought dominates fanboy imagination alongside the repetition of boxes. But to think the relationship to the heritage building is to rethink history - to aesthetisize our relation to history; and this, it seems, is a far more important and profound task - one that is certainly not happening here, even if this early 2000s design would not have been so "banal" in its first-received iteration. Yet if this is to be viewed as a side street shaft, much like the HNR itself, maybe you are correct and the historical relationship is being highlighted more than I thought after all.
 
3Dementia said:
Is Jack Diamond angry at Toronto? Can't think why, he's been very busy, but there's no other explanation for this lump 'o coal. Atrocious.
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It's strange...after a couple of nicely done institutional buildings, they seem to have missed the mark with this one, big time.....it's a dog...
 
agoraflaneur said:
Yet if this is to be viewed as a side street shaft, much like the HNR itself, maybe you are correct and the historical relationship is being highlighted more than I thought after all.
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And let's keep in mind that the later, larger of the Hermant/HNR buildings is relatively utilitarian as Art Deco blocks go--it doesn't even have the pizzazz of Benjamin Brown's contemporary Spadina-zone warehouses, much less the original terra cotta-clad predecessor next door. And yet it remains a sturdy anchor, fundamental to Y-D Square's "sense of place"...
 
I did see one mention of rental units on the second page but on the final summary at the end it says "Condo" under Tenure Type. Could it be a mix of both?

And it looks like they're retaining most of HNR and it's not a facodomy, more an addition? Is that correct?
 
The beige mixed with blue is what kills it for me more than anything, why not something interesting like red or orange or even purple.
 
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