kool maudit

Total shit. Look at those little townhomes facing Notre-Dame and Peel. Is this Fort Lauderdale?

This part of downtown should be chunky, dense, complicated. It should be a determined effort to recreate the energy and use patterns that characterised the old Hay Market; Griffintown is a first-order, inner-ring neighbourhood and it is in the process of revivification after Drapeau's vandalism.

But instead we get this shit. This is a Terasses Windsor for the boom era. 

36 minutes ago, kool maudit said:

city's height limit means that we cannot even build a 250m tower, and that is hardly tall from a world or even continental perspective. On the other hand, so what? Is Stockholm unpleasant due to its lack of such? Hamburg? Do these cities lack for interesting buildings?

It is entirely possible to build a landmark building, a memorable and spectacular building, at 139m. It's possible at 90m, at 65m.

Even if the building was 230m, it would not vault Montreal to anything close to North American leadership in the field of skyscrapers. Buildings in places like Atlanta and Seattle would still dwarf it, to say nothing of Toronto or Chicago.

The most important thing is to gradually build out this part of town, to use it to connect the urban fabrics of downtown, the Old Port, and Griffintown in such a way that it ultimately results in central Montreal feeling nearly 30% larger, being nearly 30% larger in terms of most people's usage patterns.

The building doesn't need to be particularly tall for this. It just needs to be good.

Another counterpoint still: we still have work to do.

Maybe the culture of the city will change one day so as to favour tall buildings. This would be similar to what happened in Chicago in the 1960s and 70s, when the city jumped from a 500-550 foot plateau skyline to a 1000-foot plus reality. Interesting side note here, Montreal's tallest buildings were taller than those of Chicago in the late 1960s.

Before this happens, our goal should be to see the construction of well-designed, conservatively proportioned skyscrapers whose urban attributes gradually give this building type a better image among ordinary Montrealers. Luckily, we still have a reasonable degree of latitude for architects and developers to play with; just as Chicago's Art Deco skyscraper landmarks are stunning despite falling universally shy of the 200m mark, so too do our high-rise architects have every ability to maximise their expertise in the form within the current parameters.

Tour de la Bourse or the IBM building are not little sub-scrapers like, say, the Potsdamer Platz buildings in Berlin. They are powerful presences that mightily boost their respective streetscapes, and their lessons can be applied to larger buildings if and when politics permit.

In the meantime, it is very important that Montreal's new high-rises, whether 200m or 100m, are of a type that improve's this style of building's reputation.

It would take a 300m tower to really mark Montreal's return to the realm of skyscrapers anyway. It doesn't matter if this BN tower is 139m or 210m.

Pour les embrouillés, un terrain vacant pourrait être "espace vert" ... et certains "espaces verts" de Montréal ont les qualités de terrains vacants! Nous devrions parler de ces lieux en fonction de leurs objectifs, pas de leur couleur,

Ce sera excellent pour le nord-est, mais aussi pour les quartiers St-Laurent/Rachel (Plateau sud-ouest) et Milton-Parc à l'approche du centre-ville.

These are low-end apartments from a developer whose site features misspellings. Are they really going to raise a 37-storey tower? I doubt it.

A corner that was once very heavy becomes very light. Montreal loses tissue. This whole thing is a disaster.

Chicago isn't that the city that had over 530 murders last year? I sure Montreal has a lot to learn from Chicago

also don't contribute to the humane society; hitler loved animals.

it's stupid and ungainly.

avenue du parc has been called "park avenue" by more of its residents for a longer period than called it "l'avenue du parc."

f***, it should be richler street.

i used to feel similarly about the courthouse and the national bank. now i love them. we're montreal, not unesco quebec.

You clearly don't know anything about Dinu Bumbaru. Come on.

what do you mean?

it's a great building. we can be london for this block.

my mistake, sorry.

the name reflects the anglophone history of the area and of the crew in question.

the n.d.g. graf culture is pretty anglo: http://www.mook-life.com/

the "liking tall skyscrapers is because you need a big dick" thing should probably end. freud has largely been discredited.

i remember when i first started coming on these skyscraper forums in like 1999.... we had nothing. just nothing. this is a hell of a time.

i like the sound of this hylands guy -- confident, a bit cocky and dismissive. these are good qualities for a developer.

oh my god, you guys -- just stop. stop!

in tokyo, 400 square feet is huge. who are we, quebecers? are we city people, or do we need to pace around the barn?

edit: i just said the same thing i said last time - i forgot that i'd replied!

it would have been better with one ambitious tower, perhaps the one near the stock exchange. a better developer may well have convinced a hotel chain that they wanted 30 storeys atop the present configuration of that one.

still, it's a decent chunk in an underused sector.