Lower Kitchener (534 Charles St E) | 32, 27, 15 fl | Proposed

[mastermind]

Fixed via microsoft paint 3d.  You're right it does look nicer...

[Eagle27]

Fixed via microsoft paint 3d.  You're right it does look nice

Haha, love it!  Thank you, made my day.

[ac3r]

I only spent two minutes looking through the docs...but found this...mastermind might be right???...scandal....

Hmm, I have no idea. The Heritage Impact Assessment documents dated January 2024 credit NEO Architecture as well. Maybe it is a collaborative effort? Or perhaps Reinders did the site plans and NEO did the design. Who knows...either way the design is bizarre.

[westwardloo]

Fixed via microsoft paint 3d.  You're right it does look nicer...

Thanks for putting that together.  Really easy fix for the architecture team. If only the region/ city (Should be one) had some sort of design standards board that reviewed developments in the area.

[Lens]

It all covers back to the money behind the project directing the developer to make something cheaper or value engineer it to shit

[westwardloo]

It all covers back to the money behind the project directing the developer to make something cheaper or value engineer it to shit

That is probably the case, but I don't see how a box at the top of the tower saves any money? The middle portion and top are both made from precast concrete panels. Maybe grey precast cost more then white? haha

[ac3r]

It's mostly a stylistic choice they do rather than a cost saving measure, though it's likely done for that reason as well. Look at the shorter "tower" on this project: it looks quite similar. It has that grey box thing going on too. They love using white and grey precast panels and making blank walls with tiny little windows in them. Odd, but I guess one of the 3 main guys who works there thinks this looks great. It doesn't.

You can see the same sort of design in other Vive projects they've collaborated on. Have a look at Woodside Terraces 3 and you can see the exact same design choices being used. Or 332 Charles East. A somewhat similar design was done at 169 Borden North and in fact it appears they must have had some leftover light tan precast panels when they finished The Scott because they used the same ones here...next to white and grey panels? Okay, not sure why they'd mix a light tan brown next to white and grey but I only have an MFA focused on design so maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to aesthetics haha. The SYLK Tower (the image below) also shares the same sort of weird grey box thing for the podium as this project has, along with having an ugly amount of blank, wasted wall space.

Also the things I linked highlight the other common design choice they have used a few times: having very bright colours as accents on an otherwise uncolourful building. This Lower Kitchener building has a bunch of balconies coloured yellow on the underside. Market Flats utilized a bunch of very bright lime green in its design. Woodside Terraces also uses a similar lime green to accent parts of that project. There's nothing wrong with using colours like this, but there doesn't seem to be much thought into the yellow balconies in this particular case.

The tl;dr is that the people designing these projects are just untalented.

[tomh009]

You can see the same sort of design in other Vive projects they've collaborated on. Have a look at Woodside Terraces 3 and you can see the exact same design choices being used.

Woodside Terraces is a bit of a special case as it's a combination of a renovated existing building and a new one. Given what they were working with, I think it's a pretty decent outcome so far. TBD what phase 3 will look like in reality, though.

[bravado]

The tl;dr is that the people designing these projects are just untalented.

It makes me sad to think that symmetry and restraint are things that only talented people have now

[westwardloo]

Looks like the heritage committee just started looking into this one. Too little too late. 

https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-...df4d5.html

[Acitta]

Looks like the heritage committee just started looking into this one. Too little too late. 

https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-...df4d5.html

It is old and ugly. We need more housing, not old useless industrial buildings. Why does the Heritage Committee waste their efforts on such things? Knock it down. Put up a historical plaque.

[ZEBuilder]

Looks like the heritage committee just started looking into this one. Too little too late. 

https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-...df4d5.html

It is old and ugly. We need more housing, not old useless industrial buildings. Why does the Heritage Committee waste their efforts on such things? Knock it down. Put up a historical plaque.

In the HIA it already says that there's going to be a "memorial wall", from page 48 of the HIA "The memorial wall includes information of the history of the site and it's evolution over time with photographs and images."

[tomh009]

Looks like the heritage committee just started looking into this one. Too little too late. 

https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-...df4d5.html

Well, they didn't just startm really.

A report outlining the development proposal came to Heritage Kitchener more than two years ago, and no concerns were raised then.

[nms]

The majority decision of the committee was that there were no concerns. Given how often proposals change, there was always a chance that the final project would be different (or sold to someone else without anything being built).

[KevinL]

Fence posts have been placed around the perimeter of the lot, should be fully fenced by next week.