Great Canadian Skyline Thread II

[Martin Mtl]

https://www.instagram.com/p/BmHZvV7DTYx/?taken-by=pixupmtl


https://www.instagram.com/p/BmMm16pjd0Z/?taken-by=pixupmtl


https://www.instagram.com/p/BmFMJiagHT3/?taken-by=alibrynl


https://www.instagram.com/p/BmCsk6cgxEk/?taken-by=eloadefly


https://www.instagram.com/p/BmM0u95DQPj/?taken-by=photos_fera


https://www.instagram.com/p/BmMg3puAmEq/?taken-by=kate__gkate


https://www.instagram.com/p/BmMiCMwDqTO/?taken-by=elysiamariee


https://www.instagram.com/p/BmNWH_xBIg-/?taken-by=ehungg


https://www.instagram.com/p/Bk5-NSagRM5/?taken-by=tyler.w.doran


https://www.instagram.com/p/BmRkb-Fjg5d/?taken-by=lamouv

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by isaidso

Precisely. I don't think anything built during this Toronto boom would be recognizable outside the city, skyscraper geeks excluded. Being tall or nicer than the norm doesn't qualify a building as iconic imo. It has to be instantly recognizable and become symbolic of the place its from.

Toronto City Hall is such a building. As nice as Scotia Plaza is, it hasn't moved beyond just being a beautiful building. Toronto does have iconic things but none of them were built within the past 40 years. Surprisingly, that rather cheap plastic TORONTO sign might end up being the only thing we've built this century that is becoming iconic. Goes to show that something doesn't need to be tall, expensive, big, or even beautiful to be iconic.

But then that comes down to the old question of iconic vs famous. Ordinary, unremarkable things can become famous and well known symbols/landmarks of a particular place just because they're well publicized due to their location and/or circumstances while things that have genuinely noteworthy qualities can be widely overlooked. Is something iconic simply because it has received fame, or because it's deserving of fame? Or both? And is something that's deserving of fame iconic even if it isn't famous?

[O-tacular]

Originally Posted by GeneralLeeTPHLS

Thanks for pulling up that comparison Chadillac, crazy to see how much Calgary's grown in this time frame.

The unseen view from the south and the Beltline shows an even more radical change.

[TorontoDrew]

[IMG]Toronto Horizon - [1600 x 1066] by Patrick Lawe, on Flickr[/IMG]

[IMG]001 -1crpvibfwlconsh by citatus, on Flickr[/IMG]

[IMG]Toronto Summer Afternoon by Roozbeh Rokni, on Flickr[/IMG]

[IMG]family-reunion-18-064 by gtdmouse, on Flickr[/IMG]

[IMG]from the Rooftops by Brady Baker, on Flickr[/IMG]

[IMG]Rosedale Valley by Brady Baker, on Flickr[/IMG]

[Coldrsx]

@clairemacyeg

[TorontoDrew]

Damn Edmonton. You caught up to Calgary in scale with your skyline. It's impressive Alberta has two equally awesome skylines for a province with a relatively small population. BC, Ontario, and Quebec all really just have 1 city each with large skylines.

[O-tacular]

Originally Posted by TorontoDrew

Damn Edmonton. You caught up to Calgary in scale with your skyline. It's impressive Alberta has two equally awesome skylines for a province with a relatively small population. BC, Ontario, and Quebec all really just have 1 city each with large skylines.

They have two tall buildings. Calgary is much taller and denser. If you plopped Stantec and the Delta in DT Winnipeg you’d have a similar effect.

[Ramako]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

There is no question that the Toronto skyline has changed incredibly in the last decade. The point is that most of the change is due to the construction of multiple pretty generic condo towers.

Most developments everywhereare generic. Outside of Dubai, New York and China, no city undergoes a boom where a significant portion of the new towers built are iconic.

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by north 42

I find it pretty funny how some people on here say that nothing “iconic” has been built in Toronto during the current building boom, but then list a bunch of rinky dink developments in other cities as examples of great iconic buildings! Hilarious!!!

If you're referring to my post, which of those buildings would you consider rinky-dink?

All of them stand out to me more than any single building that I can think of that's gone up in Toronto in the past few years, with part of the reason for that being that there's so much going on in Toronto that it's probably pretty easy to zone out and miss some of the more special projects, which is mostly what I was getting at with that post. Literally the two specific additions that have caught my attention the most over the past couple years in Toronto are the TORONTO sign and the Dog Fountain. I'm not saying this to bash Toronto, I'm saying this because I legit haven't paid attention to every single development going on there but none of the ones I've seen really stand out within the context of Toronto as being both "different enough" and "representative of right-here-right-now enough" to be considered iconic.

What are some Toronto projects from the past 5 years or so that are Toronto's equivalent to the CMHC, the Halifax Central Library, the Peace Bridge? If such projects exist, do they stand out within the context of Toronto the same way that those projects stand out within their respective cities? Not trolling, genuinely curious.

To put it another way, I could imagine a marketing campaign for Winnipeg that uses a silhouette of the CMHC as its logo, or one for Halifax that uses the Central Library. Are there any post CN-Tower buildings in Toronto that could be used in that way? (I'm not trying to say that there aren't, I'm asking if/what they are because I don't know.) I also wasn't using the "tower with Edwardian house for a podium" as a dig against Toronto, it's actually an interesting approach that you don't necessarily see everywhere, and really illustrates the current zeitgeist of Toronto if you will, which is why I lean towards considering that type of development iconic. There are plenty of towers with historic podiums across the country but Toronto is doing it a bit differently right now, it seems (again, not an expert on every development that goes on in Toronto/elsewhere by any means).

Anyway, glad you got a laugh!

[Ramako]

Originally Posted by Hali87

Would it be wrong to suggest that the Dog Fountain is more iconic than any single building built in Toronto during the current boom? Or maybe the TORONTO "letters"? The Regent Park redevelopment is one example of a development there that captures part of the current zeitgeist (for better or worse), although I'd hesitate to call it "iconic" in the sense of "recognizable structures".

I don't agree. The ROM Crystal addition is a part of Toronto's current boom, and I would guess that more people in Toronto would recognize it than the fountain:



https://www.azuremagazine.com/article/rom-crystal-10-years-later/

[Ramako]

Originally Posted by Hali87

If you're referring to my post, which of those buildings would you consider rinky-dink?

All of them stand out to me more than any single building that I can think of that's gone up in Toronto in the past few years, with part of the reason for that being that there's so much going on in Toronto that it's probably pretty easy to zone out and miss some of the more special projects, which is mostly what I was getting at with that post. Literally the two specific additions that have caught my attention the most over the past couple years in Toronto are the TORONTO sign and the Dog Fountain. I'm not saying this to bash Toronto, I'm saying this because I legit haven't paid attention to every single development going on there but none of the ones I've seen really stand out within the context of Toronto as being both "different enough" and "representative of right-here-right-now enough" to be considered iconic.

What are some Toronto projects from the past 5 years or so that are Toronto's equivalent to the CMHC, the Halifax Central Library, the Peace Bridge? If such projects exist, do they stand out within the context of Toronto the same way that those projects stand out within their respective cities? Not trolling, genuinely curious.

To put it another way, I could imagine a marketing campaign for Winnipeg that uses a silhouette of the CMHC as its logo, or one for Halifax that uses the Central Library. Are there any post CN-Tower buildings in Toronto that could be used in that way? (I'm not trying to say that there aren't, I'm asking if/what they are because I don't know.)

Anyway, glad you got a laugh!

Gehry's AGO addition:


http://www.ellisdonconstructioncompany.org/more-about-this-project/


Alsop's Sharp Centre:


https://archidose.blogspot.com/2004/05/sharp-centre-for-design.html


Ryerson Student Learning Centre:


http://urbantoronto.ca/news/2015/01/downtown-toronto-north-growth-watch-2015


Bjarke Ingels project now in development:


https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/to...stbank-bjarke-ingels-group.16800/page-23

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by Ramako

Alsop's Sharp Centre:


https://archidose.blogspot.com/2004/05/sharp-centre-for-design.html

Definitely think of this one as iconic, didn't think of it as being "of this boom" (not very familiar with OCAD's/this building's history)

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by Ramako

I don't agree. The ROM Crystal addition is a part of Toronto's current boom, and I would guess that more people in Toronto would recognize it than the fountain:



https://www.azuremagazine.com/article/rom-crystal-10-years-later/

Another one that I just thought was older, I guess. A lot of the Gehry/Libeskind/etc-designed stuff is pretty iconic. I was just thinking of these as being perhaps "one boom ago". I'm not exactly sure when a lot of these buildings were built or when the "current boom" is considered to have started.

[Ramako]

Originally Posted by Hali87

Definitely think of this one as iconic, didn't think of it as being "of this boom" (not very familiar with OCAD's/this building's history)

It's been a very long boom. This was completed in 2004, when boom was well underway (though the 200+ metre stuff didn't start coming online until 2009).

[Ramako]

Originally Posted by Hali87

Another one that I just thought was older, I guess. A lot of the Gehry/Libeskind/etc-designed stuff is pretty iconic. I was just thinking of these as being perhaps "one boom ago". I'm not exactly sure when a lot of these buildings were built or when the "current boom" is considered to have started.

The ROM Crystal was completed in 2007. "One boom ago" implies there was a break somewhere in between. The boom has actually been accelerating steadily since 2003. The city brushed off the Great Recession without skipping a beat. See here: http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=82234901 (100 metre towers only)

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Ramako

"One boom ago" implies there was a break somewhere in between. The boom has actually been accelerating steadily since 2003. The city brushed off the Great Recession without skipping a beat. See here: http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=82234901 (100 metre towers only)

Isn't it nevertheless a bit odd that the most exceptional examples are from 2004-2008 though? You said that the boom has been accelerating, so there should be more examples like the ROM crystal or the OCAD building from more recent years.

I think we are in a period with a private-sector real estate gold rush but relatively little public direction and vision. Vancouver is the same as or maybe worse than Toronto; maybe somewhat better urban design but similarly lacking public investment. Not zero public investment but not commensurate with the amount of money sloshing around in the real estate market.

Rather than comparing cities, maybe we should compare time periods. Look at, say, the 1960's or the 1970's and you will find that nearly every city built something more ambitious during those past decades, even the cities that have grown a lot in the past 50 years. We might not like the 60's brutalist office complexes and public buildings but modern projects are much more conservative.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Is something iconic simply because it has received fame, or because it's deserving of fame?

I'd argue yes if it's also emblematic.

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

And is something that's deserving of fame iconic even if it isn't famous?

I'd argue no. Being well known is a pre-requisite imo. I'd qualify that by saying that I consider the Banff Springs Hotel iconic even though it's not well known beyond our borders.

[Ramako]

Originally Posted by someone123

Isn't it still a bit odd that the most exceptional examples are from 2004-2008 though? You said that the boom has been accelerating, so there should be more examples like the ROM crystal or the OCAD building from more recent years.

I think we are in a period with a private-sector real estate gold rush but relatively little public direction and vision. Vancouver is the same as or maybe worse than Toronto; maybe somewhat better urban design but similarly lacking public investment.

Rather than comparing cities, maybe we should compare periods. Look at, say, the 1960's or the 1970's and you will find that nearly every city built something more ambitious during those past decades, even the cities that have grown a lot in the past 50 years.

There are only so many large public institutions like museums that can be the beneficiaries of these kinds of ambitious philanthropic campaigns, so it's no surprise that these additions came early in the boom. The Sick Kids office building on Bay and the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts are other examples.

I think we're seeing some of the private money at work with the The One, Mirvish + Gehry, the Bjarke Ingels project on King West, CIBC Square, One Yonge, 160 Front, The Hub, Yonge Street Living, One Yonge, Mirvish Village Redevelopment, etc. These are all very prominent and very expensive projects, almost all by star international architects.

But I agree on the whole, it seems like the '60s and '70s saw more ambitious everywhere generally. I can only begin to speculate on why that is.

[mistercorporate]

by Jonathan Atamaniuk on flickr


by Bernard Y Yip on flickr


by City of Toronto on flickr


by Oliver Noggler on flickr


by Rascacielo on UT

[GeneralLea]

Two of those Toronto photos are definitely not skylines.....huh?