King & Yonge May 2, 2004

I find this to be one of the nicer old buildings in Toronto, located on the north-east corner of King & Yonge. The trend in recent years has been to gut these buildings, retain the facade (for at least the first three storeys) and then insert a generic steel & glass tower behind.

a sunday rant begins...

The city actually promotes this process and gives incentives for retaining the facade. Unfortunately I have yet to see a development where it works — where it is conceived as anything more than wallpaper for the first few storeys. Usually, it looks absolutely terrible and the worst example that comes to mind is the Air Canada Centre. When given a chance to work with an old facade what happened? They ignored it and built a generic steel and glass facade above and around it. What a horrible, horrible piece of architecture in the city! I cringe when approaching it on the Gardiner Expressway or from the west side. At least from ground level the monstrosity isn't entirely noticeable. That building should be a text book example for architects on how not to integrate the old with the new.

rant is over...