Given the recent kerfuffle over Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum being voted worst of the decade’s architecture by the Washington Post, VoCA would love to have your thoughts on the new condo that Daniel Libeskind is designing for downtown Toronto:
And a daylight shot. Image: downtownrealty.ca
WE FOUND AN IMAGE OF A MORE RECENT RENDERING – it’s the one on the right:
Andrea Carson writes on contemporary art, architecture and design...
16 comments ↓
Its a giant boot? Well at first I thought it was a high back chair then I saw the heel. This isn’t serious is it?
Some people maybe will call it art in architecture, but how practical it will be?
My friend is constructional engineer said about the ROM Kristal, that building has a lot of problem already(rust in the metal parts),it is not good for our weather-this type of structure.
Why is this guy allowed to keep making these ridiculous bombastic monstrosities? And this time, its obviously a salute to the 80′s platform shoe. Someone who cant figure out that the sun coming from the west could actually damage Museum artifacts and then has to re-build the thing by slapping aluminium siding on it (nostalgia for the 70′s Toronto?)Hasn’t this City suffered enough?
After the mess he left at the corner of Avenue Road and Bloor, I’m surprised he even got the gig. I certainly hope Canada Customs holds him up at the opening of this boot-thingy so that he doesn’t come back. I hear they love him in Denver…
I feel sorry for the idiots who will buy apartments here. They are guaranteed to lose money on their investments. Libeskind’s name has about as much credibility and resale value as a used toilet seat.
According to Scyscraper News, the tower now under construction won’t look like the originally proposed ‘boot’ design shown in your images.
http://www.skyscrapernews.com/news.php?ref=2310
Since when does Libeskind know anything about designing a residence? Libeskind is so incompetent his own wife (and business partner!), Nina Libeskind had to hire another architect, (Alex Gorlin), to design the Libeskind’s own home in New York. (Go on. google it.)
Given Libeskind’s track record of building failures at the Denver art Museum, I would not be putting any of my own money into anything he designed.
I don’t mind the ROM building. Big daring buildings, even if they fail on many levels (aluminum sidings of ill-planning, etc), are still fun to look at because they are big and daring. The original boot is kind of arresting in a Dubai meets platform boot way, shame if it becomes a generic tower.
Torontonians, you lucky things, you!! You’re getting yet another interesting building. You have such a fantastic civic mentality that allows these things to happen. You just get better and better all the time. Van-snoozer, on the other hand, continues to slouch along in its building boom making the same vertical rectangular glass box over and over and over.
I find Libeskind’s design aggressive, unattractive and impractical. I think Toronto could use a few more well designed, contemporary, aesthetically subtle buildings, which this one is not.
Argh.
Too bad the boot has been removed. It looks a hell of a lot more vital and interesting than the usual, exceedingly banal and offensive, Toronto condo building.
Yes, it looks like a boot or a chair with an abnormally high back. The proportions are quite unpleasant, but I think it’s a little better than the ROM. It has somewhat more consistency and coherence, whereas the ROM has none. The bottom part of the building, shown in the picture on the right, isn’t bad. It looks better without the top part of the boot, although the curvy shape was kind of intriguing.
Looks like the boot has been replaced with something very much like the ROM form. The new bit seems not to have much to do with the rest of the building. Just his “signature” form/brand, I guess.
I’d love to say this produces a nice reference to the ROM, some effective cross-city relationship, but the ROM addition is, helas, in many ways not unique to Toronto. That form make enormous sense as Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin but not much as the Toronto “crystal”.
Evidently there are a lot of people who think weird looking buildings make for great cities. WRONG!!! These one-liners get boring very quickly. Places like Paris or Rome or even the old squares in London have long lasting appeal PRECISELY because the individual buildings form a cohesive group and the architects suppress their own egos to work together to create a unified sense of place. – Libeskind, on the other hand, is unsophisticated and builds outrageous and crappy statements to draw attention to his own ego. He could care less about Toronto as he proved with the vulgar addition to the ROM.
Please refrain from being too harsh in your comments – I had to edit the one above. I think it’s important to ask why, exactly some of us were disappointed with the ROM, and not to dismiss Libeskind out of hand. For me, the interior is of strikingly poor quality for such a major project. Also, there are architectural elements (snow falling off roof, children’s shoeprints on white painted angled walls) and very poor curatorial choices that are they most disappointing. But I certainly feel that the blah, cheap and generic condos going up are a far worse thing for Toronto.
Tracy Kimmel, helas it has been a very long time since Toronto could imagine itself having a core urban landscape in which new “individual buildings form a cohesive group”… not since about 1840, I think. Generic wannabe Miami or faux mansard historical seems to be something of the fashion now in Toronto condos. I say this one looks much more interesting and worthwhile.
As for the ROM, it’s a bit of a cookie-cutter building… generic Libeskind. (It would have made much more sense, visually at least, if it were mostly glass as originally planned, not the fall-back version it became.) However his Jewish Museum in Berlin is a brilliant, profound and moving building.
AC, agree about your problems with the ROM. For me, the interior finishing – which looks like it should belong to a 3rd rate condo – is dispiriting. The fact that the craftsmanship improves when you reach the area connected with the restaurant is very telling. Why should the pricey restaurant be afforded this dignity and not the museum?
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