(08-25-2021, 02:18 PM)ijmorlan Wrote:(08-25-2021, 01:17 PM)ac3r Wrote: Heritage protection, from a professional point of view, means preserving existing structures and adding new ones that do not make insignificant the existing ones look awkward (such as that proposal for a tower on Duke Street in downtown Kitchener, which has a developer who wants to build the tower literally on top of a beautiful old house - and rightfully so, heritage advocates, architects and normal people in the community think that's a stupid compromise).
Thanks for this whole post. I feel like I agree with it but couldn’t have said it myself. It’s nice to have an architect in the group who can bring a professional perspective.
Eric Haldenby - a Professor of Architecture at the University of Waterloo - summed it up best in one word: indignity. He elaborates saying that projects like the Duke Street proposal and Circa 1877 do nothing to preserve the heritage, they in fact perverse and degrade what you are even trying to save. It gets decontextualized - and in my words, just looks ridiculous. And I completely agree. You can see him talk about it here in this great lecture he recently did about our construction boom and our struggle with our local heritage and history (I've linked to the exact moment, but the entire thing is worth hearing): https://youtu.be/aAZ-EMfK_6Q?t=244
It's these exact points which is why I object to QCondos. It will do that exact thing to the old existing structure. It will save a tiny part the façade while stripping away the true value of that old building...for no real reason other than to allow Momentum Developments to have a "nice" looking façade on a tiny portion of the condo tower they are proposing. That's not really heritage at all, apart from being a blatant destruction of our history. And it's stuff like this that makes normal people worry about the loss of heritage and history, especially in a place like Galt. You can build new projects without having to completely turn an existing heritage structure into a Frankenstein like abomination, with old and new in one (which, of course, does not always look bad!) or by destroying the character and feel of historical neighbourhoods. It just needs to be done tastefully - i.e. not like the horror show that Gaslight Condos is turning out to be.