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  #221  
Old Posted Dec 17, 2018, 4:06 AM
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There's a Christmas tree on the top floor of MIX. Because that'll help.

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  #222  
Old Posted Dec 17, 2018, 1:38 PM
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Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker View Post
There's a Christmas tree on the top floor of MIX. Because that'll help.

Ain't nothing like the back of a pickup truck filled with snow and, what is that? An old gallon of paint?
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  #223  
Old Posted Dec 17, 2018, 2:21 PM
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That building was never much to look at, but, wow, did they ever not improve the view.
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  #224  
Old Posted Dec 17, 2018, 3:25 PM
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Tim Kiser's photos and commentary aren't for everyone but he was in Regina recently and wow look at this.
That building was clearly intended to have a neighbouring building adjacent to it. Designing it that way is good urbanism... the developers certainly did their part.
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  #225  
Old Posted Dec 17, 2018, 3:52 PM
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They did, and when it was built there was a fairly tall building blocking a lot of that view. But it's still terrible. Many layers of terrible. I'm trying to think, but I believe it is the only major building in Regina with a blank wall like that. Generally you would have two corner lots and an alleyway in between, tut the alley between Albert and McIntyre actually turns to empty onto McIntyre instead of Victoria Avenue. Victoria Avenue in the core does not have any alleys that empty onto it. I could be mistaken in that belief and there might be a couple.

The sad thing about it is the NCO building is a pretty reasonable looking building overall with a decent restaurant in the main floor and an above grade parkade above that that is reasonably incorporated to not look terrible. But, yep, that blank wall is getting a lot of visibility without The Plains Hotel next door.
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  #226  
Old Posted Dec 17, 2018, 4:10 PM
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Without a few blank walls, you can't have a streetscape like this:



The Kensington Building in Winnipeg similarly takes a lot of heat for having a big blank wall... but the problem is not the blank wall so much as it the fact that the expected building next door never materialized.

In the case of this building in Regina, if there is any blame to be handed out, you can blame the developer for being too optimistic about the development prospects of the site next door, but that's about it. Had a 7+ storey building been built next door at any point in the last 40 years, all anyone would notice is how nice that block looks. At least the NCO building showed up to the party.
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  #227  
Old Posted Dec 17, 2018, 4:16 PM
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Are you suggesting we paint something on it and have it fill the partially excavated swimming pool next door?

Using Chicago to illustrate the potentialities of Regina is very flattering as well.
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  #228  
Old Posted Dec 17, 2018, 4:17 PM
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There's a similarly bad blank wall on the side of the First Nations Bank Building in Saskatoon, which got a really great, understated mural the height of the building painted on it last year; https://www.google.ca/maps/@52.12636...7i13312!8i6656

(There's still the other side of the building though)
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  #229  
Old Posted Dec 17, 2018, 4:27 PM
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Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes View Post
Are you suggesting we paint something on it and have it fill the partially excavated swimming pool next door?
Seeing that it would only enhance my summer vacation to PITLAND, I vote yes

Quote:
Using Chicago to illustrate the potentialities of Regina is very flattering as well.
Well yes, the scale of the streetscape in the photo vastly exceeds the potential of our cities within our lifetimes (although mind you that block of 12th with the McCallum Hill triplets could fit right in there), but if you cut the buildings down by half the principle is the same.

The point is that people like to slam blank walls but what they're really slamming is the building next door that never materialized as it was supposed to.
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  #230  
Old Posted Dec 17, 2018, 5:42 PM
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The Palais de Justice de Montreal? I quite like that building.
I'm referring to its giant blank wall that faces the Old Port.
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  #231  
Old Posted Dec 17, 2018, 7:52 PM
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Originally Posted by yaletown_fella View Post
Adena Meadows is an ultra upscale gated community in Aurora. It's surrounded by the Magna Golf Club.
There's a private community named Wychwood Park at Bathurst and Davenport across from the TTC garage.
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  #232  
Old Posted Dec 17, 2018, 9:23 PM
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I'm referring to its giant blank wall that faces the Old Port.
There are actually two blank walls, but technically neither of them faces the Old Port.

One of them faces Boul. St-Laurent on the west side, and the other on the east side faces Champ-de-Mars, which is a decent-sized park located right behind the classically beautiful city hall.
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  #233  
Old Posted Dec 18, 2018, 4:01 AM
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I agree that the big blank wall isn't the issue. It's that they haven't built anything on the lot beside it. That's what I wish Vancouver had more of, towers built right up beside each other
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  #234  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2019, 9:06 PM
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I stumbled upon this photo of a new suburban housing development in Markham - and it's actually a pretty great urban form. Dense, good scale, minimal setbacks. This is what suburbs should look like.

But then you look a little closer and see the actual material selections & architectural details on the buildings and just have to wonder why?


Grand Cornell Brownstones
by Jimmy Wu, on Flickr



For contrast, here's a somewhat similar new housing development in the UK. Why couldn't they use a coherent, attractive material palette something more like this? It's not like this would cost more. What is it about all of our mass-market builders that makes them so much more aesthetically challenged than those everywhere else?



Chobham Manor
by Jimmy Wu, on Flickr
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  #235  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2019, 9:36 PM
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Is it me or everything seems to be made/fabricated in a more cheap way in North America than in Europe ?
Here I name : American Cars, Architecture, food etc...
At least, that's what I am noticing.

When I look at Australia and NZ, they seems to be more on the European side. As an ex British colony I wish we had followed them.
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  #236  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2019, 9:39 PM
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Still love it for suburbia.
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  #237  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2019, 10:53 PM
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Originally Posted by FrAnKs View Post
Is it me or everything seems to be made/fabricated in a more cheap way in North America than in Europe ?
Here I name : American Cars, Architecture, food etc...
At least, that's what I am noticing.

When I look at Australia and NZ, they seems to be more on the European side. As an ex British colony I wish we had followed them.
I've always thought that the opposite was true - Euro buildings would not pass NAmerican code, in many cases. Design is another matter.
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  #238  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2019, 11:02 PM
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I've always thought that the opposite was true - Euro buildings would not pass NAmerican code, in many cases. Design is another matter.
I've probably mixed a couple of things together...
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  #239  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2019, 11:09 PM
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Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker View Post
Still love it for suburbia.
I'm right there with you. It's hard for me to criticize it considering how hard it is to get developers to build that kind of stuff.
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  #240  
Old Posted Jan 3, 2019, 11:41 PM
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Yeah, it's perfect. I never expected to be able to say I could live in Markham, happily. But that neighbourhood, sure.

I'd eventually need to have a mix of classes - middle-aged women with underwear on their head as a hairnet leaning out the second-floor window smoking, pretty and stylish teenage girls with morbidly obese fathers, trendy couples, guitar-playing douchebags on the front steps... all of things I love about the rowhouse neighbourhoods here.

But the actual built form, that Markham one is perfectly fine. There's nothing I need to change to be satisfied with it. It's even treeless for that old British urban feel. I don't like it as much as my favourite block in Ontario - downtown Paris - or Kensington Market - but it's probably in third place.

Paris Ontario by Rick Blythe, on Flickr

Working Class Homes In Toronto by Greg's Southern Ontario (catching Up Slowly), on Flickr

I mean, come on... the Paris one is an even more beautiful version of here, and the Kensington one... I at least know it matches St. John's in that richness of artsy, dirty urban life, and I assume it even exceeds it. I could do either of those as well, the latter probably for life without dying of homesickness. I really think if I lived in that blue house my life would be, in terms of the things about it I'm most attached to, the things I miss immediately or over the course of weeks, months, when I'm anywhere else, more or less the same as it is now.
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Last edited by SignalHillHiker; Jan 4, 2019 at 2:48 AM.
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