Hume: Future looking up for tall buildings?

[M II A II R II K]

Hume: Future looking up for tall buildings?


December 22, 2011

By Christopher Hume

Read More: http://www.yourhome.ca/homes/newsfea...tall-buildings

Toronto’s towers have grown up, but not its citizenry. Though the real issue is how our buildings behave at street level, the city and its planners remain fixated on height. “There needs to be intensification,” argues architect Bruce Kuwabara. “What we have to think about are ways to create a vertical urban life that’s livable. It isn’t just about the view. It has to be about how buildings work at the base and how they contribute to the public realm.”

Kuwabara’s firm, KPMB, is one of several participating in the exhibition, “Too Tall?” The show, on display at Harbourfront Centre, 235 Queens Quay W., until Dec. 31, addresses Toronto’s fear of heights. Though the city has more highrise development underway than any other city in North America — there are 132 such projects in Toronto, compared to 88 in Mexico City, 82 in Chicago — that has only stiffened local resistance.

Toronto’s pre-eminent condo designer, Peter Clewes of architectsAlliance, agrees with Kuwabara. “We’re creating a new urban fabric,” he says. “Tall buildings make sense in the North American city when they’re aggregated. All the debate is about height, but it should be about how well these towers knit in at ground level. When you’re right down on the street, height is irrelevant.”

And as architect Richard Witt of RAW Design, points out, “The only way to build sustainable cities is with density. Density allows us to cut consumption and reduce pollution.” At a time of growing environmental uncertainty, sustainability is more crucial than ever. For the first time in decades, at least since the end of World War II, cities are starting to realize that they need to be compact, coherent and connected. Toronto’s former planning chief Paul Bedford has a simple test for the successful 21st-century city: Can you live without a car?

That’s why the most remarkable development in the Toronto condo market isn’t the height of the tallest towers, but that one of them — a 42-storey complex on University Ave. north of Dundas St. W. — will be built without parking. Though city planners opposed it, this is the project that marks the beginning of Toronto’s coming of age. For all its flaws — and its backward-looking mayor — the city has achieved a new level of urbanism.

The focus on the base has already changed how condos are designed and built. In most new projects, tall, thin, towers sit atop podiums of between two and five floors. These podiums are where buildings meet the city and become part of the urban fabric. This is space we all share. This is also space for shops, restaurants, bars, art galleries and so on. “The thing that characterizes the best projects,” Kuwabara explains, “is that they have substantial programs at ground level . . . an animation strategy.”

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[softee]

I don't get how anyone can argue that Toronto has a "fear of heights" considering it has more hi-rises under construction than any other city in North America and it already has more completed hi-rises than anywhere on the continent except for NYC.

Also, that "82 in Chicago" is supposed to be the number for NYC.

I heard there's a supertall in it's early stages, probably more news will be released by the end of the summer.