Quote:
Originally Posted by rocketphish
I agree that this building looks like every other mundane RLA project in town. But I have to wonder if part of the blame lies with the end-user... the purchaser or renter. There isn't as much disposable income floating around Ottawa as there is in Toronto or Vancouver, for example. If a builder was willing to pay to construct a fancier more elaborate design, they would have to pass on the costs to the buyer\renter. Perhaps the buyers and renters in Ottawa are driving all this mediocrity because they aren't willing to pay for better? They only want (or are able) to pay for "good enough".
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What 'fancier'?? What 'disposable income'?? We live in a city where 100,000 people make a huge salary with a full gold-plated pension.
Debate about Ottawa's fortunes and the conservative mindset of the public service aside, these cladding panels and brick masonry veneers come in ANY COLOUR OF THE RAINBOW. It seems lately the only creativity one can get is assinine arrangement of varietgated balconies/windows. One mustn't have any vertical alignments, oh no! Barcode cladding/leakage failures all the way!
Part of being an architect is being creative. Buildings can be constructed that inspire joy and have no greater $$/sq.ft. impact as these white and black boxes.
I guess the safe option will have to do for now. The difference in Toronto is that demand is waning, and designers are going all-in to attract buyers. The opposite happens here. The safe bets sell out and the builder takes off with the money regardless of how the building looks. And there's nobody to critique design that has any weight on the decision making.