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What is it about the Opera House that makes people to sensitive and eager to defend it to the point of insulting others. Some people don't like the exterior... accept it and move on.
 
Yet after Diamond's intentions are given their due, there still remains the question of how well the Four Seasons Centre fulfills its mission as "continuity" within the network of downtown hardware. Looking at the building with this question in mind, one finds disconnects more obvious than the hoped-for linkages. The building shows a notably rude, vacuous side to Richmond Street West and, across it, to the entrance of the Hilton Hotel. A proposed $500,000 glass walkway along Richmond had to be scrapped for budgetary reasons--though it's unlikely that this feature would have significantly improved the unattractive south façade of the project. The rear end of the building backing York Street is similarly blank--though asking more of the rear is perhaps inappropriate: the trucks have got to dock somewhere. I suppose it could be argued--but I'm not inclined to do so--that these inert façades constitute a kind of "continuity" with what's around them: the battalion of stodgy, blunt office buildings that stomp up University Avenue, for example.

The most objectionable ground-level façade of the Centre, however, rises on Queen Street West. This north side is directly across from Osgoode Hall's dignified Victorian court buildings (1829-1973) and its fine greensward behind William G. Storm's 1866 iron gates and fence. The address, at a sensitive place on one of Toronto's most historic and important avenues, demanded better of the Four Seasons than some backlit signage advertising Centre events and a coffee shop--the intended use of the stingy little retail space closer to the box office. A second retail outlet, farther east along the block, is similarly mean. No matter what goes into it, the vibrancy of the street will not be enhanced.

Nor does the University Avenue façade, on which Diamond and all friendly commentators rest much of the case for the building, offer the connection to the city we could have hoped for. The small, unassuming and serviceable entry to the City Room (as the lobby will be known until a naming sponsor is found) is off a small, unassuming plaza at the corner of Queen Street and University Avenue, leaving the dramatic cascade of low-iron (hence low-colour) glass an unpunctuated wall alongside the sidewalk. On nights when a performance is taking place in the hall, this façade will be animated by patrons gathering in the building-high lobby and moving along the suspended gala staircase. Light will flood from the City Room onto the street, transforming the lobby into the "lantern" Diamond wants it to be. But for those witnessing this spectacle from the avenue, this activity will probably seem to be something from a foreign, parallel world, like the movement of exotic fish in a glorious tank: lively and colourful, surely, but sealed off from the ordinary life of the street and the city. This is not, by the way, a damning argument against Diamond's University Avenue façade. In a city so well supplied with coffee shops and restaurants, public libraries and parks and other sociable places, we can surely afford some institutions that look as frankly elitist as the art they showcase.
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Great take on the exterior. I agree with JBH's analysis - he's spot on.
 
There is plenty of spectacle at the opera house: on stage; floating in the air of the Hall as beautifully modulated sounds that are as clear as a bell reach our ears; in a City Room full of people, people-watching and looking out across the panorama of University Avenue; outside, looking into the building when it glows with life and activity.

Is there anything spectacular about trucks backing into a loading dock, or people sitting at desks back-of-house? Is it the job of architecture to make these mundane tasks seem mock-spectacular?
 
It's not Diamond that doesn't get it - it's you. There is lots of room for spectacle. It's inside, where the opera and the ballet and the audience are. There's nothing wrong with a building not outshinging the purpose for which it was built. Sometimes the public has to get off its collective ass and go to the spectacle, rather than wailing and bemoning the fact that they have been deprived of the bowl of ornament to which they mistakenly feel they are entitled.
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Oh, get off your high horse. Public money went into the Four Seasons Centre. The architect has just as much responsibility to the general public as to opera-goers. Even if there were no public money going into it, the public would still have a say in how the building interacts with its surroundings, as well it should. Just like any other building.

If you think the exterior looks fine, then great. But the opinions of those of us who don't go to the opera are every bit as valid as yours.
 
If the spectacle on the inside is all that really matters then why did any public money go into this at all?

We could've just built a concrete brick box with great accousitics for much less.
 
Though I've never been one to deem 4SC as much of an architectural catastrophe as some around here might, I don't disagree with JBM about the design shortcomings.

But for the umpteenthillionth time, regardless of the joint's design merits or demerits, if there's any way *not* to address critics of its design, it's with AP's "well, you mere barbaric peons don't understand, nya nya" approach. It's just asking for this to happen to AP + BB someday...
Mussolini1.jpg
 
UT membership: free
Tickets to Wagner at 4SC: $200.00
Adma's photo 3 posts ago: priceless
 
Hey, fight fire with fire...
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So you would like to see them dead? Why? Because they have an opinion that does not mesh with your own?



Suppose some flashy building was put up and was roundly hated because it was considered too flashy? Suppose a fine structure was put up, but with lousy accoustics? You can just hear the chorus of how public money was wasted.

I don't see anything wrong with pointing out that the best was saved for inside.
 
I don't see anything wrong with pointing out that the best was saved for inside.
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I don't think the issue is what's being pointed out, but rather how it's being pointed out.
 
The best of contemporary design is on display everywhere with this building - inside and out.

The onus ( or in adma's case, anus ) is on those who disagree, to show us what a better designed loading dock than the one on York Street is supposed to look like and what a better back-of-house for Richmond Street is supposed to look like. Which, so far none, have.
 
^ You've conveniently left out the Queen St. side, the one that "matters" because it is an "important" avenue...
 
The best of contemporary design is on display everywhere with this building - inside and out.
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I'm not sure about that.

The onus ( or in adma's case, anus ) is on those who disagree, to show us what a better designed loading dock than the one on York Street is supposed to look like and what a better back-of-house for Richmond Street is supposed to look like. Which, so far none, have.
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I don't think it's the loading dock people have the most issue with - it's the Richmond and Queen St. Facades. I've never had much of an issue with the loading area, though the chain link fence that was there isn't too attractive (I haven't been back there for a while, so I'm not sure if that's gone).

I would like to put the onus on you in this instance and ask why you feel the Richmond and Queen Street facades were the best possible solutions.
 
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