07-04-2021, 01:45 PM
(07-04-2021, 08:54 AM)dtkmelissa Wrote: I definitely have preferences about what types of buildings I really love but I'm not sure that buildings should be approved based on whether they look 'good' or not. Just based on some of the threads in this forum alone, there are varying (and often strong) opinions on whether any one development looks good or not. I think the focus needs to be on building a variety of housing options that allow as many people to purchase a home that works well for them. I suspect I'll like the looks of some of them and not others but that's one of the things I kind of love about a city - the diversity of buildings. Personally, I'd rather have a mix of buildings where some look good to me and others don't, than a subdivision of low-rise homes that are all carbon copies of each other (and I used to live in one of those neighbourhoods for a long time) - but I'm sure others would disagree.
I don't know, you need to have some aesthetic standard if you're going to approve a building. You'd be surprised at how much importance is actually placed on its appearance, at least in larger cities. I guess a sleepy GTA bedroom community like ours isn't yet at the point where we will require architects and the developer to do their best, but you rarely see truly ugly buildings being approved in major world cities, unless they're far out in suburbs or something. Buildings are approved or unapproved based on a variety of factors, but so long as you meet the technical and functional needs, the next thing is for an approval committee to decide whether or not it looks good - judged either on its own merit, or how it suits the neighbourhood character.
I think the City of Kitchener does a fairly good job at permitting decent looking proposals over horrible looking ones. It's hard to list many recent buildings in this city that I would say are horrendous. Mediocre? Sure we've had a few. Auburn Lofts, the apartments at Highland/Ira Needles, Duke Tower, the apartment at Weber/Scott. They're meh at best. We have plenty of superior projects here, from 242 Queen, Otis, Charlie West, City Centre, 100/Garment Street, Station Park etc with plenty of other nice ones working their way through the approval process. These are all buildings that would look suitable in Toronto where they've got much higher architectural expectations and standards.
The City of Waterloo, in comparison, seems to be the epicenter of terrible architecture in this region, and it's Waterloo I tend to hate on. All the new buildings around the university area are almost all terrible. Weird, bright colour choices on the façades, odd design patterns (staggered balconies and windows) or incredibly bottom of the barrel stuff that looks like it was made in the 1960s and very cheap material choices, many of which are already deteriorating. As for uptown condo projects, they have not really approved any besides Barrelyards, Caroline/144 Park, Bauer Lofts etc and they're fairly mediocre. Circa1877 is the most modern looking building they've got there, and while I'm personally not a fan of it (due to the massing), it's not that bad I suppose...it's just a little generic.