308 King St N | 25 fl | U/C

[nms]

Where was George-Eugène Haussmann when you needed him? 

If you were able to wave a magic wand over the Northdale neighbourhood, which architectural style or era should have been the guiding force for the neighbourhood?

[ac3r]

Where was George-Eugène Haussmann when you needed him? 

If you were able to wave a magic wand over the Northdale neighbourhood, which architectural style or era should have been the guiding force for the neighbourhood?

The contemporary era. We've got centuries of architectural knowledge to draw on. You can make some real cool stuff now.

The problem is the City of Waterloo has no standards, so they just rubber stamp whatever meats the bare minimum and/or doesn't offend NIMBYs. You can have amazing looking student housing if you have standards and expectations to be meet.

Some examples...sorry if this website ends up prompting you to sign up to view more though I don't think it will if you just open each link separately. It's free to do so, but they annoyingly prompt you to sign up after you scroll a bit (worth signing up however, Divisare constantly posts incredible stuff with high quality photographs of new architectural works all over the world):

https://divisare.com/projects/431646-ate...ege-berlin
https://divisare.com/projects/385011-lan...ing-school
https://divisare.com/projects/435778-bru...ire-daubie
https://divisare.com/projects/464168-mar...as-didelon
https://divisare.com/projects/457286-mar...-di-milano
https://divisare.com/projects/455236-mat...ommodation
https://divisare.com/projects/448599-max...n-hainholz
https://divisare.com/projects/451703-vur...nervahaven

Though, to be honest, the biggest reason this stuff sucks? It's private. A lot of the projects just linked and many student housing projects overall, are somehow linked to the school itself. Virtually everything that has popped up in Northdale is just some mediocre private developer gobbling up cheap land, hiring the cheapest architect, the cheapest construction contractors and making a subpar student apartment building and then allowing some terrible landlord to manage it (the horror stories from students about these buildings is probably longer than Prout's À la recherche du temps perdu). So long as we allow these developers to operate with out any sort of design advisory board as you find in major cities like Toronto, then developers have no need to spend extra time or money hiring an architect to do a good job. The bar is just really low.

[nms]

Thanks for the links. A couple of those remind me of the different residences that the University of Waterloo (and the church colleges) built in their early days.

Haven't we more or less established that the City's hands are more or less tied as far as final design for a project goes? Provided it meets the requirements of the zoning, the City can't push anything.

I guess we can always hope that in the next 20 to 30 years, some of these buildings will change hands and/or be torn down to be replaced by something different. Given the known and unknown construction quality, 30 years might be optimistic.

[ac3r]

They're only tied in the sense we (any of the cities) don't have design review boards. Toronto has one that looks at all proposals to critique architectural quality and impact on the neighbourhood (as in will it have commercial spaces, private-public art etc. They then write a report that is given to the city to look through before voting for any potential approval.

[panamaniac]

Ottawa also has a design review panel that looks at certain proposals in certain designated priority areas.

[urbd]

They're only tied in the sense we (any of the cities) don't have design review boards. Toronto has one that looks at all proposals to critique architectural quality and impact on the neighbourhood (as in will it have commercial spaces, private-public art etc.  They then write a report that is given to the city to look through before voting for any potential approval.

I've wondered about this a lot. What would it take for the City (or Region?) to start a design review panel?

[ac3r]

It would take a collection of architects, landscape architects, planners and so on (no developers of course). Just anyone in the profession who can act in an unbiased manner. Funding would have to come from most likely the city.

[tomh009]

They're only tied in the sense we (any of the cities) don't have design review boards. Toronto has one that looks at all proposals to critique architectural quality and impact on the neighbourhood (as in will it have commercial spaces, private-public art etc.  They then write a report that is given to the city to look through before voting for any potential approval.

Is that for any building permit approval? Or only ones that need council approval?

[ac3r]

Well ultimately approval is up to council. It would just be up to an advisory board to present findings that say either "yeah mate this building complex will be incredible!" or "These architects ought to have their licenses revoked". Depending on the city, it could be only in prominent areas (downtown cores, important transit notes, heritage neighbourhoods and so on). It's uncommon in "regular" areas of a city, unless it is in an area that is soon to be facing increasing densification or has been identified as prime for improvement over the next few years (Kitchener PARTS plan areas could benefit).

For our region, I'd love to see one for each city. Then maybe only have them focus on certain neighbourhoods? Or perhaps certain new building heights. Or for proposals seeking to drastically change an existing urban neighbourhood fabric. Lots of options, really. I promise if you let me and some architect friends and similar colleagues brainstorm some things over a week we could come up with great ideas to suggest and by 2050 I promise this region would look incredible; it'd win awards (or I'd hope!) :'P

Would the cities listen? You'd have better luck betting on a Reddit pennystock lol. Sadly I don't think enough people care. I do. I know a lot of people in this field of expertise - other architects, landscape architects, urban planners, transit planners, artists, grassroots people. Is there a realistic chance of gathering them together to form something? Nope...at least not for now. Doing this sort of work really isn't something we benefit from directly in terms of pay, career - but it can result in nicer cities. That squishy area of ???? makes it hard to find people willing to participate and to obtain funding.

[tomh009]

Well ultimately approval is up to council.

My point is that if the proposal is within the zoning bylaw the project will never come to the council for approval. In that scenario, is the design review board involved at all?

[ac3r]

Ahh I understand what you mean. It would really depend on how the city decided to implement a design review panel. Theoretically they could add a new rule for new projects which states that, even if a project falls within zoning rules and could therefore go ahead without any further application procedures, it would nonetheless need to be presented to a design review to ensure it does in fact "[improve] matters of design that affect the public realm" with the goal of "[helping to] raise standards of development, encourage designers to avoid compromising on quality and help ensure new developments are compatible with their surroundings".

This could work in such a way as to allow the developer to not have to apply for zoning amendments so long as it fell within them (building height, sufficient parking for random examples) but they would still have to ensure that they are going to be building something that positively impacts the public realm. Which I think would be a good way to do it. If a developer wanted to build an apartment tower downtown and it fell within all the zoning rules for its location and ticked all the boxes, but it was designed in such a way that it looked like a giant penis, you would want to be able to have some way to prevent that. That's where a design review panel can come in useful. They look over the plans and decide whether or not something is suitable for the area and can then make recommendations to the city. Their report could then allow the city to go to the developer and say, "sorry your building looks like a giant schlong, can you please going back to the drawing board or at least not use pink cladding?"

[nms]

Ahh I understand what you mean. It would really depend on how the city decided to implement a design review panel. Theoretically they could add a new rule for new projects which states that, even if a project falls within zoning rules and could therefore go ahead without any further application procedures, it would nonetheless need to be presented to a design review to ensure it does in fact "[improve] matters of design that affect the public realm" with the goal of "[helping to] raise standards of development, encourage designers to avoid compromising on quality and help ensure new developments are compatible with their surroundings".

This could work in such a way as to allow the developer to not have to apply for zoning amendments so long as it fell within them (building height, sufficient parking for random examples) but they would still have to ensure that they are going to be building something that positively impacts the public realm. Which I think would be a good way to do it. If a developer wanted to build an apartment tower downtown and it fell within all the zoning rules for its location and ticked all the boxes, but it was designed in such a way that it looked like a giant penis, you would want to be able to have some way to prevent that. That's where a design review panel can come in useful. They look over the plans and decide whether or not something is suitable for the area and can then make recommendations to the city. Their report could then allow the city to go to the developer and say, "sorry your building looks like a giant schlong, can you please going back to the drawing board or at least not use pink cladding?"

What about the tall buildings are built now with a big fat podium at the bottom, and skinny tower rising up in the middle of it?