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Originally Posted by Chronamut
I guess that's the price we paid for basically building on what equated to cootes paradise 200 years ago. They actually laid down hay and then cemented over the marsh and rivers, so it's understandable that there would be issues farther down..
and lol noone ever spells my username right 
and I dunno, look at the pigott building - maybe we need to focus less on height and more on quality. It's what core urban does. Most people on street view don't notice anything above the first 6 stories. Even if we did a fusion where someone like core urban paired with other architects - they designed the podium to be historic and the other architects designed the skyscraper part. Honestly I get that with balconies and glass there is only so much you can do aesthetically, but if you look at some of the high rises at square one you can see even they are better looking.
For one we need to migrate away from all glass and vinyl paneled looks, and migrate back to a stone/glass look. The renovated school near west harbour go station is a great example - templar flats, the courthouse - all examples of beautiful fusions of old and new styles - toronto has plenty of these - in fact if was the duke from the UK that originally recommended they keep all the old historic building shells and build skyscrapers on top. Honestly it's the best solution - and it's what the building across the street is doing. The podium design is the most important part of the building For anyone who is walking down the street. Esp when you have historic buildings still existing across the street. The podium for this one is just awful, just a box on each side.
As for the tower part - we need to REALLY get away from flat roof designs being EVERYTHING in the city, and look at more peaked roof designs, and designs with more illumination - toronto has illumination EVERYWHERE - we have a string of christmas lights at the top of landmark place - pathetic.
Having columns or risers of stone, embossed mullions with beautiful designs like they used to have on the connaught addition building under each window, pediments and lintels where appropriate, classy new york 20s-40s style grand entrances like is being proposed for the new connaught building going up beside it - CLASS. We need to bring back class. We need to bring back a sense of pride of being in hamilton like existed in the 40s and 50s. We haven't had that for a very long time, but it's time to rebuild that. The feeling of upscale without a sacrifice of quality. It doesn't even need to be expensive - a lot of the stonework of core urban is actually simply formed concrete - you can do a lot of the stuff for relatively cheap - you just need to work with skilled people to make it look.. substantial, expensive, while not actually BEING expensive.. ish.
Core urban has basically run against any argument anyone has of "well it's too expensive to build anything of quality" - bullshit. They did it 100-200 years ago with far less technology than we have now. We even have the stonemasons if it came down to that. It doesn't even need to be solid - look at the William thomas building - they hollowed out all those stones so it was just a veneer. I am not HUGE on that, but it's better than nothing. I still believe the building elements should look like they actually support the building, but whatever.
One thing the council said a while back made me cringe, an that was that they don't let most people do traditional designs because unlike core urban they don't have the SKILL to pull them off - how sad is that - we claim to be the pinnacle of technology yet we have devolved in our ability to make quality architecture. So yeah I do have ambitions for a higher architectural standard, and maybe one day I'll just take that responsibility on myself - one can dream.
For hamilton it's not even an ambition - we are one of the only remaining cities left in ontario with as MUCH architecture that is beautiful -for me it's just a matter of MAINTAINING and continuing that ancient path of excellence in this city, and building it higher, much higher, as core urban is now starting to flirt with. |
I have a few takeaways here. First I would like to say that I agree with your architectural sensibilities, and if we can somehow incentivize craftsman-quality builds that you describe then I would love to see it. Unfortunately this doesn't really address the economic limitations of building said nicer structures, so the feasibility of getting what you describe Isn't necessarily any closer. I do understand that Core Urban does great work, so I will use that as a jumping-off point, but we cannot build the Pigott building today, tragic as it is (not without significantly deeper pockets).
The crux of the issue is crossing the gap of construction cost. What we see built are cheap structures, even by regional/national/global standards. The traditional way of building higher quality things is for real estate to become more expensive, as it is starting to do in Toronto. What I (and I think you) are interested in is how to bring that level of quality and then some without the needed real estate value, so reducing the cost to build (the structure or the beautification elements).
I like that you bring up Core Urban, because they
are the ones building high-quality, timeless structures. This proves that somehow there is an economic niche of some kind, but we need insight on what that niche is and how their projects manage to pencil out. If we can crack this 'code' we can begin to tackle bigger projects of similar quality as you and I desire. Do Core Urban's projects (midrises) work because they require little digging for foundations? If so, it is possible they can avoid the groundwater issues, but this doesn't work as well for highrises. Core Urban does not have the ability to take on such projects as major developers can, so we cannot determine if the lack of quality bigger structures is due to sheer cost
for Core Urban or if it doesn't fit a pro forma for
any developer.
My current train of thought is to create a partnership (city or otherwise) with Core Urban. Give them more capital to build, help the partner understand what makes these projects work, and attempt to support and expand the practice. Ie, make Core Urban into a larger developer and we can foster the necessary trades to build better, and ideally drive down the cost of stone/brickwork in Hamilton, something most developers simply avoid due to cost.
Really, some of this is better for planners to solve. We can possibly incentivize buildings downtown to have a podium (every building up to floor x) that 'respects its surroundings' by requiring a historical-like facade. This way, the at-grade urban design you desire can be found, and does not require the elaborate and costly needs of building a 50s art deco skyscraper in 2022. It sidesteps the economic issue for better urban design practice, something that is sorely lacking here.
My main points are that to bring what Core Urban does to a larger scale, we need supportive industries to reduce the cost to build good architecture, willing developers, and policies to incentivize it. It is not too much to ask the city for more cohesive and architecturally respectful urban design guidelines, given we are talking about creating a better public realm. These are all kind of abstract goals however and I don't know if they are actually very realistic given how far it deviates from the contemporary development model we see today.
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