Until last week, the only news I'd heard about the Absolute residential development in Mississauga had come in the depths of winter, when Toronto reporters and critics were outdoing ourselves in praise for the design.
The unveiling of plans for the Absolute tower back then was a good day in the history of Toronto architecture. In a town where the launch of a new condominium tower is usually a ho-hum occasion, it was pleasant to see media folk thronging the restaurant atop the CN Tower for a look at the winning design of a 56-storey condo stack slated to rise at the corner of Hurontario Street and Burnhamthorpe Road.
That evening, the face of Yansong Ma, the young Chinese-American architect who captured the $125,000 prize, was on all the local television news shows. Next morning, Mr. Ma's design — instantly nicknamed "Marilyn" because of its foxy curves and bulges — made the front pages of the papers. Architecture was in the headlines, people were paying attention — and all that, to my mind, was an excellent thing.
Then, one sizzling day last week, came the announcement from Absolute's developers — Fernbrook Homes and Cityzen Development Group — about an upcoming gala opening of the project, a mixer for people who've bought there and those who are thinking about it. The invitation was unsurprising — except for the picture that came along with it, in which Marilyn appeared to be standing next to a long-lost sister.
'Modernism and the contemporary city has been too much related to the industrial city of the past,' says architect Yansong Ma, designer of the curvy Absolute buildings.
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This addition of a second, 50-storey tower by Mr. Ma to his 56-storey one has to do, in part, with the strong condominium market in the Greater Toronto Area. But it also indicates the readiness of the buying public to take a chance on a skyscraper design that is unusual and artistically adventuresome. The original building sold out as soon as it went on the market, Danny Salvatore, president of Fernbrook Homes, told me. No wonder he and his partners at Cityzen have invited Mr. Ma to have a second go at the Mississauga skyline.
Reached by phone in Shanghai, the Yale-educated architect explained what he is doing, and why.
"The public loved the first building, but I do not want to repeat the first one," Mr. Ma said. "We have to do something new, but similar. The first building is located at the corner, so the rotation [the apparent pulse and billow of the structure's skin] is more dramatic. The second one rotates slower, and the overall plan is more elegant."
Though the artist's impression of the scheme shows a long, low building running between the two towers, Mr. Ma said "they do not connect at the base." As he explained it to me, his intention is to make the first building, on the corner of Burnhamthorpe and Hurontario, a forceful landmark at a busy intersection, with only a minimal podium.
The second tower has no podium at all, but hits the ground free and clear.
"We want to do something other than a box. Anything but a box is fine with us! Modernism and the contemporary city has been too much related to the industrial city of the past. There was this saying in the last century that 'a building is a machine for living.' We believe it is a design for living, so that, when people look at a building, they feel nature, not industry. I think it is time for people to understand themselves, their bodies, their natural environments. Technology supports what we do, but our building does not show technology on the outside. The building should reflect culture and nature."
Somewhere between the first and second coming of Marilyn, Mr. Ma has addressed certain problems that were apparent in the single-tower scheme, though he has not, to my mind, resolved them. The base of the first tower has shed the blank look of a pedestal for statuary, and re-emerged as a somewhat more porous piece of connective fabric between skyscraper and city. But where the area below and around the tower was too stark in the one-tower version, now seems to be cluttered — as though the architect were still too busy with the monumental glamour of the towers to pay much attention to their basic urbanism.
Be all that as it may, however, the Absolute tower scheme remains the most charming architectural project to go public in and around Toronto so far this year. It will be interesting to see how Mr. Ma's creative thinking evolves during the design of his towers, and how he addresses the outstanding problems with his plan. But already, even though Absolute is still in its early stages, he has given us much to think about and to admire.
