Dear Mr. Claus,
I know I'm too old to be writing to you, but there are a few things I've been worried about lately with regards to architecture in Toronto and I don't know where else to turn.
First of all, there's this condo-mania going on. For the most part, I'm happy there's so much development and so many people choosing to live downtown. This really sets us apart from other big cities. But there's got to be an architectural review panel put in place, since some of these projects are horrendous and totally out of whack with the neighbourhoods they're going into. Could you use your influence with Mayor David Miller and threaten a coal-fired generating station in his stocking if he doesn't get going on this?
And speaking of condominiums, there's this L Tower by Daniel Libeskind that's about to be shoehorned onto the tiny site where the Hummingbir…, er, I mean the Sony Centre now sits. It's a double-edged sword, I guess, since without the revenue this building will generate, we might lose Peter Dickinson's 1960 modernist masterpiece. But those of us with a soft spot for heritage architecture (and, yes, Virginia, modernism is heritage) worry this new boot-shaped building will obliterate the old one. (And heaven forbid it should look as if Mr. Dickinson's building is so much gum on the bottom of Mr. Libeskind's boot!) Could you convince Mr. Libeskind that a gesture toward the building's history might calm our nerves? Since new developments are required to spend a small percentage of their budget on artwork, perhaps the condo could include a small public gallery devoted to abstract painter R. York Wilson, creator of The Seven Lively Arts, that amazing 100-foot-long mural that has graced the Sony Centre's lobby since opening day.
Those of us with a soft spot for heritage architecture worry that the new L Tower by Daniel Libeskind will obliterate the Sony Centre, or what used to be Hummingbird Centre.
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You could threaten Mr. Libeskind with an alternate scheme by Will Alsop, designer of the 2004 expansion of the Ontario College or Art and Design — something on stilts that hovers over Mr. Dickinson's building, if you think that will motivate him.
Moving to suburbia, I'd like to ask that you give much-maligned Scarborough a better image for Christmas. Recently, I read an essay in a popular Toronto lifestyle magazine that made my home sound like an architecturally desolate place where people of different faiths don't even talk to each other. I can't say I've experienced this, but apparently, the Kennedy subway station is crawling with gang members, and regular, law-abiding people let their dogs defecate on the station's terrazzo floors.
Scarborough, writes the author, is "the unsophisticated past that Toronto feels it has sloughed off, Jersey to its Manhattan."
Isn't blaming suburbia for society's current shortcomings getting a little old? I mean, if I'm a bigot or a gang member or not the socially active, book-club-joining sort (or all three), would a move to the Annex really change me?
I'm worried, too, that if my parent's generation — the one that built this community with such optimism in the 1950s — read this ill-conceived piece, they'll be scared to leave their homes. Is that any way to treat them?
Maybe, since this writer has obviously been naughty, you could arrange a change in his personal circumstances that forces a move to Scarborough — maybe to my neighbourhood, where, because of all the bad press, architect-designed homes on big lots with giant, mature trees go for about 60 per cent of what they'd cost in Don Mills.
(Oh, and give an extra candy cane to Globe Real Estate's Derek Raymaker: While writing recently on the "Scarborough discount," he managed to find many nice things to say about the area, such as we actually have parks, home prices here are on the rise, and a new development designed to meet LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards will soon be going up at Midland and St. Clair avenues.)
Speaking of Don Mills, would it be possible to give Canada's most famous "new town" at least a partially enclosed mall? You may remember there's been quite a lot of controversy — I've written about much of it — over Cadillac Fairview's failure to address the needs of the greying population by pig-headedly moving forward with its plan for an open-air (and hence not very conducive to coffee get-togethers) "lifestyle centre" where the fully enclosed Don Mills Centre used to be. And could you gently remind them that if one fake keystone or pediment makes it on to any of the new buildings, there'll be many angry modernists out there?
There's a lot I haven't addressed, like how you might put a little more courage under Toronto's tree so we prevent "demolition by neglect" using the new strength of Ontario's amended heritage law (Bill 60), and how it'd be really great if we could get a home builder willing to take a risk with a new subdivision of small, modernist starter homes so people have an alternative to condominiums. Maybe we can tackle those next year? I promise to be extra good.…
Sincerely, The Architourist
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