Writers about contemporary residential architecture, the present scribe included, like houses and high-rises that surprise, or make points, or put interesting new spins on old formulas. While some architects and academics I’ve met profess disdain for controversial, look-at-me structures, most reporters prefer to think about no other kind. Of course, if the building under review is also comfortable for the inhabitants and acceptable to the neighbours, that’s all to the good – but comfort and propriety, in and of themselves, are rarely enough to inspire more than a sentence or two.
Which is the reason readers of columns like mine hear little about dwellings such as the 18 four-level luxury townhomes in the new Mississauga complex known as Parklane Residences.
Designed by Russell Fleischer, principal in the firm of Turner Fleischer Architects, for developer Tong Hahn, with interiors by Bryon Patton and Associates, the houses of Parklane do not quicken the pulse, nor are they meant to do so. Each has parking for two cars on the ground floor, accessed from a laneway at the rear. The kitchen, living room and dining area are on the second level, and the three or four bedrooms are where you’d expect to find them.
The windows are larger than ordinary punched openings, but less expansive than the floor-to-ceiling walls of glass one commonly finds in new condominium stacks. Brick and rough-textured stonework, intended, the architect said, to “provide contrast” and “complement natural heritage,” frame the windows. The top of each single-family unit is flat, which lends a little touch of contemporaneity to the otherwise conventional, somewhat gruff exteriors of the townhouses.
Prices start in the upper $900,000s. Mr. Fleischer believes buyers could include affluent families with young children. But I think this sector of the market is unlikely to turn up at the sales centre (125 Lakeshore Rd. E., in Mississauga) because the houses have no backyards, and most people who want homes in suburbia also want yards. (Of course, you don’t need a backyard to raise a family – I made do without one, and my children did not grow up to be anti-social.)
The house-hunters more probably drawn to Parklane, Mr. Fleischer predicts, will be empty-nesters who have lived for years in the neighbourhoods of south Mississauga and nearby Port Credit. They are folks inclined to downsize but don’t like the idea of living in a condo tower, and who enjoy being near Lake Ontario.
Indeed, the exact location – certainly not the humdrum architecture, or the suburban car culture the architecture suits all too nicely – is the only reason I can think of for spending a million dollars to live at Parklane.
The Greater Toronto Area has numerous good parks, some of which bloom gloriously during southern Ontario’s always too-short spring. But surely none of them is lovelier than the city of Mississauga’s four-hectare Brueckner Rhododendron Garden, which lies between the Parklane site and the lake.
While the garden has no playground for children, it features trails that meander among the oaks and pines sheltering the rich collection of rhododendrons, azaleas and other flowering plants from woodlands and mountains. The park, a spot of living beauty in the midst of unsustainable sprawl, is perfect any time of the year (but especially in the blooming season, between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day) for strolling, dog-walking, or just being quiet – the sorts of things appreciated, that is, by the well-heeled people most likely to find Parklane fetching.
But if renderings are to be believed, this project just won’t measure up to the garden it is destined to overlook, in terms either of charm or seriousness or delight. Those are three graces that architecture, like every garden, should always deliver, in Mississauga and everywhere else.