Toronto Has 'A Lot Of Building But Not Much Architecture'

Award-winning architect Brigitte Shim says Toronto’s condo and office tower builders could step up and contribute to the public realm by taking more care when designing their projects.

In 1954, architect Phyllis Lambert wrote a letter to her father Sam Bronfman, who was about to embark on a major commercial building development in Montreal. As reported by Marian Scott in the Montreal Gazette, Lambert told her father that he could build “another vaguely modernized skyscraper office building like so many others” or “a building which expresses the best of the society in which you live, and at the same time your hopes for the betterment of society.”

Lambert’s quote was front and centre recently at the Urban Land Institute (URL) Toronto Symposium, where a panel discussion evolved into a critique of Toronto’s tall buildings.

One of the fastest growing cities in North America, Toronto already ranks fourth on the world list of cities with the <a href=https://www.skyscrapercenter.com/cities?list=structures TARGET=_New>most tall buildings</a>. At the beginning of 2017, there were 1,411 new residential projects in the pipeline, representing 311,350 residential units, as well as 1,313 non-commercial projects. Every year about 10,000 new residents are moving into the city’s downtown core.

”Toronto is seeing a lot of building,” architect Brigitte Shim told the ULI gathering, “but not a lot of architecture.”

Shim is a principal at Shim-Sutcliffe Architects in Toronto and a professor at the University of Toronto John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design. Along with partner Howard Sutcliffe, she has received 14 Governor General Awards for Architecture and many other accolades, including the Order of Canada.

Shim said Toronto has “really great planning that sets the table, lays the foundation” for downtown projects. “But to get great architecture you need really great clients. Our development community has done good and competent work, but if they were to really step up, it would make a huge difference to the quality of architecture. We have okay buildings that follow general rules but we could do better.”

As part of the development approval process, Toronto has a Design Review Panel of volunteer design professionals including architects, landscape architects, urban designers and engineers. The panel’s mandate is “to improve people’s quality of life by promoting design excellence within the public realm, including the pursuit of high quality architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and environmental sustainability.”

Panel vice-chair Michael Leckman, principal with Diamond Schmitt Architects, told the ULI gathering that most of the Design Review Panel’s time is spent discussing urban design rather than architecture.

”The projects that come before us are so complex, with so many urban issues to resolve in the 25 or 30 minutes we have to talk about it,” that there’s little time to talk about the architecture, he said.

”Truthfully, in the 10 years I have been on the Design Review Panel, there has been a handful, maybe 10 projects we have seen where we can say, ‘That’s inspiring.’ It is a very challenging environment to provide design excellence in.”

Jennifer Keesmaat, Toronto’s chief planner and executive director said, “We are very much a developer-driven city. It’s very different from other cities where you have a much stronger regulatory framework, where the standards are set by the city and there’s a requirement to build to those standards. We have a negotiated process. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It’s a very complex city and we are able to engage in complex negotiations on really specific projects in a short period of time, which is why the city is growing so fast.”

”When design review is working well, it’s not about telling the architect this colour is better than this, or this opening is better…it’s more about how well (the project) is addressing the urban context, how well it understands the neighbourhood it’s situated it,” said Shim.

She says where the process “gets sticky…is when they are not very good architects. Then you have to get prescriptive, which is exactly what you don’t want to do.”

Keesmaat said building a culture of design excellence starts with the residents of the city. “If you had consumers who weren’t willing to accept crap — who had more sophistication about what they were demanding in their buildings — it would really transform the industry.”

She also pointed blame at the architects. “They come in with bad plans and blame their clients,” she said. The industry needs to “stiffen its spine” and recognize that it has an obligation to push back about what they are willing to produce, she said.

”Education is really key,” said Shim. “In Chicago every cab driver has an opinion about every building in the city. They can tell you what they like and don’t like.”

Keesmaat said that despite the criticism, Toronto is recognized around the world for the way it has integrated tall buildings into the fabric of the city. “We tend to underestimate how well we have absorbed growth while preserving the character of our areas,” she said.

Heritage conversation regulations and secondary plans for specific neighbourhoods are tools the city can use to negotiate better projects with developers, said Keesmaat.