Skyline Killers

[MolsonExport]

The Great Wall of Windsor!

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

The Great Wall of Windsor!

It reminds me of the awful 1960s era high rise apartment buildings that, decades later, I still associate with North York.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by bilbao58

It reminds me of the awful 1960s era high rise apartment buildings that, decades later, I still associate with North York.

they are still there aplenty, especially near Jane/Finch. Currently serving as warehousing for the underprivileged.

blogto

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." -President Lyndon B. Johnson

For anyone who may not know: That quote was something LBJ explained to a young Bill Moyers after “encountering a display of blatant racism during a political visit to the South.” As Moyers explained:

We were in Tennessee. During the motorcade, he spotted some ugly racial epithets scrawled on signs. Late that night in the hotel, when the local dignitaries had finished the last bottles of bourbon and branch water and departed, he started talking about those signs. "I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it," he said. "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archi...-04e10106ff6c/

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lb...est-white-man/

[Labtec]

Originally Posted by cabasse

thats how i feel about the SOM designed bellsouth/at&t building here. overshadowed by the BoA plaza next door but still one of the tallest in the city at 677'

loopnet

here's my killer for atlanta. related group's icon midtown.


skyscraper center

It looks like a Miami building placed in midtown:

Photo source: https://relatedgroup.com/properties/icon-midtown/

[llamaorama]

I'm weird, I kind of like slab apartments. They are often clean and symmetrical in a way a lot or more recent architecture isn't.

[CaliNative]

Originally Posted by pj3000

Hudson Yards - Manhattan

Yeah, plus the skinny supertalls. Look like giant smokestacks from miles away. Hide the gems like Chrysler and even Empire State.

[CaliNative]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

tour-montparnasse.fr

The building is bad, but the location is far far worse. criminal.

I'm surprised Paris let this one slip through. This kind of thing happens in Houston all the time, but Houston isn't Paris.

[CaliNative]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

they are still there aplenty, especially near Jane/Finch. Currently serving as warehousing for the underprivileged.

blogto

You're going to get a lot more of these when they fix the affordable housing crisis. Better than being homeless. L.A. could probably use 100 of these, at least. Hopefully spend a little on better design and landscaping, so they don't look like commie blocks or the 1950s housing projects that are now mostly gone. A little attention to design can make these much better without hiking costs too much.

[MolsonExport]

For sure. But the neighbourhood problem is not the type of building, rather, it is the concentration and number of underprivileged. This area is overwhelmingly very poor by Toronto standards. It is probably the most notorious 'ghetto' area in the country. It could be the Pruitt-Igoe of Canada.

[bilbao58]

I don’t think those towers at Jane and Finch are what I’m remembering, simply because I don’t think there was much reason for us to be that far west. What I remember was most likely closer to Bayview or maybe Leslie. Even so, they were definitely not “luxury” apartments. Even as a kid my understanding was they were generally for people who couldn’t afford a house. Fifty years ago Toronto home prices were already crazy.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by bilbao58

I don’t think those towers at Jane and Finch are what I’m remembering, simply because I don’t think there was much reason for us to be that far west. What I remember was most likely closer to Bayview or maybe Leslie. Even so, they were definitely not “luxury” apartments. Even as a kid my understanding was they were generally for people who couldn’t afford a house. Fifty years ago Toronto home prices were already crazy.

maybe these guys? https://www.google.com/maps/@43.7675...7i16384!8i8192

[mousquet]

Why did I expect the Montparnasse Tower to this thread...?

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

The building is bad, but the location is far far worse. criminal.

That's a popular gross lie. I told you guys thousand times on here, the building is not bad. It is a regular, if not neat skyscraper from the early 1970s.

The location appears very bad indeed, only because they wouldn't build any more skyscraper around, out of dumb NIMBYism, while there is not so much of precious top-notch historic architecture in the nearby 14th arrondissement.
We could afford to demolish some old random bland stuff over that area to develop a whole high-rise cluster, it would sell very very well.

I don't know how much that 50-yo black tower on the edge of the 6th arrondissement is worth, but it might be something like a billion dollars.
It actually looks alright from rue de Rennes.


https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rue_de_Rennes_(Paris)

Use a bit of imagination and think about what a cluster of mixed-use contemporary skyscrapers would look like from there.
It would look great like greedy billionaires would rush to it to purchase the most valuable properties and speculate.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by mousquet

Use a bit of imagination and think about what a cluster of mixed-use contemporary skyscrapers would look like from there.

Or maybe this. BIBZILLA!!!

[mousquet]

^ Okay... Ok!

I've got nothing left to say.
You just shut my mouth.

[bilbao58]

^ "New and Improved!" version

[Gresto]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

For sure. But the neighbourhood problem is not the type of building, rather, it is the concentration and number of underprivileged. This area is overwhelmingly very poor by Toronto standards. It is probably the most notorious 'ghetto' area in the country. It could be the Pruitt-Igoe of Canada.

One simply cannot compare Toronto's poorest areas to the slums in U.S. cities. Places like Jane-Finch are poor, but there's no discernable decay or widescale abandonment. I do hate those commie blocks that were erected en masse across the city in the '60s. They are eyesores on the cityscape, and CaliNative is right that they needn't have been so cheaply and trashily designed. Toronto should have taken a lesson from a city like Barcelona, though the homogeneity is overwhelming.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

maybe these guys? https://www.google.com/maps/@43.7675...7i16384!8i8192

Looking at a 3D map, I think they may have been on and around Bathurst.

[muppet]

It has its moments at street level and inside (sky garden), but London's death ray Walkie Talkie is a stunna






But seriously, talk about a blot on the landscape. Is there a city Vinoly hasn't wrecked?:






In its first summer it melted cars and set shops alight before they put sun blades over the windows





Plans are afoot to hide the damn thing:

[muppet]

Also this gem, hard to beat - the Trellick Tower marring Notting Hill. So ugly it's iconic and a Listed structure. I wish they'd just paint it white