The Gaslight District | completed

[jeffster]

OMG....I need some eye bleach. What the hell is going on there?

[Bjays93]

OMG....I need some eye bleach. What the hell is going on there?

Its worse in person

[ac3r]

OMG....I need some eye bleach. What the hell is going on there?

Lol blame ABA Architecture. They were behind projects like Charlie West, 1 Victoria, 600 Queen, Circa 1877 and many others...just some of the shittiest buildings in the region. They're like the budget version of SRM Architects who are already so bad they might as well be renamed Dollarama Architects. You get what you pay for. It's amateur work. First year students at UW Architecture could do better than these clowns but we keep allowing them to build.

[jeffster]

OMG....I need some eye bleach. What the hell is going on there?

Lol blame ABA Architecture. They were behind projects like Charlie West, 1 Victoria, 600 Queen, Circa 1877 and many others...just some of the shittiest buildings in the region. They're like the budget version of SRM Architects who are already so bad they might as well be renamed Dollarama Architects. You get what you pay for. It's amateur work. First year students at UW Architecture could do better than these clowns but we keep allowing them to build.

OK, CIrca 1877 is pretty bad, but I can't get this vision of Gaslight out of my head now. It's almost like the architects grew up with bedskirts. So every building has to have some sort of lower level skirt around it. But in the case of Gaslight, it looks really, really bad.

[westwardloo]

OMG....I need some eye bleach. What the hell is going on there?

Lol blame ABA Architecture. They were behind projects like Charlie West, 1 Victoria, 600 Queen, Circa 1877 and many others...just some of the shittiest buildings in the region. They're like the budget version of SRM Architects who are already so bad they might as well be renamed Dollarama Architects. You get what you pay for. It's amateur work. First year students at UW Architecture could do better than these clowns but we keep allowing them to build.

This project is truly horrendous, it is some how making DTK look good. How did they fuck up so bad with material choices? I like pretty much everyone of those buildings you listed. I agree 1 victoria should have been designed to a higher standard, as it is at a prominent intersection in the region. So much hate on this board for circa 1877, I really like the look of it. yes the two sides of the parking structure are pretty bad, but those will definitely be covered up by future buildings.

[Joedelay Highhoe]

They did a real great job integrating heritage features into this project. That old stone wall really pops!

[mastermind]

I also saw this the other day irl and shat my pants a little in fright. It's really disappointing, after having so much potential.

[ac3r]

Unless something changes, they should be wrapping the tower podiums in glass...at least I sure fucking hope so. The architecture firm behind this work is Martin Simmons and they are easily the best local architecture firm native to Waterloo Region. Here are two renders vaguely showing the glass. If they don't add this, then yeah, it's going to be a diaster. I already think it is because when you look close, many of these panels are not even lined up correctly. There are wide gaps in between some of them which makes no sense. Duke Tower is suffering from that problem as well.

Even so, of all their work, this is perhaps their weakest project yet.

[ac3r]

Although...digging through their server, I found this, which does just seem to be the faux brick grey/dark grey panel. Ugh...maybe the sides facing the street will have glass, but the inner courtyard will just be ugly panel? If that's the case I could care less since I'm not living there. If it looks good from the street that's acceptable, though still a shame if they leave the interior the way it is.

[tomh009]

That building looks to be even wider than City Centre 2.

[Spokes]

Wow. That's just bad. I don't know what else to say. Wow.

[Bjays93]

In those renders at least it looks like it's a form of brick rather than coloured panels which we are seeing in irl. I really dont know what to say

[tomh009]

Unless something changes, they should be wrapping the tower podiums in glass...at least I sure fucking hope so.

Looking at the photos, I don't see any brackets or attachment points on the podiums for adding glass. But maybe they have a cunning plan to install glass somehow?

[cherrypark]

Although...digging through their server, I found this, which does just seem to be the faux brick grey/dark grey panel. Ugh...maybe the sides facing the street will have glass, but the inner courtyard will just be ugly panel? If that's the case I could care less since I'm not living there. If it looks good from the street that's acceptable, though still a shame if they leave the interior the way it is.

Seems like the same bait and switch of the DTK renders. Propose higher quality materials and airy garage design and swap back to pre-fab monoliths.

[ac3r]

Although...digging through their server, I found this, which does just seem to be the faux brick grey/dark grey panel. Ugh...maybe the sides facing the street will have glass, but the inner courtyard will just be ugly panel? If that's the case I could care less since I'm not living there. If it looks good from the street that's acceptable, though still a shame if they leave the interior the way it is.

Seems like the same bait and switch of the DTK renders. Propose higher quality materials and airy garage design and swap back to pre-fab monoliths.

It seems like that was possibly the exactly the situation. Someone was posting about this on Reddit and an architect that was involved in the design of the podium said that they tried to object to the design and offered alternatives, but that the developer went with this as a cost saving measure. I'm definitely not surprised, since it was done by one of our best architecture firms, but developed by one of the worst/cheapest developers in the region.