1. Very optimistic for a rental building on the 900-blk of Pandora
2. Is this really the image you want to project to Council?
Might be related to Our Place next door.
![]() | UNDER CONSTRUCTION 975-983 Pandora Avenue Uses: rental, commercial Address: 979-983 Pandora Avenue Municipality: Victoria Region: Downtown Victoria Storeys: 15 |
Posted 20 December 2018 - 12:15 PM
1. Very optimistic for a rental building on the 900-blk of Pandora
2. Is this really the image you want to project to Council?
Might be related to Our Place next door.
Posted 20 December 2018 - 12:17 PM
I like it's simple blocky massing. It's mass-housing.
Posted 20 December 2018 - 12:24 PM
I like it's simple blocky massing. It's mass-housing.
Would have been cutting edge in 1963.
Posted 20 December 2018 - 01:42 PM
As some wise commentator on the interwebs once observed, developers will propose this kind of stuff in Victoria because they can get away with it.
Call me a grinch if you like, but how many times are we supposed to listen to this same tune without any variation?
1) Distinguished lower levels? (yes, but barely so)
2) Distinguished and preferably set back uppermost levels? (nope, bland repetition and yet another perfectly flat top)
3) Interesting proportions? (nope, yet another slab)
4) Interesting materials and/or colours? (nope)
5) Ample glass coverage? (nope)
In the year 2018, proposing to repeat the same basic form and floorplate from the base all the way up to the flat top should get you laughed out of the room. Seriously, does nobody at the city actually care about any of these considerations? How many of these cookie-cutter punched-window jobs do we think downtown Victoria can absorb? This would be what, number four of this same basic design in the past few years?
Posted 20 December 2018 - 01:47 PM
As some wise commentator on the interwebs once observed, developers will propose this kind of stuff in Victoria because they can get away with it.
Call me a grinch if you like, but how many times are we supposed to listen to this same tune without any variation?
1) Distinguished lower levels? (yes, but barely so)
2) Distinguished and preferably set back uppermost levels? (nope, bland repetition and yet another perfectly flat top)
3) Interesting proportions? (nope, yet another slab)
4) Interesting materials and/or colours? (nope)
5) Ample glass coverage? (nope)
In the year 2018, proposing to repeat the same basic form and floorplate from the base all the way up to the flat top should get you laughed out of the room. Seriously, does nobody at the city actually care about any of these considerations? How many of these cookie-cutter punched-window jobs do we think downtown Victoria can absorb? This would be what, number four of this same basic design in the past few years?
That is a long way to say we are a small city and we are not Vancouver. This is normal fare for a city like ours
Posted 20 December 2018 - 01:49 PM
...This is normal fare for a city like ours
But why does a small city deserve bland architecture?
Posted 20 December 2018 - 02:10 PM
This is normal fare for a city like ours.
Okay, so give me one example of a city like Victoria (similar size, on the west coast or at least in the west, expensive real estate and rents, tourism-focused) that is putting up multiple iterations of rental towers of the same basic design in its downtown core in the 2010s.
Posted 20 December 2018 - 02:14 PM
Crikey, the last thing that anyone should want along Pandora is bland, dark, heavy, (potentially) depressing architecture. This building should be as bright and light as possible. Do I really need to elaborate on that?
Edited by aastra, 20 December 2018 - 02:14 PM.
Posted 20 December 2018 - 02:15 PM
Posted 20 December 2018 - 02:33 PM
Like I say, developers should have to give reasons why anybody would bother to take a picture of the building that they're proposing.
And rental projects shouldn't be getting a free pass in that regard just because they're rentals. Give me a break. I'm a pro-development fanboy but even I can see how having multiple instances of the same basic rental tower could backfire mightily. It's not the 1960s anymore. Repeating the same basic bland & blocky design shouldn't be acceptable. It wasn't acceptable for decades between then and now. So why are we going back to the old ways? Because there's a rental crisis? There never wasn't one. Because people have short memories? Short memory is now an urban planning principle in Victoria?
Even if we think downtown Victoria is so large that a few duplications of the same basic design would be irrelevant, I still have to ask:
a) why should anybody want duplications of the same basic design, and
b) how many duplications would be too many?
Posted 20 December 2018 - 02:35 PM
Yep... change the exterior a bit but use the same floorplans, over and over again.
I understand the motivations on the developer's part, but I'm saying throw us a bone and tweak it a bit. Distinguish the top two levels. Use a different cladding and a different colour scheme.
Make it not quite so frickin' obvious, in other words.
Edited by aastra, 20 December 2018 - 02:37 PM.
Posted 20 December 2018 - 02:36 PM
....And rental projects shouldn't be getting a free pass in that regard just because they're rentals...I can see how having multiple instances of the same basic rental tower could backfire mightily. It's not the 1960s anymore. Repeating the same basic bland & blocky design shouldn't be acceptable...
Posted 20 December 2018 - 02:38 PM
Give a developer all the height and density they want, and don't ask how every single project "addresses housing affordability" and you'll get some unique projects.
Posted 20 December 2018 - 02:41 PM
I'd say the rental project at Pandora and Cook had the right idea re: going with a more distinctive styling. I'm honestly not crazy about the final result, but nevertheless I appreciate it for being unique.
Posted 20 December 2018 - 02:46 PM
I'm a pro-development fanboy but even I can see how having multiple instances of the same basic rental tower could backfire mightily.
On this very board we've criticized the Bayview buildings for their sameness, lest we forget.
Posted 21 December 2018 - 10:57 PM
Hudson is a premium product, I can't imagine this project renting at the same rates. Then again, even Azzurro is renting at $1,400 for a 1BR. Difficult to forecast the rental market in 3-5 years, especially with the number of rental projects going up right now.
Posted 23 December 2018 - 09:16 AM
I looks like a sheared-off tower resurrected from some slightly pomo tower around Metrotown from 2001...c'mon Victoria, you can do much better..its dewar, boring and graceless
Posted 23 December 2018 - 10:06 AM
The thing is, if built, it would be the only new tower this bland. I can't think of another building built downtown in recent years that could beat it.
Posted 23 December 2018 - 04:48 PM
Well on that first, that was built a long time ago. And I still kind of like View Towers, it is one building downtown. I find Tara Place much worse. If we keep building along the lines of the diversity we have been for the last ten years I think that Victoria can have one building like View Towers. In twenty years people won't even know the name of the building whereas twenty years ago it was seen as the one stop ghetto for the city.
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