CONDO CRITIC: When the car becomes king, we all lose

North of Eglinton, west of the DVP, is one of those areas of Toronto where the development industry seems to have been given free rein.

The results aren't pretty; to drive through these neighbourhoods is to encounter a confused landscape where nothing adds up, where nothing is connected. It's hard not to feel depressed by the sheer awfulness of it all.

Residents, of course, would tell you adamantly that there's nowhere else they'd rather live. Just as well. Still, it will be interesting to hear what they have to say a few decades from now when energy costs have gone – literally in this case – through the roof.

The fact is that these residential precincts, each one divided by urban highways that eat pedestrians alive, will become obsolete sooner than the 19th-century buildings that preceded them. Modernity, with its back lots and cul-de-sacs, has never seemed as out-of-date as it does here. This is what happens when cities are designed for cars, not people.

Condo Critic

THE SAVOY, 16 DALLIMORE CIRCLE: Looking like the set of a movie set in some not-too-distant dystopian future, this residential slab sits in a weird and monolithic mass of townhouses.

Some are more recent than others, but the effect is one of absolute sterility and anonymity. By the time you reach the end of Green Belt Dr. – the very name adds irony to insult – and get to Dallimore Circle, you have left the city far behind and entered a world as detached as it can be and still remain accessible.

The Savoy – which marketing genius came up with that one? – offers a modern-day take on the '70s slab. Though it stands only eight storeys tall, it manages to loom over the neighbourhood like some oversized warehouse. The building itself is exactly what you'd expect to find in this sort of semiurban context – a series of undifferentiated façades made up of balconies and vertical bays, precast concrete and glass.

Architecturally, there's virtually nothing to talk about. The structure is as devoid of interest as a building can be; perhaps this doesn't matter. Ask a developer, and undoubtedly they will insist the biggest factor a condo can have going for it is price – the lower the better. And yet, it is precisely this sort of project that calls out for architecture. It's one thing to be ordinary, another to look ordinary. This isn't to say the Savoy should resemble, well, the Savoy, but it might have been nice if the designers had tried a little harder to make their work look less generic.

And although one can't hold the sins of the nearby townhouses against the condo, they sure don't help the cause. It would be hard to come up with a more bizarre looking scheme in the city. Even the small park between them and the Savoy manages to feel strangely menacing.

Grade: C

WHAT DO YOU THINK? Email condocritic@thestar.ca.

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