The city's planning department, working with Urban Strategies and Hariri Pontarini architects, have released a
Tall Buildings Study that puts forward comprehensive recommendations for how tall buildings should be built in the downtown core.
It should please anyone worried about unrestricted growth in this booming building economy, though people hoping for more building like
Alsop's OCAD classroom block will probably be less enthusiastic.
The study concerns itself with what it calls downtown, from Front to Dupont, and Bathurst to the Don Valley. It calls for tall buildings to be restricted to areas it calls High Streets, main commercial thoroughfares, and dictates how these buildings should be designed and spaced.
According to Robert Freedman, the city's director of urban design, the study is aimed at making sure that as downtown builds taller, that the streets remain vibrant."
"We like to think of tall buildings as having a base, a middle and a top," he says, "and within the urban context of downtown, the base should relate very appropriately to the street. Much of the document is about the context that you see adjacent to the street and that really contributes to the street life."
The study includes stipulations that every tall building be designed with a podium that's at least 3 storeys tall, and designed with what the study refers to as "a high degree of permeability" through the inclusion of transparent doors and windows. "At least 60% of the frontage on High Streets between 0.5 metres and 3 metres in height must be glazed and transparent," it stipulates.
The study recommends 17 such regulations.
The city is taking the Tall Buildings Study to the public of wards 20, 27 and 28 for discussion this spring.
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Robert Freedman
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