Frances Bula writes in the Globe and Mail about this proposal and its opponents.
Cadillac Fairview is holding an open house on Thursday at the Fairmont Waterfront hotel to get public response to nine “design principles” and massing (general size and shape) options for the building that it says architects came up with after the city’s urban design panel turned down the original design in January.
Surely, they could find a design the compliments the existing buildings, instead of designing a building that sticks out like a sore thumb, totally out of place.
No. The design must compliment the era it was built in, not a partial facsimile of something nearby that was built in a completely other time. Northern European cities have mastered contrasting designs that compliment through their diversity. Do your homework.
The best complementary is to have an excellent creations from both 1914 and from 2019. Sore thumbs heal quickly; fake efforts to mimic leave decade-long scars.
This project is still completely out of context, namely with the scale of the adjacent buildings and the 19th Century urbanism of Gastown precinct. It is literally a cram job substituting as progressive-conservative architecture. There should indeed be a plaza in this space, perhaps with a crashing fountain and appropriatey-scaled elements like seating, cool lighting and transportation-themed sculpture that will humanize and animate what could be a unique outdoor living room.
Moreover, this would be an ideal place to build a front door to the future rail and sea passenger transport terminal that will inevitably become vital by mid-century. Blocking it with a violently cinched tower does not bode well for the future nor for sound planning and design.
Kill this ill-advised project, please.