Quote:
Originally Posted by trofirhen
I feel a certain "Toronto" element in this building, and I have to admit liking it. Would anyone agree that, if built 600+ ft tall, on much the same scale, that this would fit somewhere in TO?
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I was this week in Toronto and it was my first time there since 2009. My, has that city changed in five years! I absolutely love the scale and height they are building in, as do I love the variation in heigth they have. Their towers are not only taller, but so much more massive than ours. They certainly do look impressive both from the street level as well as from the top of the CN Tower (which is always a treat, as was the new aquarium). There is certainly some New York vibe in the Downtown core during the office hours.
But what they have gained in height, they lack badly in architecture. I found almost all the new glass towers hugely boring architecture wise and many looked just downright cheap. Both Aura and L Tower were huge disappointments and are poorly executed. Our Trump Tower looks much better than either of those two (and don't let me get started on their Trump Tower). Actually only Toronto's Shangri-La was really impressive to me and other new towers were only impressive because of their height. Apperance wise I think Vancouver is ahead of Toronto with many nice (and interesting!) projects.
But I do give Toronto accolade for having a massive metropolitan skyline underway and it looks more impressive as a metro area than Chicago, through which I once again connected to my next destination. Chicago is only a superb looking Downtown, whereas Toronto has towers literally everywhere.
I would certainly love to have some "Toronto height" also in few places in Vancouver (for example with this project), but I am much happier with Vancouver's overall implementation of towers. In Vancouver the tower surroundings are always nicely done and very approachable, whereas in Toronto all these massive office and condo towers are really uninviting and have dead zones around them. South Core seemed as dead as five years ago despite having thousands of new condos there. It is the Coal Harbour of Toronto, but with less attractive streetscape.
Sorry for all the Toronto comments, but my trip is still so fresh on my mind.