The Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation (TWRC) is sponsoring a $20 million international design competition to re-design the area from the water’s edge along the Western Gap in the west to the Parliament St. slip in the east, a distance of 3.5 km. According to the TWRC, 38 design teams from 15 countries on four continents submitted proposals. Five teams were selected to compete. Their submissions will be on display at the BCE Place Galleria, Harbourfront Centre, Eaton Centre, Sherway Gardens, Fairview Mall and Scarborough Town Centre for two weeks. Teams will present their work at BCE Place on Monday at a public forum that starts at 6:30 p.m.
Hume in the Toronto Star writes today: “Cynicism comes cheap in this town, a place where many are content with the breezy comfort of ignorance…. For the record, work underway on the waterfront includes the recently completed dragon boat racecourse, the engineering of the new berm at Don Valley Park, the Cherry Street Beach clean-up, the John and York Quay promenades and the HtO urban beach park. That doesn’t include detailed planning for the East Bayfront, the West Donlands, Lake Ontario Park and Commissioners Park. Though the entries vary in quality, there’s no shortage of great ideas.”
You can vote for the designs you like on the Star’s website by clicking here.
2 comments
Although I have yet to see the full details of the final entries, I feel quite discouraged by the preliminary reports about the five finalists in the water’s edge design competition.
All but one seem to be infected by the over-design disease that afflicts the practise of architecture, and several include ideas that are so over-the-top that they will simply never be constructed, due to cost, engineering complexity or political opposition.
Why, for example, are we even bothering to talk about a new island in the middle of the harbour — a project that would take decades to build and billions to finance and wouldn’t do anything to address the accessibility of the lakefront.
Some of the others seem enraptured by their photoshopped conceptual cleverness, yet it’s not apparent that they will provide Torontonians with the one feature the waterfront so obviously lacks –a relatively spacious pedestrian and bike-oriented linear park at the water’s edge that is neither architecturally gimmicky, nor ruinously expensive, nor a tourist trap.
John Lorinc
Bull. Shit.
When are they NOT running a competition to revitalise the waterfront. I think the city’s strategy to revitalise the waterfront concists solely of having competitions regarding the area ad nauseum.
The waterfront has been a subject of architectural and urban design discource for decades now, with little to no actual action executed.
The city is continuing to waffle on the waterfront and having further competitions regarding its fate won’t solve anything. Whats needes is firm decisive naopleonic urban revitalisation action. Any action taken to date is token for talking points and check marks, but far from a broad and bold gesture at revitalization.