Entries tagged with "urban+change"
Friday 11 January 2008
Historic signs on Queen Street
(It’s been a whole month since I last posted, and what a month. Lots of things are up in the air, but in general it’s been going well. There are promising job leads, I’ve had time to reorganize the studio at last, and resume work on some projects, both musical and electronic - more about those soon. Meanwhile...)
The other day, while Sean and I were out for a bite to eat, we noticed a store sign across the street proudly announcing “Claremont Confectionery - Smoke and Gifts - Complete Line of Guns & Fishing Tackle” in handsome hand-painted lettering… might have been forty or fifty years old, by the look of it. The building is now a restaurant, but the owners had apparently liked the sign enough to keep it around. It’s not the only such “historic” sign on Queen Street, either.
I like this sort of nod to the past. I’ve heard it criticized as pretentious and empty - like “façadism” in architecture, where the front of a historic building is kept, and attached to a brand new, usually much larger building. You’re appropriating a cultural artifact that has its own layered history, the argument goes, presumably hoping that some of its essence carries over into your new enterprise.
But nah… it’s pretty neat that elements like this are being kept, however superficial they might be. If it’s done with a bit of reverence and respect, they can help connect us with our surroundings, and remind us that we’re all part of this vast stretch of history.
I once designed a logo for a friend, which was eventually made into a sign that hung over her storefront on Queen West. I’d designed logos before, and web sites and business cards, but this felt different - the first time seeing something I’d created become such a visible part of her shop’s public face, physical and permanent.
Well, not that permanent, of course. It’s been gone for years now. Dozens of signs appear on and vanish from that block alone every year, only slightly more permanent than the cards, posters and other ephemera that flutter through it. It’s cool that every once in a while one survives.
(Next: decay, ruins, and aesthetics.)
Tuesday 4 July 2006
Took a couple cool walks through the west end, down the hill north of Davenport that marks the ancient Lake Iroquois shoreline, past the old Wychwood streetcar barns and the Tollkeeper’s Cottage, a couple of souvenirs of Toronto’s transportation history. The former site is slated for conversion to artists’ studios, greenhouses and parkland, the latter for restoration as a national heritage site.
And there were other neat things along the way - parks and neighbourhoods and friendly cats, and other stuff that may provide inspiration for the radio scripts I’ve been working on.
Down on Bloor Street, we passed by the trio of construction sites at Varsity Stadium, the Royal Conservatory and the ROM, and wandered down Philosopher’s Walk past the Conservatory and the U of T music building, there to check out the second lamppost bass installed by Richard Bishop (who ran across my post about his earlier installation, the Kensington Bass, and was kind enough to alert me to the arrival of its new sibling). A bit tough to play, but fun! I’ll have to come by with my contact microphone and an amp or recorder sometime.
Speaking of the urban landscape, city council is now seeking proposals to provide street furniture citywide. One side effect of this is that the Eucan “monster bin” project (see left) is dead. Good thing too - but we’d better keep an eye on the proceedings and let councillors know we want ads kept under control.
There’s also one really maddening bit: those three-sided “ad pillars” that AstralMedia have installed in parks are exempt from all this. They’re just off the sidewalk, and therefore within the jurisdiction of Parks and Rec, not Urban Planning.
More about this via Spacing Wire. Also, a Star article by Christopher Hume.
Also, on Friday, Newmindspace (instigators of Bubble Battles, subway and streetcar parties, and other revelry) are having a big mobile party they’re calling Flight Of Fancy, somewhere close to downtown. Route to be annouced via email. I’m gonna be there, hopefully playing some music!
Tags for this entry:
architecture,
art,
bass,
kensington bass,
newmindspace,
public art,
public space,
spacing,
street furniture,
subway,
toronto,
transit,
urban change
Tuesday 25 April 2006
Dan Gibson, nature sound recordist. He actually died over a month ago, but I hadn’t heard until now. When I was a kid, we had the very first Solitudes LP, back before his son talked him into adding music (a smart commercial move, I’ll grant you, but no thanks - I’d rather have just the sounds).
Jane Jacobs, author and champion of neighbourhoods and cities as vital entities. Her book The Death and Life Of Great American Cities spurred me to study urban planning (I discovered it, in turn, through Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn). (via Spacing Wire)
Tags for this entry:
acoustics,
architecture,
building,
cities,
environment,
human spaces,
jane jacobs,
nature,
obituary,
public space,
recording,
sound,
toronto,
urban change,
urban design
Tuesday 11 November 2003
My faith in this city has been restored. David Miller’s the new mayor. On balance, the changes to council look good: Glen de Baeremaeker is in in Scarborough (diss Scarberia all you like - I’ll take it over Etobicoke any day) and most of the other new faces are promising. And now we’ll have an actual leader at the helm - and not a vile embarrassment of a furniture salesman elected on name recognition and blabbermouthedness alone who knows jack about the city and no longer even gives a crap about his job.
Out in the 905, things aren’t quite so pretty: same old suburban developer-sponsored louts, for the most part. In Hamilton, the new mayor backs the Red Hill Valley Expressway. Construction is underway, so short of a minor miracle (say, new provincial premier Dalton McGuinty pulling a Bill Davis), things don’t look too good on that front.
Beyond that, a federal election is looming, and I think Chretien’s slow-motion retirement might have pissed off people in sufficient numbers that a right-wing landslide is conceivable (if the Conservatives and Alliance do indeed manage to unite).
But for now, I am optimistic and highly relieved.
Tuesday 21 October 2003
It’s been really weird watching them tear down the central part of the Royal Ontario Museum to make way for what they’re calling the Lee-Chin Crystal. To me, the Walker Terrace (the mild-mannered 1980s addition that they’re now demolishing, pictured above) was always there, like the CN Tower or Maple Leaf Gardens. It’s pretty weird to see it torn out.
The Crystal is a jagged explosion of metal and glass designed by Daniel Liebeskind, the flashy musician-turned-architect dude who did the Holocaust Museum in Berlin and is now working on the New York World Trade Center site. (His entry in the ROM’s so-called redesign ‘competition’ was scribbled on napkins from the museum’s chi-chi upstairs restaurant.)
I have some pretty strong reservations about the new design, most of which boil down to maintenance. All those weird angles and custom-fitted panels are begging for leaks. And they’ve already had to revise the plans, replacing a lot of the glass with metal. Memo to architects: windows that face up collect dust, snow and bird poop and look like hell in pretty short order. I forsee great gobs of money having to be spent annually just to keep the thing together - money which could be better spent on running a good museum. On the other hand, it does a lot of good things, starting with re-orienting the building to face Bloor Street (a ritzy shopping street) rather than Queen’s Park (a relatively barren car thoroughfare).
I had a bigger shock a few blocks away, where they’re building a new expansion to OCAD, the Ontario College of Art and Design. There, rather than extending horizontally, perches an entire new building a couple floors above the roof of the existing building, propping it up above the park to the south (so as to keep it sunny). People have likened it to a matchbox standing on toothpicks, and it’s completely true. I’d seen renderings of the building-to-be, but to actually see It looming several stories above McCaul St was pretty damn freaky.
The architecture critics tell us that this is all a good thing, that these audacious new buildings will get people excited about our city and its institutions. And I suppose that’s true - people do have a certain fondness for our New City Hall, which was built in the 1950s and still shows up in movies as some sci-fi government or corporate HQ. I have to feel sorry for the people that are going to have to work in these places, though. (I could go on and on about this, but Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn says it better than I could.)
Thursday 20 March 2003
From the Chicago Tribune, March 19th: “Media giant’s rally sponsorship raises questions” (Thank you, Boing Boing.)
“In a move that has raised eyebrows in some legal and journalistic circles, Clear Channel radio stations in Atlanta, Cleveland, San Antonio, Cincinnati and other cities have sponsored rallies attended by up to 20,000 people.”
Now, let me tell you about Dundas Square. It’s an odd little triangle downtown that used to be full of cheap and/or sleazy shops, in an area that was seriously damaged by the construction of the giant Eaton Centre shopping mall next door. A year or three ago they knocked down the buildings to make way for a new public square.
Fair enough; downtown could use more of that sort of thing. But the concept for the square - essentially our own miniature version of Times Square - has always struck me as ridiculous. Times Square is awe-inspiring in its way: street advertising and trashy glitz taken to its greatest extreme. To mimic it is to miss the point. It’s tacky, uncreative, me-tooish - exactly the sort of thing that Canadians from one end of the country to the other love to mock Toronto for.
The square, then, is surrounded by billboards and giant screens showing full-colour video. And crowning it all is The Media Tower, on the northwest corner (it’s the drum-shaped thing in the photos). Essentially it’s a big box made of girders, several stories high, made for the express purpose of hanging ads on. Guess who owns it. Yay, Clear Channel!
On the other hand, Dundas Square has provided a nice location for antiwar demos. That’s one of the most important functions for a public square, after all. And it makes me feel a bit better.
And hey! There’s this big fat target waiting if agit-pranksters want to hang a banner or something. With lots of exposed girders to chain themselves to.
Wednesday 8 May 2002
I dropped by the Toronto Reference Library today. Designed by Raymond Moriyama, it’s one of the loveliest interiors in the city: huge, airy, impressive and yet intimate, with plenty of natural light, water sculptures decorating the ground floor, and generous skylit reading areas. The north end has a stunning view of Rosedale Valley and the uptown towers of Yonge Street. The only real downer (aside from the rather bleak expanses of blank brick on the outside) is the fact that all the upper floors ring a giant atrium, making it necessary to walk all the way around them if you’re headed for the opposite corner.
It’s part of a period in architecture that I particularly love, for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on: those buildings that were built by governments in the 1960s and ‘70s. Although they vary widely, there’s a distinctive feel to them, and some common elements, like the use of 45-degree angles and circular forms, lots of brick and warm colours, and vanes to cut down glare and break up blank ceilings.
Those subways that were built in the ‘60s and ‘70s are great examples. I happened on a book about the Montreal Metro recently that was full of this sort of thing: strikingly patterned concrete, angled walls, integrated art and so on. The contemporary stations I’ve seen in Boston and other cities are similar. (Check out Matt McLauchlin’s loving tribute, Montréal By Metro.)
In Toronto, the 1978 Spadina Line is the prime example, with eight unique stations (most of which, unfortunately, are in the median of a minor expressway). Eglinton West is warm and welcoming; Glencairn is quiet and curiously intimate, with lots of small walls to break up its space; Lawrence West has a mezzanine decorated in bright primary colours, while walls of plain concrete lend its platform a quiet dignity; Dupont, probably the most remarked-upon, is mysterious, simultaneously cave-like and futuristic with its round corners and giant circular lights. In their day, all the stations sported original artworks, though some have faded and some have had to be dismantled, notably Yorkdale’s vaulted ceiling of rainbow neon designed by Michael Hayden.
So what is it that I find so appealing about this era? I think it’s a feeling of genuine optimism and civic-mindedness. I’ve only lived in Toronto itself for a couple of years, but it didn’t take long to notice the sense many have of the 1970s as a kind of golden, enlightened age. New expressways were turned back by those living in their path; plans to scrap the city’s streetcar network were abandoned; alienating high-rise housing projects gave way to sensibly planned new neighborhoods. The future seemed bright and human.
I think we could use a little more of that right about now.
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