75 replies to this topic

[Nparker]

Too cool. Thanks Holden West.

[Holden West]

I'm guessing the Medical Lake Water was from Swan Lake? :p

[D.L.]

work is now well underway in gutting the structure

[G-Man]

This now has the new floor added and there is only one unit left. This will be a great little addition.

[VicHockeyFan]

Today:

[Baro]

Tiny windows and hardi-plank siding, top notch materials for old town.

[VicHockeyFan]

Tiny windows and hardi-plank siding, top notch materials for old town.

Does seem odd to me, those small windows when they will always have a view that direction. The red is steel siding, BTW.

[Bob Fugger]

Does seem odd to me, those small windows when they will always have a view that direction. The red is steel siding, BTW.

It kinda looks like somebody plunked an ATCO trailer on top of that building and then tried to paint it so no one would notice that's what they did. Yuck!

[Rob Randall]

I'll wait for the finished product but my gut told me a modern glassy penthouse would have been compatible with the old building. But there was so much concern from City Hall that the extension be as "invisible" and non-threatening as possible resulted in this treatment.

By making the windows so small it ends up looking like a part of the infrastructure, like the elevator housing penthouse or storage rooms.

[VicHockeyFan]

I'll wait for the finished product but my gut told me a modern glassy penthouse would have been compatible with the old building. But there was so much concern from City Hall that the extension be as "invisible" and non-threatening as possible resulted in this treatment.

By making the windows so small it ends up looking like a part of the infrastructure, like the elevator housing penthouse or storage rooms.

I suppose the purchasers can now apply to knock the wall down somewhat and install big windows. Approval could arrive by 2013.

[aastra]

But there was so much concern from City Hall that the extension be as "invisible" and non-threatening as possible resulted in this treatment.

It's absolute crap. They (the city's people) aren't preserving the Old Town. They're trying to change it into something it isn't and never was.

Just look at the sheer amount of glass covering these facades. Didn't the people back then know that buildings in the Old Town were supposed to have tiny windows?

[aastra]

It's as if we're only considering what the old buildings eventually became (upper floors boarded up or lopped off altogether) rather than what they were designed to be.

Back in the day they put as much glass on their buildings as their architectural technology enabled them to put.

[Rob Randall]

I think it's safe to say the size of old windows was limited by the technology of the day--the difficulty in making plate glass and the inefficiency of masonry construction techniques.

A big sheet of commercial window glass can cost $1000 or more. Imagine how much it was back in the Victorian era before mass-production when window glass was hand-made.

[Baro]

And don't forget they didn't have nice laminated / tempered glass like we have today. Those really old windows were pretty fragile. A good up to code storefront window these days can take a baseball bat.

Glass is subtle, glass is TRANSPARENT. I don't see anything more subtle to tastefully accent an old building. This looks cheap and really stands out. Something glassy would have blended in nice. It's glass, it's see-through!

[aastra]

Glass is subtle, glass is TRANSPARENT...

That's a good way of putting it. This addition isn't subtle, is it? It's as if it's in competition with the building below it.




The other nice thing about windows is that they reflect their surroundings. Look at the reflections in the picture below. If you like the Old Town then you should like reflections of the Old Town's buildings, right?

[Holden West]

^I've warned you several times about using empirical data to make City Hall look bad. The hard working people on staff and in committees have a tough enough time as it is without you waltzing in with your well-researched examples and thoughtful essays.

[LJ]

I am not sure if I have ever commented negatively on a project before, but that looks absolutely terrible. I thought when I first saw it is was a temporary shelter (Atco trailer) for the reno project. It doesn't fit in with anything else there, it might look at home in a Rock Bay industrial site.

[baconnbits]

that looks awful.
I would prefer, rather than requiring a developer to cheaply replicate a heritage brick facade with what looks like plastic siding, they strive for something more interesting and dynamic. throw something more modern to jutt out of the structure and provide a contrast. something that doesn't attempt to blend in, and fail.

[piltdownman]

Shockingly bad

[VicHockeyFan]

I'll go downtown this afternoon and see if I can get some better shots from a better, maybe higher angle.

Don't wait up for me.