How tall is too tall?
Tall buildings study proposes design regulations that would ‘sterilize’ architects, developer says
Tom Giancos doesn’t mince words when asked his thoughts on a controversial study that recommends Toronto restrict the height and locations of tall buildings in the downtown core.
“I believe the report is seriously flawed,” says Giancos, a vice president with Minto.
The report, “Tall Buildings: Inviting Change in Downtown Toronto,” puts forth a vision for how tall buildings should be built in the city centre, an area ranging from Bathurst St. to the Don Valley Parkway, and from Dupont St. to the waterfront.
Authored by Frank Lewinberg of Urban Strategies and David Pontarini of Hariri Pontarini Architects, the study identifies places downtown where tall buildings should be concentrated — along “high streets” such as Bay, Bloor, College and King Sts., for example.
The study also proposes height limits for tall towers based on where they’re located.
Currently the city evaluates tall building development proposals using design guidelines — not regulations — to determine floor plate sizes, setbacks and the distance between adjacent buildings.
Lewinberg and Pontarini’s report goes further, recommending the city impose regulations that dictate exactly where tall towers should be built downtown, and that it establish maximum heights for those highrises.
The authors also recommend that these tall building regulations be incorporated into the city’s official plan.
“This proposal would create hard and fast zoning rules that would be tied into the city’s official plan,” says Robert Glover, a principal with urban design firm Bousfields Inc. and a former director of urban design for the city. “From a design point of view this is very prescriptive.”
TONS OF TOWERS
The residential population of downtown Toronto has surged in the past decade, propelled by immigration, a stable jobs market and a growing desire among young people and retirees to live in the heart of the city.
To accommodate this influx and intensify the city centre, the bulk of the residential development down- town these days is of the highrise condo variety. There’s also been more office tower construction downtown in recent years. The tall buildings study is part of an effort by the city to get a better handle on this flurry of highrise development and establish ground rules for city planners and developers. “It gives us a chance to establish a policy framework so there’s a little more certainty and clarity for the stakeholders, for industry and for communities,” explains Gregg Lint- ern, director of community planning for Toronto-east York District. The end goal is a “shared vision of where we locate tall buildings and how they’re done,” he says. “Ultimately that will lead to less controversy and a greater acceptance.” Not at the moment, though. Giancos says the study proposes a “clumsy and arbitrary street-based system for identifying tall buildings sites and heights.” He notes that tall tower zones outlined in the report exclude a number of areas where tall towers have already been approved for development, such as St Thomas and Charles Sts., Sherbourne St. and parts of Bloor. What’s more, Giancos says, height limits were taken out of the city’s official plan years ago; he’s baffled the study has proposed re-introducing them. He also wonders what effect strict design regulations would have on the look of buildings downtown. “Toronto’s architects are getting more creative and innovative all the time. This study may sterilize that creativity.”
CODIFYING DESIGN
Peter Clewes, a partner with archi- tectsalliance and an architect who has designed his share of tall towers (most recently Peter Street Condos, the Four Seasons and Pier 27) shares Giancos’ concern.
“The danger is you impose a level of homogeneity that was imposed in a place like the Railway Lands,” notes Clewes, who designed several of the Cityplace towers.
He sees that condo cluster as a cautionary tale that underscores the perils of overly controlled design.
“You get this field of towers with the same facing condition and all with roughly the same floor plates and heights,” he says. “And it’s this level of consistency and banality that really isn’t the city.
“What’s interesting about the city,” Clewes continues, “is that it develops incrementally over time and is kind of a messy growth, but that makes it interesting. You get these conflicts and juxtapositions that make it look organic, as opposed to something that’s planned.
“When you try and codify design, you lose what makes Toronto potentially interesting.”
Shirley Blumberg, a principal with Kuwabara Payne Mckenna Blumberg Architects, worries that with all the fuss over the size and height of tall buildings, the city risks overlooking the pedestrian environment — or public realm — at the base of the towers. “That’s what you see as you walk along the street,” she says. “The public realm is the most important thing.”
On a trip to Sao Paulo last year, Blumberg recalls, she discovered that tall tower developers there are responsible for designing the sidewalk areas in and around the big buildings.
“You end up with this amazing streetscape,” she says.
“Rather than trying to control the size and height of its tall buildings, the city should focus more on what’s happening on the ground,” says Blumberg, who sits on Toronto’s design review panel.
“There’s so little investment in the public realm here, it just breaks your heart.”
TALL BUILDING TOOLKIT
Despite criticism of the tall buildings report, Pontarini still thinks the study has merit.
He knows a thing or two about tall buildings, having worked on many of Toronto’s big towers, including One Bloor, Shangri-la and Pinnacle on Adelaide.
The study was intended to help the city do a better job of managing the flood of development proposals, he explains. “They wanted a toolkit they could use to analyze all these applications in a coherent way so developers knew what the process was going to be and what the issues were going to be.”
Pontarini disagrees that the proposed design regulations would stifle the creativity of local architects.
“I think Toronto has some of the most creative architects, especially when it comes to developing in complex urban conditions,” he says. “So I don’t think there’s anything in there that would impede their ability to do a great project.”
But for his part, report co-author Lewinberg candidly admits that the study is so out of date at this point — the first draft was filed in 2008 — that much of it is now obsolete.
“So many buildings have been approved in locations and at heights that we didn’t even know about.”
The tall buildings report is currently being reviewed by the Toronto-east York District community council and it remains to be seen which of the recommendations will be implemented in the end.
“We are considering how to implement (the recommendations), including using the work as a set of guidelines first and then looking at how to incorporate them appropriately into the official plan and zoning over time,” says Lintern.
“It’s important to strike a balance between encouraging growth and making sure we continue to build livable downtown communities.”
Giancos thinks the system works fine just the way it is.
“Tall building development and the current policies in the downtown have generally been a huge success,” he says. “The (tall buildings) study is predicated on treating it as a problem.
“We cannot have a ‘one size fits all’ set of standards embedded in formal documents that may be forcefully applied.”