Essay about TD Centre: An Architectural Mini-Utopia in Downtown Toronto

The Ottawa Courthouse is the main provincial court found in the city of Ottawa. It is occupied and used by an average of 1,000 people daily. The building which is at 161 Elgin Street was opened in 1986. It is made up of offices, courtrooms, waiting areas, temporary holding cells, and a parking garage at the base of the building.

What is that strange orange brick building? Why should I care about that? That striking orange, brick building is the Guardian Building of downtown Detroit. When deciding to go to a historical site in the city, I was drawn in by the history of the place. I am relatively new to the city and when I heard about this place, I knew that’s where I wanted to go. When our group traveled together to the site, it became apparent why this building is not only important to Detroit, but to all cities. The Guardian Building was not only a great fixture of the past, but it is a leading example of the efforts to bring a city back to greatness.

Those high-rise buildings overshadow the Downtown and make the street look shady, in addition, When I walk in the streets of the Downtown and see the architecture of the buildings I feel stunned, also when I see the combination of historical towers and modern towers it feels like I’m stuck in the time.

Think about Detroit and what it is today, would you have thought that Detroit’s skyline was the greatest in the world for architectural style? Well, you may have to change your mind. The roaring twenties were a time of growth and great economic wealth for many places, especially the United States and Europe. With new technology anything could happen as some would say it. Automobiles were very important and started to grow in the eyes of manufacturers and consumers. Detroit was growing with industrial and commercial spirit, big in the automotive business, Detroit had many jobs and factories inside the city limits. The country was on the rise and nothing could knock it down, the Art Deco architecture style was at its peak during the 1920’s. People say not to judge a book by its cover, don’t judge Detroit by what it is now, open the book to see that the motor city has a great history and this building is a part of it.

Toronto in 1915, was undergoing many changes from the previous century and developing into a city with a future of becoming a global phenomenon. Toronto, is known for its buildings, culture and history. However, these buildings, culture, and history did not come from nowhere. These came from the actions of the predecessors who wanted to develop Toronto into a marvel that shows its history within the walls of several buildings. The buildings that I visited, showed the history that was presented within the novel. Although, some did change in their appearance, and others in their function. I was able to understand their importance in the past and the present. At the corner of King and Bay, was the Toronto Telegram building. However, today it now

From picture three we can see the variety of buildings this street has. In this picture, you can see the different colors of buildings. They’re not two buildings next to each other with the same color. Each building you pass by looks like a different street because of the different designs the architects put. For example, in picture three on the top of each building, you can the different designs the architects chose to put. You can take a closer look at picture five and see how the top part of the building is symmetrical because the five small columns the building has. In picture three you can also see how each building has a different type of window. On the top of each building of the street, you can see a different design. In contrast, the buildings at Writer Square are all very similar. They all have the same design and color. This makes the design simple and boring. This is how Larimer Square caught my attention and how Writer Square didn’t.

The Fuller “Flatiron” building was designed by Chicago’s prominent architecture firm Daniel H. Burnham and Company ¬– lead by Daniel H. Burnham. Located in the 22nd and 23rd street of Broadway, Fifth Avenue, New York, the building was originally built to serve as offices for a major Chicago contracting firm, the George A. Fuller Company, hence its initial name. As the building finished construction in 1902, the detailed beaux-arts style skyscraper is immortalised through its unique relationship to its urban context then and now, and memorable photography by Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz – making the Fuller “Flatiron” building a famous landmark in the intersecting streets of New York City to this very day.

Jacobs instead champions a combination of aesthetic and practical diversity in the city. Aesthetic differences can come from buildings constructed during different eras. Jacobs adds that having an organic mix of commercial buildings and apartments adds to a city’s diversity and beauty. To conclude her argument, Jacobs states that standard commercial establishments are mixed in with landmarks in functional cities and cites New York as an example. As a native New Yorker, many restaurants, bars and other commercial buildings are located in propinquity to landmarks such as Carnegie Hall and the Empire State Building. Jacobs believes that this combination advocates as the standard for urban planning.

Mies van der Rohe is one of the most prominent figures in modernist architectural history, the man who popularised some of the most influential phrases of the era, e.g. “less is more”, and strove to push his ideas and philosophies, not just on what he thought a building should be, but of what he thought architecture itself was. He changed the cityscape of America, showing the world a style that was simple and elegant, with such a controlled palette of expressions that shone through in its geometric beauty.

Many downtowns first emerged as a distinctive place due to elite residents with homes in the area, which served as meeting places for important business transactions. By the late 19th century downtowns had typically been laid out with designated business blocks (Ford 2003). The growth of the business block as an economic center and booming downtown forced out any competition that were not appropriate with “high rents, social pressure and architectural change” (Ford 2003, pp 45). This was the origin of the spatial structure and land use patterns that are associated with contemporary downtowns. The origin of the town structure is most commonly affiliated with European cities as models of spatial layout. Specialty business and retail districts that characterized American downtowns and what we now image a good downtown to be are directly linked to it European counterpart. The key characteristic that defer from the European model was the tendency for American cities to be street-oriented rather then place-oriented. This contributed to the more linear structure of the city, business pursued locations on the “main street” rather then near major plazas or religious buildings (Robertson 1997).

Today technology allows us to construct structures that we would never have been able to make in the past. Some of the creations are impressive based on what they accomplish but others are masterpieces in themselves. Man’s capability to build such tall buildings, as the skyscrapers we are familiar with covering our cities today, is a major expression of the advancements we have made as a culture. The power necessary to build such tall structures inspired competition between architects to see who could build the tallest one. One skyscraper that has inspired many and served as a model, for high rise buildings that were created after, is the Chrysler Building. The Chrysler Building serves as an identifying mark to anyone that

His first comprehensive city plan was La Ville Contemporaine (the Contemporary City) a project to house three million inhabitants designed in 1922. This was Le Corbusier’s first attempt to reconcile man, nature and machine (Fishman, 189). The city starts at the center with a transportation hub for busses, trains, cars and planes. Surrounding this hub there will be an organized cluster of 24 60-story skyscrapers. These glass and steel skyscrapers are cross-shaped. Each individual skyscraper is to be set within a large rectangular green space. The skyscrapers house the “brain” of the city. The city is beautifully geometric and symmetrical. Placing the skyscrapers in the city center reinforces the emphasis on capital as a means of creating a successful city. Because of the shape and mass of each skyscraper, they have more usable space than an entire neighborhood but also relieves density and congestion because of the organization (Frampton, 46).

Different architects have different styles because they are trying to get at different things. Architecture is not just about making something beautiful anymore, it is about trying to get across a set of ideas about how we inhabit space. Two of the most famous architects of the twentieth century, one from each side, the early part and the later part up until today each designed a museum with money donated by the Guggenheim foundation. One of these is in New York City, it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The other is in bilbao, Spain, and it was designed by Frank Geary. My purpose of this paper is to interrogate each of these buildings, glorious for different reasons, to show how each architect was expressing their own style.

At a total height of 1,092 square feet, the Tokyo Tower (東京タワー) is one of the two most significant skyline landmarks of Tokyo, Japan. Reminiscent but taller than the Eiffel Tower (by thirteen metres), it was built in 1958 after the Second World War, and by design was a telecommunications tower. For more than half a century, it symbolised the development and economic growth of the nation. In most contemporary societies, many people, tourists and citizens alike, look to these landmarks as emblems or representations of a city, even an entirety of a nation. Often colossal in height, these monuments enable us to ‘read’ cities with a distant and objectifying gaze. In the following pages, first, the strengths then weaknesses of reading a city panoramically

First of all, to start building a city an urban pattern has to be established, this will make the city look much more organized and well thought. A pattern can be chosen from a whole list of working patterns for a city. Establishing a grid is a common way of equally distributing the city. However, we want to keep in mind, that important buildings, such as businesses, and government buildings must be accessible to the public, but separated from the rest of the city. We have great examples of grids such as New York City, in New York, United States, or Mississauga City, in Toronto ,Canada. Although, when building from scratch it is not possible to leave aside what has already been built, a city indeed has to adapt to what is already existing, as well as to the new global economy, social and political trends, and new issues that arise in the new era, this also changes the structure and tradition of building and forming urban patterns. Using the existing patterns, combined with new ones, both patterns can collide and make new forms in city blocks. Results vary from city to city, but the essence is the same in all of them; old and new patterns coming together to create unplanned shapes, a new form of Urbanism, based on new and old patterns, aiming to satisfy the needs of the modern world. A great example is New York