Toronto Life Square called "crime against urbanity"

This is probably not what St. Joseph Media had in mind when it shelled out for the rights to name the building at the corner of Yonge and Dundas Toronto Life Square after its flagship magazine.

Toronto Star architecture writer Christopher Hume wrote that the developer, PenEquity "has committed not just an offence against good taste, but a crime against urbanity."

While applauding the move of CITY-TV to another site on Dundas Square, Hume goes on:

As for Toronto Life Square, the best hope is that much of the unrelieved grey of its surfaces will eventually be hidden beneath the advertising that will provide whatever identity it has. Indeed, the building might best be understood as an armature for video screens, billboards and the like.

There's no shame in background buildings – that's what most urban structures are – but they need to be well designed, decently appointed and, above all, part of the larger whole. At Yonge and Dundas, they also need to define the square, which is, after all, an open space surrounded by buildings.

Unfortunately, Toronto Life Square (whose original name, Metropolis, made a lot more sense), looms over the square ominously, too big for the corner and barely contained within its site.

The industrial references – exterior fans and exposed air ducts – seem singularly inappropriate in this context. If the designers were going for a Pompidou Centre-like mechanical aesthetic, which could have been fun, they failed. Perhaps because of the grey exterior, which some might see as urban camouflage, and the easy awkwardness of its utilitarianism, the building takes on a strangely military quality. It could be a post-apocalyptic battlefield headquarters, or something built for the permanent warfare envisioned by Orwell in 1984.

[UPDATE] A discussion/debate on the Sounds Like Canada radio program on CBC on Tuesday contrasted the views of Hume (pretty much what he is saying above and in his article) and Toronto Councillor Kyle Rae, who has for 5 years championed the renovation of Yonge-Dundas Square. Rae defended the use of the building on the northeast corner as an armature for giant advertising screens, as being exactly what they envisioned. We're not sure he helped his case by comparing it to "a fridge, with fridge magnets on it" or "Bladerunner". (It was interesting that while defending the building and saying Hume should relax and wait until it is covered with ad screens, he said the city was dismayed that the building on one corner was confusingly named Toronto Life Square in an apparent effort to rebrand the entire square. Rae says the city remonstrated with St. Joseph that the building was not the square, but to no effect.)