[adma]

What a wasted opportunity, for $107 M they could have built the Taj Mahal. Hoping they would go vertical and make a real impact on the landscape.

Actually, given the location, it's probably *fortunate* it isn't a Taj Mahal. All things considered, it's probably better that Vaughan practice this kind of restraint rather than let its parvenu vulgarity all hang out.

And rather than FLW, the roots seem more Saarinen-esque, tower and all...

 

[adma]

Also, be careful at sneering at MCH's "incredibly dated PoMo 80s megalomania". Given the particular case in point, that's a bit like a postwar modernist knocking Old City Hall's "incredibly dated Victorian 1890s megalomania".

Now, if one wants to knock city halls in the supposed MCH spirit, knock Brampton's--more genuinely "urban", perhaps (thanks in part to location), but oh so feeble...

 

[scarberiankhatru]

www.city.vaughan.on.ca/va...0430_5.pdf

Check out the locational study from 2002 - as part of the study, PricewaterhouseCoopers visited other civic centre sites, including Etobicoke, Scarborough, Whitby, North York, Oakville, Mississauga, and West Palm Beach...I wonder which employee selflessly volunteered to research the last locale?

 

[ahrvojic]

^
One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn't belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?

 

[simply Dan]

be careful at sneering at MCH's "incredibly dated PoMo 80s megalomania".

I know, I know.... I've gotten into trouble on here for criticizing Mississauga City Hall before... I realize it is a PoMo "masterpiece" or whatever - I just can't stand that form. The whole Gianni Versace tits-out decadence was never really a convincing style - if anything it exudes a lack of confidence as opposed to great wealth and power. Royal Albert Hall is one thing, Trump Taj Mahal is another. If the 80s/90s was an era of pretend and fake, this decade is turning out to be one of true refinement and subtle elegance ...not crassness and kitsch. Of course, there is always Las Vegas...

 

[Tuscani01]

Vaughan seems lost and confused.

We have a project which belongs in the city centre at Major Mac, and then we have 2 city centres. Rutherford and Jane, and Highway 7 and Jane are both called "City Centre". I guess Vaughan can look forward to a new city hall being built soon after that one opens?

 

[p5archit]

...to bad the finance minister (and the Dick Cheney to McGuinty) lives there and represents the area.

...not quite, but close Richmond Hill- he used to live in Maple, but that was years ago-land however is another thing..

Still, this project is going to be built in the middle of nowhere, so it honestly it doesn't matter to me what kind of architecture they get..PoMo or boxo..

p5

 

[adma]

If the 80s/90s was an era of pretend and fake, this decade is turning out to be one of true refinement and subtle elegance ...not crassness and kitsch.

However, let me change a little of that around...

"If the c19 was an era of pretend and fake, this century is turning out to be one of true refinement and subtle elegance ...not crassness and kitsch."

Presto, you got Modernist dogma. Not that Modernism is bad or anything; I'm pointing more to what such judgment naively, clumsily, and in some cases destructively blanket-eliminated.

Okay, so as you're suggesting thru the RAH vs Trump Taj Mahal comparison, we might be dealing with something more "degraded" now. I'm not disputing that fact. However, taking the bigger-picture view, to use the Trump/Versace alibi to condemn MCH is as clumsily insensitive as using the Robert Taylor Houses alibi to condemn the Weissenhof Siedlung.

The 80s, and 80s PoMo, isn't all about simple Dallas/Dynasty et al--it's a lot more interesting, much as the 50s was a lot more interesting that its June-Cleaver-hating critics would have wished. All I'm arguing for is to take a more knowing, comprehensive, and even sensitive (yes, sometimes sensitive-to-insensitivities) view of our collective past, and yes, that includes the 80s. Heck, that "comprehensive view of the past" approach is itself archetypally "PoMo 80s", in the *best* (i.e. smartest, and an advance on earlier blinkered approaches) way.

For that matter, your "true refinement and subtle elegance" characterization of the here and now is something that, in its turn, sells the here and now short. That is, sure you can be a design purist, but...stop being such an unyielding design purist. It's as depressing as your narrowly TrumpVegas characterization of the 80s. Besides, too much of said refinement and elegance makes me wanna reach for my Peaches

who subverts it all by, well, embracing her (and our) inner 80s...

 

[dashingdan]

If Vaughan IS building this in the middle of nowhere as some have criticized, then the comparison to Mississauga City Hall is apt. Square One was built on farmland. Much of the land around it is still undeveloped, although that is changing quickly. That doesn't change the fact that our city hall is on former farmland, and that we made the "mistake" of building our downtown there, when Port Credit would have been more of a natural choice (although farther from Streetsville, Malton and Meadowvale).

 

[roch5220]

Is it me, or is it awfully short. I mean, if they are going to develop around it, seems like a future waste of land.

 

[interchange42]

Yes, it's short, but it's also being built in the heart of Maple, which is a former village, and which is made up of low rise homes. In that context KPMB's plan makes a lot of sense.

Too bad it's in the wrong place in the context of the rest of Vaughan' plans however. Sorry to say I don't expect any better from Vaughan though...

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[ahrvojic]

We have a project which belongs in the city centre at Major Mac, and then we have 2 city centres. Rutherford and Jane, and Highway 7 and Jane are both called "City Centre". I guess Vaughan can look forward to a new city hall being built soon after that one opens?

A decentralized centre... how postmodern!

 

[adma]

Vancouver's 1930s City Hall is nowhere near the, er, "city centre"

 

[Transportfan]

Yes, it's short, but it's also being built in the heart of Maple, which is a former village, and which is made up of low rise homes. In that context KPMB's plan makes a lot of sense.

I think that's Vaughan's biggest problem. They put too much emphasis on their villages and not enough on the city as a whole. They very wrongly thought it was appropriate to put the new City Hall in the geographic core of the municipality (Maple) and didn't think of implications of placing it in a location with NO potential for the surrounding development.

 

[interchange42]

Look - a webcam!

Despite this being a KPMB project, it's been quite a long time that we've been ignoring this project. Shows just how much attention we pay to Vaughan I suppose...

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