Under the Skyscraper

Mississauga Monroe

2006-03-29T10:12:00.000-05:00

Torontonians have long made fun of the sprawling Atlanta-like mess to the west, known as Mississauga. This vast suburb is one of the largest cities in Canada but never had a centre, unless you count a huge shopping mall. However, time and traffic have led to densification, and now that shopping centre is being ringed with tall towers. Soon an actual sidewalk might appear, you never know.

In any case, credit to Cityzen Development for running a design contest for their next tower. The wiunner has been announced, and it truly is a surprise. The selected design (by an obscure Chinese firm I can't even find on the net) is a true state-of-the-art condo, with all of the twists and turns made possible by modern construction.

The next challenge: Let's see how close the final product ends up looking like these renderings. Believe me, it is very difficult to get architecture and condos to work together. The desire for a bigger walk-in closet or better living room furniture arrangement can quickly destroy the architectural essence of a building through an endless series of small alterations. Will that happen here?

Hiatus

2006-03-28T17:47:00.000-05:00

Sorry for being away for so long. Renovating your own apartment (actual photo on right) can do that to a person. In any case, it was pleasing to see a few thoughtful comments upon my return, and I'm not talking about the bot-generated ones. I will try to be more regular about posting in the future.

To start with, some very surprising news about Alsop. This is being spun different ways, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. His work in Toronto is about to grow more numerous and it should be very interesting to see if he can transform into a condo starchitect. Toronto is certainly a good lab for that, with its many hordes of condos constantly popping out of the ground.

Speaking of condo starchitects, add another two to the list. Richard Rogers and Herzog / de Meuron just, as the Who liked to say, sold out. That said, their projects may be the best New York condo developments yet with big names attached.

The Wright Condo, Sort of

2005-12-27T16:51:00.000-05:00

While in Oklahoma City for the holidays, I spied this strange, empty tower looming over the old strip malls just outside the downtown area.

The building was built in 1966 as Citizen's Tower and was apparently inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright's only office skyscraper, Price Tower. ("Inspired" being a nicer word than "plagarized".)

The adjoining streets make up Heritage Hills, a beautiful and historic residential area dating from the boom years of the early 1900s.

Since it is all the rage to sell condos by famous architects, you can see where this story is going. Some OKC genius finally figured out that there was enough cachet in the semi-Wright credentials and the funky hexagonal floorplans that he could make a go of converting it. He bought the tower at auction for $845,000 (about the price of a bad 2-bedroom apartment in New York). He then managed to get the zoning changes through the planning department and is now converting the building.

A visit to TheClassen.com shows some truly great floorplans and some truly terrible marketing. Note to broker - you may want to drop the watercolors of antique furniture in favor of computer renderings of mid-century modern. You are supposed to be selling a contemporary loft lifestyle, not a retirement home.

Um, that's supposed to be mid 20th century, not 19th.

The price list will make any Blue Stater gag, but a 2 bedroom, 2 bath for under $180k will actually be a tough sell in OKC, where cul-de-sac suburbs across from a Wal-Mart strip center are the norm and housing prices are stagnant.

Still, there may be just enough new-in-town semi-temporary professionals looking for a condo lifestyle to drive the sales. I hope so, because this is a great project and a great building. It would go a long way to completing the renewal of downtown Oklahoma City into not only a place to work and entertain, but to also live.

Toronto and New York Condos

2005-12-07T15:54:00.000-05:00

When I was in Toronto over the weekend I happened to visit several condo sales offices (Glas, Mode, 88 Broadway, 533 Richmond). Some very sleek trends. Also, the apt sizes were much smaller than New York. At the risk of generalizing, it seems that a possible explanation could be:

1) In New York, people rent. They rent and rent and rent for years before buying a condo, if ever. Owning an apartment in the city is rare and due to scarcity condos start at $1000 psf. There is no such thing as a starter condo, or bargain basement condo. The closest thing would be the lower-priced co-ops (as low as ~$600 psf), but they are a somewhat different animal, being older stock and in most cases converted themselves from rentals. Their legal status is quite different and they are only rarely being converted or built.

As a result of this scarcity, New York condos must stand out to reflect the superluxury status of their owners. Many buildings have 1 bedroom apts with 1.5 baths because they are truly about the luxury market, and that luxury is reflected in terms of space. Room sizes are quite large as a result. Since people in New York tend to not have cars, there are no parking levels, and therefore no easy way to create storage lockers. Also, people usually do not have nearby relatives. So, storage is a problem and closets tend to be more important and larger in size (many are full walk-ins). ADA also requires very large bathrooms and kitchens.

Because of New York's history of masonry buildings, or because of the conservative superluxury nature of the condo buildings, exterior architecture was, until recently, very muted. Few buildings used extensive glass. Now, with the market much more competitive, exterior architecture is becoming extremely aggressive.

In earlier New York condos, almost no common amenities were provided, either due to space limitations or to keep common charges down (already inflated by New York utilities and salaries). This is changing as party rooms and gyms start to appear.

2) In Toronto, the rental market is comparatively small. Most young people live at home, with their parents in a house, until they can save the down payment for a small starter condo. (Unlike New York, most of the neighborhoods in the city have medium-to-large single-family homes, so this is easier to do).

As a result, price is critical for condo sales and apartment sizes for condos tend to be very small. At $300-$400 psf, the goal is to keep prices in the $200 k's, which means small 500-650 SF one bedrooms. One condo I just saw had two different lines of 410 SF studios! Many bedrooms have one dimension less than 10' and the other is often less than 12'. Two bedroom apartments are almost always smaller than 950 SF. Most kitchens are on a single wall, with no clear dining area. The lack of ADA does keep kitchens and bathrooms small, but the majority of apartments also have a den despite their small footprint. Why is hard to pinpoint, but it may be that while New York's luxury market rewards closets and powder rooms, Toronto's value-driven market rewards anything that can be called an extra room.

Everyone has a car, so condos always have parking levels and therefore storage lockers. Closet space is not at a premium and also squeezed out by the size constraints, so there are fewer and smaller closets.

Because of their small size, and the intense competition, Toronto condos must find ways to stand out. Exterior architecture is part of this, with more curves, angles and glass than New York. However, because of the focus on cheap sales prices, the exterior architecture is governed by cost and tends to be less expensive in detail than the most recent New York facades. Buildings primarily compete on the quality of their sales offices ("presentation centres") and their model apartments. This drives the innovative use of interior design aspects, like concrete floors or Italian-designed kitchens. For example, on my recent tour of just two model apartments I saw such standard features as:

flush ceiling showerheads
replacing tubs or enclosed showers with tub-sized showers with a premanufactured base and a simple fixed glass wall on half their length. This was enough for the limited spray caused by the rain-curtain style showerhead (and inexpensive to build!)
floor to ceiling frosted glass sliding panels on floor and ceiling track instead of conventional doors for the bedroom
frosted-glass and laminate horizontal kitchen cabinetry that self-illuminated and auto-opened when lifted
panelled fridges and dishwashers and countertop range to almost completely hide the appliances
unusual tile schemes for bathroom walls and kitchen backsplashes

Plus, an outrageous level of common amenities is provided in every large building. Some of this is apparently due to zoning, some due to having more space available, and some due to competition.

Big statement, tiny condos

I suspect that in time, the differences between the two markets will narrow. New York will always have a space premium, but once the superluxury market weakens the lower end of the market will probably become more important and room sizes will drop. The exterior architecture has already merged. Building amenities are now much more common. At the same time, Toronto will feel pressure from people living in a small condo to move to a larger apartment, and the superluxury segment is starting to develop (4 Seasons, Trump, etc) But for the time being it does seem to explain why in New York the room sizes need to be larger while in Toronto design features make up for the smaller spaces.

Subway Spruce-Up

2005-11-30T12:48:00.000-05:00

The TTC is well known for running a clean-but-dull subway, where the trains run on time but the visual environment is very 1960s bathroom. Most stations are tiled with something older than most riders, or at best some partial renovations. Many stations have sections of multiple types of tile from different renovations. It never looked great, but as long as it was clean it was tolerable. Can't blame a subway started in the 1940s for having low ceilings after all, and compared to New York (the stations it was modelled after) it was actually not bad at all.

Times change. New York has done a good job of fixing up its tired old stations (albeit in a faux-Victorian mosaic fashion, but what the hell, it looks great). You can see a good before-and-after here. Now Toronto has made the surprising announcement that they are going to begin sprucing up some of their own more bland stations. Osgoode, Museum and St. Patrick are legendary for their blahness, and now they are becoming rather exciting. A few mummies here, opera speakers there and you have some fun postmodern kitch. Go for it.

Read the full story here.

Edifice Complex

2005-10-28T19:42:00.000-04:00

One subject that I constantly worry about is the design of parking garages. These are the elephants in the room in any urban redevelopment, since the dirty secret of modern planning is that you can make the streets and the buildings look like no one drives anymore, but in reality we all still do, and must. "Come see our pretty main street, and by the way there is an enormous ugly parking garage on the next block." This is not so much an issue in Toronto, where it has become acceptable among developers to suffer the cost of building underground parking, or in New York, where there is no parking period, but it has huge ramifications on the rest of North America. Look behind the office buildings in Glendale, or Jersey City or countless other places and recoil in horror.

The correct approach is to try to design a better parking garage. Architects used to consider it beneath themselves to even try, so they left it to the engineers. Modern education and training of engineers has segregated their profession from any concept of architecture, so they were ill-equipped to come up with anything attractive. And the clients, of course, would refuse to pay for it if they had. Things have finally changed, as noticed in this NY Times article. There are even discussion forums on the topic. This can only mean good things for urban design everywhere.

Battle of the Transmission Towers

2005-10-25T18:23:00.000-04:00

Chicago and Toronto have a lot in common these days. Both are crammed full of condos, and Toronto keeps looking to its big brother a couple lakes over for urban design guidance. (So far, no such luck, but at least they are trying.)

Chicago's proposed Calatrava Spire has already gotten a good deal of press, and now they are talking about a CN Tower clone that would rise 2,000 ft (compared to Toronto's 1815 ft).

The design is acceptable, although I would prefer a little more splay in the legs in order to appreciate their geometry. These kind of towers generally defy easy categorization, being driven more by functionality than any particular neo-idiom. The main problem with the proposed Chicago tower is that its form is not unique -- it can already be found in the white steel cell phone towers that I've seen around Toronto and no doubt other places. It's one thing to have an iconic, vaguely erotic, un-nameable needle on your waterfront, but a giant cell phone tower is not so cool. My prediction that this gets built: 50%. I think CN's record will hold out a little longer...

Chicago's Classy New Condo

2005-10-21T08:02:00.000-04:00

Although I have never been to Chicago, I hope to visit certain exiled friends there soon. In the meantime, the city's architectural resume continues to impress. Like Toronto, Chicago has experienced a terrific rush of new condo high-rises. I use the word "terrific" because, in general, any kind of upscale urban density is a good thing, but both cities have had trouble with the mediocre appearance of many of the new buildings. Too much concrete, cheap panelized brick, lumpy proportions.

The Tribune has a nice review of the latest Chicago luxe condo, one that is impressively tall (631 ft) and well shaped. The Heritage at Millenium Park is a winner in my books, regardless of what the insides are like. (Nice sales website too)

Small Group of Idiots Ruin Toronto

2005-10-12T09:42:00.000-04:00

...or something like that. I'm so mad about this that I can't even comment right now. In some ways, the Robert Moses-era had its advantages. City-building never pleases everyone, but this example of a couple deli owners being able to stop real, critical, the-city-is-falling-behind-its-rivals -without-it light rail mass transit shows the pendulum has swung too far.

SOS, go to hell.

Go Gardiner Go

2005-09-28T07:45:00.000-04:00

As in "please fall down". I can't spare the hours to retell this tale from the beginning, but the Toronto Sun does a surprisingly good job of summarizing the current situation regarding Toronto's unloved waterfront elevated expressway. Not bad writing on long-term planning and case studies for a tabloid that usually loves cars and whatever cheap thrills are at hand.

Tear that sucker down and all of a sudden Toronto really is a world-class city. Seriously.

O Happy Day

2005-09-27T18:52:00.000-04:00

I've waited a long, long time for this... a new large office tower for downtown Toronto. And even better, there may be more coming.

This site is just behind the excellent Simcoe Place tower and has been awaiting development ever since the construction of that Tower. There is already a PATH connnection planned.

This new tower is going to continue to shift the skyline to the west, something that was already happening with the CityPlace condos. The CN Tower was once well to the west of the downtown skyline -- now it looks well-integrated.

This is all being done without the kind of financial giveaways that are used in places like New York to entice commercial development. That's good, but I still think more should be done to incentivize large towers that will keep office jobs downtown, where they belong. Times are good; now is the time to build so that when the next downturn arrives firms won't flee to Mississagua.

Vancouverism

2005-09-21T08:40:00.000-04:00

A simply excellent essay about past trends in dense city building, aka Manhattanism, as compared to new trends in dense city building, aka Vancouverism. Interesting collision of random factors that pushed Vancouver to the fore, but I agree that they hit on something that is now referred to across North America as "Vancouver-style". I don't agree with some of the specifics, but the overall posit that Vancouver is leading the way for 21st century cities is a viable one.

A quick review of what sets Vancouver apart. Concocted instantly in the late 1870s as a land promotion scheme for the Canadian Pacific Railway, Vancouver is the continent’s youngest major city – younger than Seattle and Denver, even Phoenix and Calgary. Always a place of innovation in urban planning and housing design, Vancouver has seen its downtown population double in the past 15 years. The continent’s youngest major city with its highest residential density? – iron rule number one of North American urbanism broken.
Broken rule two is just as important. Vancouver is the only major city in North America without a single freeway within its boundaries. Citizen activism in the late 1960s saved Gastown and Chinatown by stopping a roadway with the Orwellian name of the “East Downtown Penetrator,” followed by significant investment in elevated rail public transit.
Rule three is that Vancouver’s current planning decisions are almost entirely insulated from interference by city councilors and mayor. This does not mean unbridled power for planners (land use policy remains politically accountable), but it does allow for decisions in the long-term interest of the city to often prevail over the short-term needs of getting re-elected. Born of our geographic situation wedged between mountains and sea, Vancouver has had a historical legacy of relatively high-density living, taken to new heights by a political culture in which more people per block is thought to be a positive nearly as often as often as a negative.

Rule four has to do with one of the urban forces most difficult to discuss: race. While having immigrant and non-white population ratios comparable to New York, Toronto, and Los Angeles, Vancouver has escaped many of the striations and frictions that come with neighborhoods sorted by ethnicity. The shame of our city is not a racial ghetto, but a chemical one: indeed, the Downtown Eastside is one of Vancouver’s most multi-cultural, multi-racial neighborhoods, one linked by a culture and economy of drug dependency. The Downtown Eastside’s tragedy may well have been exaggerated by urban planning policies that have concentrated social housing and front-line poverty agencies in this district as densely as condo towers are concentrated only six or 10 blocks to the west.

Rule five has to do with the role that developers have in providing the social, cultural, and recreation infrastructure in new and renewed neighborhoods. For nearly 20 years, Vancouver has used a form of social bonus zoning, in which extra density in housing developments is granted in return for such public amenities as cultural facilities, parks, schools, and social housing. After resisting it at first, our development industry likes the current system, one where density is traded for a better public realm, because they find such investments increase the value of their projects.

Arty Condos III

2005-09-20T19:13:00.000-04:00

Well, that didn't take long.... another win for Team Academic Starchitect!

Arty Condos II

2005-09-16T12:38:00.000-04:00

The crystal ball strikes again -- no sooner do I comment on the trend in collectible academic architecture than The New York Times echoes me in an article on a new project in Vegas:

It also reflects a growing consciousness among developers that many people want to live in high-profile buildings.
"Buyers love that," said Bobby Baldwin, chief executive officer of Mirage Resorts. "They love the fact that they're living in a Rafael Viñoly building."

In New York, for example, the architects Richard Meier, Zaha Hadid, Steven Holl, Charles Gwathmey, Santiago Calatrava and Enrique Norten have recently added their designs to the skyline.

Ah yes, Steven Holl and Enrique Norten. Should have mentioned them yesterday as well. Neither has ever done a condo (in the US) , but it can only be a matter of time. Actually, I think Enrique has a few on the drawing boards...

Arty Condos

2005-09-14T18:56:00.000-04:00

In Manhattan, where condos regularly cost well over $1000 per square foot, the marketing evolution of using starchitect power has long moved on to the super-starchitect. As of a couple years ago, it was no longer enough to get a fancy condo design by a top firm like Richard Cook or even the better-known Michael Graves. You had to up the ante and get the celebrity power of a supername better known for their museums or institutional work -- Gehry, Libeskind, Meier, Gwathemy, Foster et. al. Someone even trotted out a bland looking glass building and claimed it to be the last design of the late Philip Johnson. And we've all heard about the stunning townhomes-in-the-sky scheme by Calatrava.

This trend has been well documented in various media articles over the last year. What I see now is the next stage -- desperate developers uncovering obscure academic architects whose lack of built projects makes their condos all the more desirable as collectibles. "Now that everyone has a Gehry, let's collect someone new!".

This is best exemplified in New York by a new, very expensive condo on the Lower East Side (!) called Blue. The design is by Bernard Tschumi, who has never, ever done a condo before. He has done some great work (like the Columbia student center) and is well known in the chain-smoking, black-turtleneck design crowd, but a sixteen storey condo? Wow.

Can lofts by Rem Koolhaus, townhomes by Zaha Hadid or condo slabs by Diller + Scofidio be far behind?

Stadium Coin Toss

2005-09-08T08:14:00.000-04:00

After a ridiculous saga of back and forth stadium games that undermined faith in the ability of Toronto to actually plan and build any kind of important big city-building project, the famous soccer stadium is back for one last kick at the can.

Site selection is down to two: Downsview Park or the Canadian National Exhibition. According to news reports over the last few days, the Canadian Soccer Association is now favouring the Downsview site. Apparently the mighty Maple Leafs are also involved, because they now want an MLS team for Toronto.

The furor over which site is more appropriate is an excellent debate for urban planners and architects. Let us examine the strengths and weaknesses of each site:

Below are two satellite images (thanks, Google) of the sites at the same scale. Exact stadium position (*) is not known but estimated using past history as a guide.

DOWNSVIEW PARK: This is either the future heart of the city or a colossally screwed-up lost opportunity, depending on how you look at it. A large site in the northern centre of the city was preserved for future park use when an airbase was closed. A subway station (the current end of the line) was built in the 1990s on the corner of the site. However, the surrounding area is mostly single-family residential with 6-lane arterial roads clogged with strip malls and light industry. The truncated Allen Expressway runs along one side. Central Park West it is not. However, the area will densify over time, and in this spirit an ambitious plan was launched after a top-notch international design competition in 1999. That plan has been horribly underfunded (thanks, Canada!) so nothing much has actually happened other than selling off chunks of the park to big-box development to cover costs while using the barren open spaces to host the odd mega-crowd event like papal visits or SARS-stock. The idiots in charge don't seem to realize that you can't make an uban oasis without spending money to actually build something lush and interesting, and you certainly can't do it when your Great Lawn-type spaces overlook a Home Depot parking lot.

PRO: Given the above mess, the site might actually do well with a soccer stadium. Something has to kick-start the further construction of the park, and there is a small chance that a stadium could do it. This is probably why the federal government prefers the Downsview site.

Also, soccer has broad suburban and city appeal, and this site sits on the fringe of both. Suburbanites will have an easy time driving on one of the many nearby highways to the site, and soccer-loving city residents (a high proportion of them recent immigrants) can commute via subway.

Architects wooed by the landmarking and ego-busting possibilities of the site may jump at the chance to do a stadium on a tabula rasa. After all, Munich seems to like their new showpiece-in-the-park. But is the designer and budget already set?

CON: The catalyst factor is a big if -- what Canadian construction project has ever included much landscaping in its design? A cheap stadium surrounded by parking lots would kill, not help, Downsview Park. If you have ever been to Flushing Meadows in Queens you have seen a great site ruined by the disastrous surrounding of the park in stadium parking lots and expressways.

The site surroundings may take decades to urbanize to the point where this is an attractive community. It is currently too suburban to support the kind of sports infrastructure -- bars, t-shirt shops, restaurants -- that make going to the game a fun experience that involves more than parking the car.

And, subway station aside, most fans are going to come by car. Where will all those cars park?

THE CNE: The Ex grounds are a legacy of Toronto's annual summer fair, the CNE, which are still in use today both for the fair and for a variety of other uses. The 1 m sq ft National Trade Centre dominates the eastern part of the site today and is heavily used for conventions. There is also a new minor-league hockey arena at the east end. For decades the old Exhibition Stadium held 40,000+ for football and baseball. The western part of the fairgrounds house permanent exhibition buildings that range in age from 50 to 100 years old, some used year round for restaurants, consumer shows, and a hall of fame. The overall feeling is a little confused, not quite as historical and green as it could have been, and a little messy with all of the scattered parking lots. The closest parallel would be the more cohesive Seattle Center. The lakefront expressway borders the site, and there is a substantial transit station for the commuter rail and two streetcar lines. The subway is not nearby and requires transfer to the streetcar or bus.

PRO: What worked for the CFL, MLB and the AHL should work for MLS. Highway access is good, parking is ample, and there although there is no direct subway access the location is central and tied into other downtown transit modes.

The Toronto mayor favours the CNE site.

Building a stadium on the grounds would also be a good catalyst for fixing the hole left by old Exhibition Stadium. New landscaping, new architecture, new energy.

Other stadium uses -- and there will be many, from festivals to concerts to one-off sports events -- would be much easier to run and more appealing to the audience if in a central location and not in the suburbs.

Most importantly, the Ex is just outside of the downtown core, with a view of the skyline and lakefront energy. How can you quantify that?

CON: Toronto in the last few decades has turned (famously) into "Vienna surrounded by Atlanta". With the distribution of middle-class soccer fans across a huge area, transit is not so important as most will now be coming by car from suburbs 45 minutes away and not simply trying to take a crosstown streetcar. To drive through city traffic to get to a game will deter many of them. The haute downtown condo crowd is unlikely to attend a soccer match, no matter how convenient. On this practical basis alone, Downsview is more accessible to the people likely to attend games.

The CNE is also capable of better placemaking, and it took years to get rid of hulking Exhibition Stadium. There may yet be a better use for such a prime site -- more exhibition halls, like Frankfurt, or more urban green space, or an attraction like an aquarium (also under consideration).

Finally, one reason the Ex was abandoned in the first place was the terrible wind and cold blowing off of Lake Ontario. (This could possibly be mitigated through clever stadium design.)

CONCLUSION: I was firmly against a stadium at the god-awful campus of York University when that site was first proposed. Downsview is better because of the subway and the chance to save/renew the park. The odds of attracting Joe Newmarket to a game there are also better. But I can't abandon my philosphy of putting public-image public-spaces downtown, where the symbology of the city identity is paramount and where there is the greatest chance of creating, and benefiting from, an overlapping infrastructure of the urban environment. The CNE is not ideal -- it's a fairground, not an urban street, and as deviod of bars and shops and pedestrians as the suburbs. But at least you can get a decent coffee a short distance from the main gates. Keep the centre of the city in the historic centre, rebuild and densify the CNE to be the best urban fairground site in North America, and put the stadium on the lake where it belongs.

Malmo-lous, Simply Malmo-lous

2005-08-30T17:30:00.000-04:00

Get ready for a lot of press about Malmo, the formerly industrial city in Sweden that is trying to reinvent itself in a big way. A paradise for urban planners who love to play with waterfronts, they have done a great deal of work in creating an urban oasis in the last few years on what used to be docklands, fill, and a car factory.

The Guardian ran a nice article on Monday and there are also several Swedish sites with good photos. It all started with the original 2001 housing exhibition, which has since evolved into the uber-trendy Bo01 neighbourhood.

The onslaught of press will occur when Calatrava's spectacular Turning Torso opens. This is the building that will have an impact on every single condo tower in North America. I'm sure someone in Vancouver, Toronto, New York, Miami, Chicago and San Diego is scheming a knockoff as I type this... Check out the developer's website.

Don't Fence Me In

2005-08-29T16:13:00.000-04:00

Dear Toronto Public Space Committee,

I have been following your campaigns for some time now. While I disagree with some of them (I am cognizant of the poor funding environment for cities and therefore tolerant of commercial street furniture and transit ads), it pleases me to see that someone out there is concerned with the deteriorating quality of Toronto's public space. Unlike many older American cities (blessed with long histories of philanthropy and reform movements), there is not much to begin with in Toronto and the little remaining attractive public space must be carefully nurtured.

Which brings me to Moss Park. The Armoury on the corner of Jarvis and Queen has long been somewhat of an eyesore, both for its banal architecture and its lack of utilization. (Such a prime corner probably has better uses than as a parking lot for army reserve vehicles.) Nonetheless, I do not object to the continuing military use of the site and strongly disagree with the reprehensible homeless "activists" who often try to take over the building. My concern is with the visual environment around the building.

The main redeeming feature of the Armoury is that it currently offers a generous amount of green grass buffer in an area that, although now gentrifying, is still very hard-edged. This grassy relief is now in danger, physically and visually.

Apparently a contractor has begun to install chain link fencing around the site today. This action needs to be investigated:

1) Did the city grant a permit for this work? Does Planning know about it?

2) What is the purported need? Does it justify an 8' tall fence around a small reserve installation? Would a low fence suffice?

3) Why is the fence not set back more from the street?

4) Why is it not a more attractive fence design (such as painted metal) that is compatible with an urban environment?

5) A similar fencing action was attempted about six years ago but withdrawn after protest (with the assistance of Councillor Rae). Is this simply another attempt to fence off the property?

Simply claiming "military security need" is not sufficient for ill consideration for the public nature of the buffer space. It fact, a chain link fence in the face of pedestrians on Queen Street is quite insulting. As you so carefully point out on your de-fence project, chain link fences are not positive materials for the borders of public spaces.

There are ways to provide security, if in fact it can be justified, without harming the streetscape. Please consider this a cause for your website.

CC: 32 Brigade Public Affairs Office, Councillor Kyle Rae

Note -- to see the difference between a tall chain-link fence and an attractive iron fence, see the fence replacement project at New York's Central Park Reservoir. These are the details that nobody thinks about but everyone loves.

-----------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE: Within a few days, I received a response detailing that the fence had in fact been discussed with the city and community groups, would soon be replaced by a setback wrought-iron version, and that flowerbeds would be added to enhance curb appeal. Fantastic!

Bikes and Condos

2005-08-24T18:44:00.000-04:00

Just a short news item on two things I thought were cool:

This Ritz-Carlton (left) is unusually attractive-looking for a downtown hotel. What could have been a nightmare in Philadelphia's most important square instead looks pretty good.

Could this bike scheme(right) in Lyons really work? They brought back the old leave-bikes-around-town-for-free model and this time are trying to make it work. Will credit cards and electronic sensors prevent the theft and vandalism that ruined the concept in past applications? The best part -- the whole system came at no cost as part of the deal that gave anad company the right to put up posters at Lyons' bus shelters.

The Real Underground Art Scene

2005-08-24T16:55:00.000-04:00

Came across this article on art in subway stations and was very impressed. Why does this matter, you say? Well, it doesn't, except when you spend long periods of time staring at the wall in a subway station that is well over 100 degrees in the summer you wonder about how different treatments of a concrete box might make for a more pleasurable day.

Art for a token... or is it token art?

New York is doing fairly well on the art front these days, as they have actually removed the 1970s bland tile from many stations and restored a faux-1900 mosaic tile look to them. There is also a reasonable amount of installed artwork, though many of the more interactive ones eventually break down. The best has to be REACH-New York, which can be found very close to uSkyscraper's home base.

Toronto is more of a problem. Because of the city's total funding crisis, the TTC is doing a great job of maintaining the status quo but is falling behind on renovations and expansions. This can be cool in a way (where else can you see 1960's retro buses roaming the streets?) but the old subway stations pretty much look like an unrenovated bathroom at this point. The new stations were done with such obvious budget constraints that they feature exposed concrete and depressing fluorescent lighting. Someone's architects should have ridden the Stockholm subway first...

Downtown Dorms

2005-08-19T18:26:00.000-04:00

One of my favourite sources for architectural news is ArchNewsNow, which collects stories from papers around the world, and also posts some original content. One great recent feature article by Trevor Broddy discusses the unusual urban situation now unfolding in Vancouver, one of North America's most attractive cities. With its dramatic mountain and ocean views and forest of tall condo towers on a small pennisular, some have called it urban paradise.

Paradise, yes, but because of short-sighted urban planning, downtown Vancouver may be becoming a fool's paradise. This is because people are coming to live and play here, but not to work. Director of central area planning Larry Beasley confirmed in a recent interview that no new office tower has started construction or even been proposed by developers for our downtown core in the new century.

How many office buildings can you see in the above photo?

In other words, downtown Vancouver has few office towers to start with (only 15 million SF of class A office space, similar to Jersey City or Pittsburgh) and almost zero potential or desire for office growth. It is becoming a bedroom suburb of, er, the suburbs, which is so confusing that there is no word for it.

It is not surprising that offices are being built in the suburbs and not downtown Vancouver. For a huge number of reasons, lousy downtown quality of life among them, most US cities long ago passed the point where more than 50% of their regional office space was not downtown. What is surprising here is that this change is happening in what is otherwise a super-successful city that has undergone a decade long building boom.

The same trend is happening in a few other popular cities successful -- San Francisco, San Diego, and Miami. Because these cities have attractive urban environments there is rampant condo construction on the order of thousands and thousands of units a year in the downtown cores. However, due to high business taxes, declining roles as head office locations, deliberate planning or all three there are virtually no office buildings under construction. This is not the case in New York or Chicago, where new office buildings are sprouting up alongside, or sometimes under, new condos. Toronto has a problem with office suburbanization -- only a couple new office buildings in the core in the last decade -- but the large base of existing commercial office space and the city's continuing national head-office role mitigate the issue somewhat.

What is going on in Vancouver is definitely the most extreme case of a downtown being exciting, vibrant, diverse, full of retail and entertainment and yet losing its original function as a commercial center. By definition, downtown areas were created because businesses needed to be close to each other and their customers, and organically evolved into districts with high density and high land values. Vancouver still has the density and high values, both the highest in Canada, but diminishing commercial office activity.

What happens to a city when no one works downtown but everyone wants to live there? Is this a failure that will doom the city to become a glorified urban theme park, or a wild success for those who felt that the last fifty years of commerical-oriented downtowns had destroyed traditional cities? Should the Vancouver continue with condomania or should incentives be offered to try and encourage downtown office development? Is there even a problem here?

What would you do if you were mayor?

The Sky is Falling

2005-08-08T17:18:00.000-04:00

Dear Mr. Healy,

I enjoyed your article in the Times regarding skywalks. However, I was a little surprised that you kept the national blinders on and did not discuss the skywalks in Calgary (the largest skywalk system) or the underground networks in Montreal and Toronto (two of the largest underground). You did note that cold-weather skywalks were not really a problem, but I think any study of what makes these systems work or fail should have included the Canadian examples.

Perhaps a critical mass of buildings needs to be present (the failed systems are quite small), or rapid transit (something that Cincinnati and Hartford do not have, and that Dallas does not connect to), or just a long winter. In any case, it would have been interesting to have gotten the reaction from those places. Is the Calgary skywalk now falling out of favour? Does Toronto regret its underground retail pull?

(Mr. Healy later responded that the "blinders" were not intentional, since he was focussing on failed systems, which tended to be located in the US. See NPR host Kurt Andersen's skywalk article for a prescient analysis from almost 20 years ago. )

Apple vs. Apple

2005-08-04T08:12:00.000-04:00

Seems the Big Apple can't quite handle the architectural stylings of that other Apple. The New York Times ran an article yesterday that discussed a new Apple store proposed for the old Andrews Coffee Shop at 5th Ave and 19th Street:

But if Apple hopes to get its plans for a retail store approved by the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission, the preservationists at least want the building to bear some of the architectural basics of its neighbors. Plans for the site, in the Ladies' Mile Historic District, are subject to commission approval.
Apple's first plan, to simply replace the aluminum-framed storefront of what had been the Andrews Coffee Shop with a gray limestone facade - its logo of a large once-bitten apple etched into the stone - ran into opposition from Community Board 5, a local advisory body. Its second proposal, said Simeon Bankoff, executive director of the Historic Districts Council, a nonprofit preservation group, "presents this flat pane of glass that would be more appropriate to an aquarium."

Let's examine the facts. This is probably one of Apple's medium size streetfront stores, like this one in California, not a huge flagship store like the existing one in SoHo. Apple has a strong retail architecture which is extremely consistent. It is a little unorthodox in terms of rebuilding the entire facade with a minimalist modern look, but that's their product and in most retail environments it is a real improvement. Most big brands now have their own architecture anyways -- visit Fifth Ave in the 50s, or Oxford Street, or Tokyo's best areas. Everyone is doing it. Remember Prada?

The proposed area is historic but the site certainly is not. The actual "Ladies Mile" was not on Fifth Ave but Broadway, and the great historic department stores of the era, that truly invented the entire concept of a department store, are on 23rd Street or Sixth Ave. Examine for a moment the actual facades around the site in question -- thanks to the wonders of A9, you can do that by clicking here and then moving left and right up the block. There is a lot of bulky limestone, and a lot of tacky awnings for Lenscrafters and delis. The immediate neighbours are not architecturally significant.

If Apple were to propose gutting a substantial building with a historic facade it would be one thing. But to take the worst storefront on the block and update it with glass is not worthy of bureaucratic opposition. Putting a fake historic pastiche on the site would be a lie and not serve anyone. Cities change, and sometimes contrasting that change can have benefits. A couple years ago the Harvard Club on 44th Street went through a gut-wrenching debate over an addition. Should the old red-brick facade be faked up and copied, even though no one builds that way anymore, or should a minimalist glass facade be constructed instead to highlight the older buildings around it? The decision was to go with the glass, and I think people were pleasantly surprised with the result.

My point is, when presented with a non-historic site in a historic district, what better way to highlight the beauty of the older buildings than by building an invisible glass wall that delicately inserts modernism while reflecting, literally, the history around it through comparison? Apple has the right idea. Landmarks is wrong on this one.

Editorial Gridlock

2005-08-03T18:25:00.000-04:00

Now lost to the archives of the Internet, I read an editorial on the weekend in the Toronto Sun that pleaded for the provincial government to build more roads. The Sun is fairly right-wing, but I was still surprised by the vitriol against transit and demands for more highways, "even expressways." Now that I think about it, I've noticed an increasing number of references to gridlock in the Toronto media of all stripes.

On the one hand, this is a good thing because it is a spinoff of the discussions about the city getting more money and power to shape its physical infrastructure thanks to the long-awaited gas tax redistributing to local authorities. (Way to get with the 20th century there, guys. ) Any debate about how to spend money on infrastructure is a good debate, since it means people are talking about the built environment of cities.

That said, it will be very interesting to see which way this turns. Here is a breakdown of Toronto's transit personality by decade:

1950s - Small city. Nothing to do and nowhere to go. Streetcar system and city streets are still sufficient.

1960s - Growing ambition. Highway building coexists with subway building as the city remakes itself for the modern era.

1970s - Fear of heights, realization of American planning mistakes, and focus on neighbourhoods. All future highways cancelled. Subways expand slowly.

1980s - Integrated transit system of bus, streetcar and subway is North America's model of efficiency. Ridership peaks. City booms.

1990s - Suburbs pass 50% of regional population and transit (which has not expanded) suffers. Ridership drops, fares go up, toll highways appear in the burbs.

2000s - New focus on transit with some gains. But population shifts have left everyone unhappy and there is no money anymore to build anything, anywhere.

In other words, Toronto is still pretty transit-oriented. Even the road lovers allow that public transit must be supported. But it's like Vienna suddenly grew an Atlanta around it. The downtown is lively, has a huge population and decent transit; but there are also now massive suburbs, office towers outside the core, and industry kicked far into the 'burbs to accommodate all those downtown condos. People must drive because they have no other options. Might be their fault for moving there in the first place but growth was allowed or encouraged and now they are stuck. What to do? An article today anguished:

Does anybody really believe that better co-ordination of transportation planning, improving communication to drivers, better sequencing of traffic lights and better timing of road construction -- the four big solutions Mr. Tory presented last week -- will make the slightest difference to commuting times? In fact, the present government is already doing most of what Mr. Tory wants to do, and the most one can say is such policies are potentially slowing the rate at which Toronto traffic slows.

Assuming for a moment, that one must do something (more on that later), what is the right path?

1) Build massive new rapid transit. Hate to say it, but this is pretty impossible. Even if you had billions to spend you can't build enough to suddenly turn a postwar city into Manhattan (and even in Manhattan people hate being forced to take the subway.) Beijing and Shanghai are actually trying to do this and it still isn't working for them. The more they build, the more people want to drive. Planners are stunned but infrastructure can't beat the addictive car culture that is now a global phenomenon. Cars are, frankly, amazing if you can afford to have one. They wreck cities but hard to see that from one's insulated little steel cocoon.

2) Build new highways. The war-cry of conservatives (like that Sun editorial), this just doesn't work. Sorry to call people uneducated, but a careful study of history (and common sense) will show that if you make it easier to drive somewhere, more people will do it, and unless you freeze development you are guaranteeing that new suburbs will clog whatever capacity you build. And it's not exactly insignificant that you have to destroy, as in utterly ruin, whole neighbourhoods to build them. Newsflash -- Robert Moses was spectacularly wrong. It cannot be done.

3) Change behaviour. Most impossible of all, though it may happen through factors that can't be controlled like the price of oil or federal tax programs. You can try to impose tolls on roads, but good luck finding a politician to support it. The entire structure of our society is geared towards car convenience. Not necessarily a bad thing, as our standards of living have, in many ways, improved as a result. I mean, if all cars were electric would there be any problem at all? (The answer is still yes, but one can dream.)

4) Optimize. This is the best idea in my opinion. There is actually a lot of space already dedicated to the streets and Toronto has an excellent grid. The problem is that they are often horribly used in terms of efficiency. I'm not talking about fixing a traffic light here or turn lane there. I want total redesign of the streets so that all streets are one-way, all lights are adaptably synchronized and there are minimal screw-ups with cars fighting pedestrians fighting cars for crossings. Encourage transit within this optimization, but don't kick people out of the cars that they were forced, or democratically chose, to drive. Computer technology exists to remake the way we use streets, and Manhattan proved the wonder of the system when it switched from 2-way streets to one-way synchronized years ago. At night you can cruise any avenue in Manhattan for 100 blocks on the "green wave" without hitting a light. No need for an urban expressway - just sail up 8th Ave. Toronto is more complex but much more could be done to keep short-trip drivers off the expressways and on the city streets while not damaging the built fabric that lines them.

This whole crisis is not totally surprising, since the exact same issues have been around before. Check out this fantastic 1957 CBC television special about Toronto's traffic problems back then. The difference between 1957 and 2007 is the technology. Use it properly and the city street, one of mankind's greatest inventions, may survive just fine for years to come.

Addendum on the Spire

2005-07-28T08:47:00.000-04:00

A rare negative piece on the Chicago Spire today, from Peter Slatin. I'm a little surprised that he is against a project that has such excellent architecture just because he doesn't like that starchitects are now being used to sell condos. Isn't that the point, to get on the other side of the table so that developers want to use great architecture as a selling tool? I mean, you can't complain about Trump's "commercial" architecture one day and then complain about top-flight design the next -- you begin to be seen as anti-developer, period.

Slatin and others also don't like the location of the Spire, feeling that a slender needle-like structure on the edge of the downtown and taller than anything else would look "garish" and out of place. Ugliness would ensure. Hmmn, guess they've never been to Toronto.

Finally, now USA TODAY has commented that America is overcoming its fear of terrorism as it relates to tall buildings, and that "skyscrapers remain symbols of American achievement and striving." Sure, if that's "striving" circa 1983. Take off the blinders, USA TODAY, and read my post from yesterday regarding where America stands in the supertall status charts. You're not coming back. And by the way, can you even spell "Calatrava"? That's a four-syllable word, you know.

Fear of Heights

2005-07-27T17:48:00.000-04:00

In Toronto the fear of heights is grounded in a 1970s movement when residents were concerned with the impact of tall buildings on the character of what was a dense but very low city. A temporary ban was even enacted, and the low-is-good attitude lingers today. In New York and the rest of the US the fear of heights has diffe; it is entirely related to terrorism. Americans still have enough ego (or do they?) to want to build tall, but now they are afraid to do so based on 9/11.

The New York Times has an article today that echos my post of yesterday about the Burj and the Fordham. It again brings up the fear of tall buildings as targets and points out that this does not concern those in China, Taiwan or Dubai.

If you look at a table of the world's tallest buildings, you will see that today only two of the top ten are in the US (Sears and Empire State). Another couple years and it will be only one. The momentum is clearly elsewhere, and this is not something that started after 2001. Whether Americans are right to fear terrorism against tall buildings or not is not the point. The trend is clear and unmistakable. The land that gave birth to the skyscraper is looking at a modest future at the feet of Asian giants.

Tallest Torso?

2005-07-26T08:54:00.000-04:00

Since the CN Tower was built in 1976, it has been the world's tallest Thing. There are tall office buildings out there, like Sears and Petronas, but none as tall as 1,815 ft. Even the newest record-holding office building, Taipei 101, reaches only 1,666 ft. Their top floors can't even beat the CN Tower's observation deck altitude of 1,465 ft -- in other words, the highest up a human can go to look out over a city and still be standing on the ground is, at this second, still the CN Tower.

There are some other heavenly buildings under construction, like the Burj in Dubai (a fantastical 2,600 ft tall, if it really turns out to be built as projected), and of course there is the overhyped will-it-ever-be-built Freedom Tower. (Too bad the US wasn't founded in 1816 -- it's only 1,776 ft tall.) But the one that I most fear as the usurper to CN's crown, at least in North America, is the just-announced Fordham Spire in Chicago. Reaching 2,000 ft tall, it is designed by superstar Calatrava (whose first North American work, I should point out, was built in Toronto a decade ago and has been seen in many US television commercials since). Because it is condos, and not offices, and because it has Calatrava's name (now credible in condos thanks to ubercool Malmo Turning Torso) I think this one might really happen. Granted, the developer's other buildings are high-end kitchy nightmares, but this one is a leap forward and easily marketable.

I say Toronto must fight back with its own supertall condos, instead of whittling down any proposed point-tower until it becomes, you guessed it, a 25 to 35 story squat box.

Only one site remains...

2005-07-23T19:49:00.000-04:00

Nice article in the NY Times today about the rebuilding of a park next to the WTC site. This is one of the last pieces to be rebuilt outside of the old WTC site proper. I'm not going to launch into a diatribe about the rebuilding process and its lack of progess; that has been covered amply elsewhere. I am going to reflect a little on September 11th itself by re-reading my World Trade Center Report, written in the immediate aftermath.

I miss that pedestrian-unfriendly, ice-falling-off-of, borderline-banal, utterly fantastic exclamation point on the tip of Lower Manhattan. The remaining skyline is barely taller than, say, St. Louis...

A Tall Paradox

2005-07-22T18:00:00.000-04:00

Read some interesting Toronto articles today, Lofty Plans for Replacing Planetarium and A Housing Plan that's Just Right. Here is an interesting paradox for you:

1) Toronto has a fear of tall buildings.
2) Toronto loves tall buildings and has more of than than all but six of the world's cities.

How can both be true?

The first is well-known from various civic fights over tall buildings. Lop a few floors off here, a few more there.

The second comes from this table at . Toronto is #7 on the planet for sheer number of tall buildings within city limits, where a tall building is defined as anything over 12 stories. That's more than Chicago, more than any city in Europe, more than Sydney, Houston...

Rank City Population Area Buildings Points
1. Hong Kong 6,787,000 1,001 km² 7,435 115,066
2. New York 8,104,079 800 km² 5,455 35,636
3. Seoul 10,331,244 616 km² 2,835 15,790
4. Chicago 2,862,244 589 km² 1,045 15,463
5. Singapore 3,437,300 685 km² 3,503 13,147
6. Bangkok 7,587,882 1,569 km² 711 11,105
7. Tokyo 8,130,408 621 km² 2,107 9,255
8. Shanghai 9,145,711 6,639 km² 549 8,517
9. São Paulo 10,600,060 1,525 km² 3,023 7,857
10. Toronto 2,481,494 630 km² 1,623 6,701

Toronto clearly punches above its weight in the world league of skylines. And yet, the table also shows that Toronto's buildings are not supertall. The city has far more "tall" buildings than places like Shanghai but they must be far shorter on average, resulting in fewer points in the scoring scheme used in the table above (see the table link for explanation). Compare to Chicago - same population, area, and 50% fewer tall buildings, but twice the score!

My theory is that Toronto is the city of the bulky 25 storey tower. Big enough to annoy anti-tall groups, but too short to please the populace with bold architectural expression and encourage more tall development. As pointed out in Ms. Gadd's article, there is also a very low number of buildings 6-11 stories tall (not reflected in the table above), which leaves the city feeling more suburban in attitude.

A fascinating situation - I wonder which argument will prevail? I am, of course, voting for supertall.

A Quick Test

2005-07-22T10:45:00.000-04:00

Wanting to post on MacDoug, I ended up registering for my own blog. This could be fun, if only my home PC equipment did not consist of:

One (1) 1996 Gateway Solo laptop with a Pentium I chip and 16 MB of RAM. I managed to cram Win98 on there, and still love the simplicity of the machine, but ever since the great hard disk failure of 1997 there is nothing of note on there.
One (1) 56k modem card on aforementioned laptop
One (1) sketchy sometimes-works dial-up number to Manhattan's last, and forgotten, free ISP, MetConnect.
One (1) Mac SE circa 1991 that was rescued from the street outside an elementary school. Loaded with goodies from The Underdogs.
One (1) 28k modem of uncertain make, that along with Mozilla 0.9 and previously mentioned free ISP allows one to recreate mid-nineties internet surfing experience.

Will struggle to overcome and update when possible!