25 King St W. | Proposed | 64 st | 298.14m | Downtown

I have mixed feelings about this project. While I am pleased (and surprised!) to see such a large office tower being proposed at King and Bay (who knew there was any room left for such a project) I wish the proposed tower was much taller and hence more slender in appearance although I understand when it comes to building office towers the laws of "diminishing returns" kick in after about 50 floors due to the size of the elevator core.

I also wonder why make it the same height as 1st Can? Another 30 feet and it would be a legit super-tall (although with the inclusion of the spire I suspect it will technically be a super-tall since they all cheat nowadays ).

Finally the construction of this tower will require the destruction of the lower rise towers of Commerce Court designed by I.M. Pei, one of the greatest architects of the 20th. Century. When has this ever happened in Toronto? Would we ever permit the demolition of a building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson, Frank Gehry etc? There are some thorny issues involved with this proposal.

This is an absolute beauty and a total surprise!!! My only critique would be it's not tall enough. That plot of land and that cluster of skyscrapers would look epic with this tower proudly reaching new heights rising above them all!

I also suspect though that the thickness of the tower will get slimmed throughout the approval process and the height slightly increased as a trade off *fingers crossed* lol and I hope the spire stays!

This tower at 350-400m would be EPIC!

We are so accustomed to seeing residential point towers that I think we forget office towers are bulkier buildings by their very nature. It has the height to carry it off, I think. I am really curious why they didn't add on a few extra metres to push it over the "supertall" threshold... that is very strange but I'm not complaining!

Taller said:

We are so accustomed to seeing residential point towers that I think we forget office towers are bulkier buildings by their very nature. It has the height to carry it off, I think. I am really curious why they didn't add on a few extra metres to push it over the "supertall" threshold... that is very strange but I'm not complaining!

Click to expand...

This project came as pleasant unexpected surprise. I agree with you 100% that lately we've been accustomed to see a few tall, thin residential super tall or near super tall projects. Office towers tend to require larger floor spaces and will be bulkier which is not necessarily a bad thing.

This is only the first preliminary rendering. It will go through a few subsequent revisions. The office market so far has been untapped. There may be more demand that we realise. I strongly believe that this project has a good chance of evolving into a legit super tall (legit by roof height).

well i will complain on behalf of the more civil tongued. This "just short of" 1000ft/300m is teasing, it's provocative, it's inconsiderate! And we wont accept any silly spire thingy as a single inch!

"WHAT DO WE WANT? SUPER-TALL!! WHEN DO WE WANT IT? NOW!!!
SUPER-TALL! SUPER-TALL! SUPER-TALL! (i'm starting a protest/chant over here!)

Otherwise, awesome news, great year end surprise. Cheers!

:lol: As Al-Z pointed out in the international thread on this proposal, likely it will be considered a supertall because of the "spire". Why the antennae on top of FCP doesn't count, I'll never know. Take away these "spires", and there would suddenly be major cities and countries around the world with no "supertalls"!

There are world cities, where it seems any sort of decorative "doo-dahs" qualifies as a "spire". Some countries seem to specialize in these accessories and antennas. These "spires" inevitably get included in the height of the building. Take away the errmm... "Spires", and there would be major cities and even continents who would magically all of a sudden have zero of the prized "supertalls"! If we were a little less principled and counted FCP's antennae as a spire, we would have had a supertall since 1975!

A great sense of scale with this image found here

Click for full size!