900 King St W | 25 fl | U/C

[jamincan]

I asked someone indirectly involved in this project (but who works for one company involved in it) for more information on the design. I was allowed to see a few more images of much higher resolution and...yuck. If they approve this and they use this design, it's going to look like a Soviet era brutalist apartment tower.

I don't see anything remotely brutalist in the design, but perhaps you meant Khrushchyovkas, which famously have tight setbacks from the street, and commercial uses in their podiums and feature frivolous architectural flourishes like we see in this building's condo hat.

[ac3r]

I don't see anything remotely brutalist in the design, but perhaps you meant Khrushchyovkas, which famously have tight setbacks from the street, and commercial uses in their podiums and feature frivolous architectural flourishes like we see in this building's condo hat.

Oh, I'm just talking about it from an aesthetic/design perspective! When I was doing my PhD in architecture I was entirely focused on aesthetic and design principles and theory, so that's generally how I judge buildings first. I barely know a thing about architectural engineering and whatnot.

Khrushchoby are different. Those were just modest apartment blocks made for workers, designed to be very easy to construct as they didn't require much effort to put up since it was almost all prefabricated. The setbacks are somewhat of an ideological thing, oddly enough. Soviet cities - in fact, even Vietnamese, North Korean or East German city designs - tend to share that feature. The reason for that is generally because the principles of Soviet political philosophy (which of course influenced communist or socialist countries all over the world) wanted to emphasize community, which meant that urban planners and architects designed cities, city blocks and individual buildings to emphasize the use of public space. People were encouraged to enjoy the outdoors, walk around the streets, take transit to work etc. The home was secondary, unlike here where we treat our homes as our castles to customize as much as we can.

My critique of the building is basically that it's the proposed painted (dark and light) grey concrete that will be used on the bulk of the tower that I find to look kind of brutalist. It's a fairly imposing material to use on the façade of a building IMO. I love brutalist architecture - heck, I love concrete most of all and almost all my architectural work has used stuff like concrete, CORTEN steel and glass (IMO...as Dieter Rams said, less is more :') - but this lacks any aesthetic sensibility. I have a feeling it could very well end up looking like a concrete monolith, rather than a pleasing residential building. It's very rare that a predominantly concrete residential building works. It was heavily used in British modernist/brutalist council housing and people generally found the atmosphere to be a very uninviting, psychologically negative experience and since the 1970s onward, so much of it has been recladded or outright demolished. This tower, in particular, just looks...cold. It's like a lot of the SRM Architects work. If you check out their portfolio, you can see that it suffers from a similar flaw: it's just repetitive, bland, cold uninspired and cheap.

It might look okay, but I doubt it. Nonetheless, having another 231 rental apartments added to the core of the region is a good thing so I do hope this gets built either way since the housing crisis in Canada takes precedent. Maybe bitching about aesthetic choices is a niche thing, but if we're going to be having these buildings standing for the next century...they should look as nice as they can.

[tomh009]

It might look okay, but I doubt it. Nonetheless, having another 231 rental apartments added to the core of the region is a good thing so I do hope this gets built either way since the housing crisis in Canada takes precedent.

As long as we are not building 20 cheap, ugly buildings in the same area (cough cough) I think this one will work fine, some better examples of design and architecture are likely to be nearby.

[ijmorlan]

The construction of the embedded track is actually quite simple. They built it all in one layer here, rather than the two layer approach Toronto uses. It's basically just booting the rails, holding them in place, and then pouring concrete around them.

I think it’s actually 3 layers in Toronto. Typical replacement involves only removing the top layer and replacing the tracks; a more extensive rebuild involves rebuilding the 2nd layer, including replacing the mounting brackets for the tracks; the bottom layer is just a layer of concrete which should require replacement only after a century or more.

I’m sure there is a reference on https://stevemunro.ca somewhere but I can’t find a specific article right now.

[ijmorlan]

Any meaningful discussion on green tracks should have been had 10 years ago when the LRT was being planned. This current discussion is simply another opportunity for ac3r to bitch about something.

I don’t agree with ac3r about every single issue, but I very much appreciate his perspective, and definitely want to hear him “bitch” about things. Better to complain than to just accept the status quo. Remember, the reasonable person adapts themselves to the universe; the unreasonable person attempts to adapt the universe to them. Therefore, all progress depends on unreasonable people.

As to the LRT, those in charge claimed the right-of-way would be useable by emergency vehicles, which isn’t compatible with grass; but as far as I can tell this is not actually the case, so I don’t see why we can’t do what is done in many other cities.

[panamaniac]

Meh ...

[DK519]

Looks like demolition was started today. Big ol' pile of rubble when I drove by tonight.

[Lebronj23]

Looks like demolition was started today. Big ol' pile of rubble when I drove by tonight.

 Seems awfully quick from a proposal to approved without  going through sales. Maybe it’s being demo’d regardless?

[ac3r]

I don't believe it was approved yet, so it's likely that the building was getting demolished regardless. However, it's also a rental building so there would be no need for a sales period apart from the ground floor retail space they are including.

[jwilliamson]

   

[KevinL]

Also, a demo permit will often be issued before a construction permit for its replacement.

[Spokes]

Also, a demo permit will often be issued before a construction permit for its replacement.

But does a site plan have to be in order?

[DK519]

Also, a demo permit will often be issued before a construction permit for its replacement.

But does a site plan have to be in order?

Apparently not as is the case with 206 Duke E.

[tomh009]

Also, a demo permit will often be issued before a construction permit for its replacement.

But does a site plan have to be in order?

Empty land (as one has after the demolition) does not require site plan approval.

[Spokes]

But does a site plan have to be in order?

Empty land (as one has after the demolition) does not require site plan approval. 

But it should!!!