Urban Shocker
Doyenne
The building achieves it through presence.
you really have no sense of humour do you? my statement is not personal towards you. (unless you truly are Dame Edna) It was meant to lighten the mood... and its ironic because your fashion sense doesnt match your architectural tastes. ah well, I guess I'll just refrain from addressing you in any way.
I have a theory. I think Us and Adma live together. It would explain a lot.![]()
Stand in the Square and look around - you're in Ground Zero of it!
The new apartment building will be the antidote. The verticality of the tower - windows, balconies and unadorned space between them - will echo the similar verticality of the heritage buildings at 19 and 21 Dundas Square, so it all connects nicely. Good old Jack to the rescue!
...I agree that the "necessary sacrifice" of the 1920 Hermant Annex is among them. Like, I like the Hermant Annex, it's definitely got a grungy sidestreet-industrial-modern feeling to it, and it's *ahem* "authentic"-to-the-point-of-euphemism and an urban explorer's/discoverer's delight. But unless there was some sentimental personal connection, I wouldn't bawl my eyes out at its demolition.
And by the same token, I don't feel the Diamond/Schmitt design is such a comedown, designwise, as to motivate me to rally on behalf of the Annex. If it were slated to be replaced by bathetic treacle like French Quarter, maybe--but not D+S.
Perhaps I am over-sentimental, but I can't help but see this proposal as the latest in a long line of little defeats around Toronto, and ceding even an inch to such short-sighted interests is particularly galling to me. The new building contributes nothing to the area: it's one of the most densely-trafficked 'hoods in the one of the richest cities in North America, and the best they can come up with is a selfish, insular little high-rise slab that wouldn't look out of place in Rexdale?
I'm a bit shocked at the lack of vision we demand from the companies that are building the bones of our city. Somebody's going to look at this thing in thirty years when it's run-down and owned by York West and wonder, "how did this get here?"
You're a rube, sweetie.
I can't think of a building that expresses the connection between location and passage of time better than the Harbour Commission building does. There's a profound eloquence in it remaining exactly where it is in the face of transitionary forces that have reordered everything around it.
And I say that as the person who ( hereabouts at least ... ) first threw the concept of "Facade District" into the mix. THC isn't a facade, though, it's a "truth squad"-like reminder of where we've been that perfectly illuminates where we are.
That's the point - the Square is the 'antidote'. The Square was designed to this way, and very purposefully. Your suggesting this building fills an essential role that it simply doesn't need to fill.
It doesn't really echo the verticality of the towers that well either - if anything, it simply detracts from the other towers.
The most practical thing, never mind the "historical correctness" issue, would be to keep the thing in situ. (Or else to demolish it; which in its way, might be the more "historically correct" solution, if one wants to approximate a 1910s/20s judgment call.)
Tewder: to you, my "notions of preservation" may be "painfully constipated"--but in these particular instances, I know the deck in question, and it's stacked; sorry. It's just like arguing that the Harper Conservatives understand Toronto's true urban needs more than any gov't or opposition party over the past generation isn't going to get a Harper Conservative elected or anything less than keelhauled in Trinity-Spadina...and not without reason, either...