Canada Life Building

I think this building fits that corner well. It suits the neighbourhood and looks interesting.

behold! The extent of Toronto's commercial building boom! :bash:

There's plenty of new commercial space going into the market all the time. Just most of it isn't new towers; rather they're rennovations and redevelopments of older, smaller buildings. I would like to see some real highrises going up though.

lets not forget Marintime Life.... that wasn't very long ago.

The rendering looks pretty accurate so far.

Wow, looks great! I wish it was taller though.

"Wow, looks great! I wish it was taller though"

No way - It may already be too tall given its location or would I want it to block the views of the weather beacon

I never liked this one for the following reasons . . .

1. It blocks the view of old city hall's tower looking east along Queen West.

2. The building looks like some pomo nightmare with a serious identity crisis. A complete mishmash of three competing motifs and little coherence. Why couldn't they stick with one or two ideas, tops?

^They chose to have 2 different exterior ideas because they wanted the side facing University to blend in with the older buildings and to have a more modern facade facing Queen street.

Buster said:

1. It blocks the view of old city hall's tower looking east along Queen West.

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You could say that about so many projects, for example we shouldn't have built the condos on the waterfront because they block the Royal York from being seen from the lake. It's just another form of NIBYism.

I think the height is okay on this one. It's a very tricky site and context, but I think they are going to pull it off.

There's not much about this development that I don't like. Though I'm holding my breath on the way it'll end up meeting the street on Queen, but I suspect it'll be just fine.

I think its good.

Travis007 said:

^They chose to have 2 different exterior ideas because they wanted the side facing University to blend in with the older buildings and to have a more modern facade facing Queen street.

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Hey, I think it's a great concept. I really dig the portion along University Ave.

However, the Queen Street Facade doesn't do it for me. I love the bottom half, but the top half looks freakish in my humble opinion. Two different designs are great, but three different designs requires some careful planning.

I guess you can't please everyone.

sk8rboiiii said:

You could say that about so many projects, for example we shouldn't have built the condos on the waterfront because they block the Royal York from being seen from the lake. It's just another form of NIBYism.

Click to expand...

That's true.

I would say that a lot of buildings along Queen's Quay look terrible. At the risk of sounding cheesy, the Royal York looked like a diamond in a ring of skyscrapers. Now it's been reduced to little.

The view of Old City Hall looking north along Bay St. is amazing, just as nice as it was looking east along Queen (though the effect was less dramatic).

I guess this makes me a NIMBY. But hell, if we let developers build any piece of crap wherever they wanted, we would end up with something akin to Houston. Where would Toronto's west-end be without the NIMBies who fought to trash the Spadina expressway?