Quote:
Originally Posted by Hawrylyshyn
Have you been to King W lately? It's definitely not slummy feeling and commercial tenants are doing fine (I can't think of any empty retail spots along this stretch). There are a lot of students in the area (more with a these developments) to support them as they tend to not have cars and rely on walking distance restaurants and retail.
And I know we disagree on this - the buildings being super aesthetically pleasing don't really contribute to the livability of an area.
Regarding Hamilton being a black sheep -- how often are you in other cities? Every city is getting tons of fugly architecture in modern times.
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And yet many are much more mindful of retaining their EXISTING old architecture - look at toronto, they've done a beautiful job of preserving it - true they have a lot of skyscrapers but they have also preserved and retained a ton of old facades. Us? Someone buys them up and waits until they collapse - our practices are abysmal compared to other cities, criminal even. Not that I am saying this church is the epitome of architecture, we have hundreds of churches after all, I am more insulted at the lack of.. creativity in the final results. It hurts my architects background and spirit hehe..
And yes, I am not saying that building generic architecture does not contribute to the livability of an area, but hamilton is unique in the amount of old architecture it has - its why filming takes place here - we need to be mindful of that. It is why firms like core urban existed, because they saw that need to maintain the historic streetscape and add new buildings that could complement that. I mean look at the visceral reaction we all had to the new city center design. Proper design DOES still play a part in our city, at least as far as the podium is concerned. Build whatever monstrosity you want on top of that, but put some effort and thought into the podium, please! I mean, this is an ARCHITECTURE forum, so obviously design is going to play a role in peoples reaction to things.
And I get you get what I am.. getting at lol.. personally we probably need a balance between how I think and how you think. Perhaps THIS area of hamilton isn't doing so bad... but the same cannot be said of everything along king EAST. Mac kinda gives an artificial positive view of our city if one were to look at JUST that region and ignore the rest of hamilton.
Upon saying that though, we each sorta contribute our own flavour to these sorta forums - having people that specialize in different things, so these kinda back and forths are at least still welcome on THIS site, although apparently they turn their noses up at us if we do it on the toronto site..