Hume: Lighting the way on Bay
February 2, 2012
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Christopher Hume
STAR COLUMNIST
Bay St. has always been a great place to work; in recent years, it has also become a place to live. Though largely corporate south of Dundas St., north of that it is largely residential. Condo towers now line Bay north to Bloor St. and even beyond. But after decades of being one thing then another — institutional, commercial, corporate, domestic — Bay is an architectural and planning mish-mash. Though there are impressive stretches in the downtown section, it falls apart quickly. As much as any street in Toronto, Bay illustrates the sort of planning confusion that has kept the city from achieving greatness.
Rather than coming up with an approach and sticking with it, official Toronto has pretty much allowed developers to do what they want. Or so it seems. It’s not the mixed use that bothers; it’s the built formlessness that irks. There are some fine buildings on Bay, but not enough to compensate for the lack of appropriateness and the discordant scale of things.
Torontonians think of Bay right up there with the city’s most important thoroughfares, but a visitor coming here for the first time would never grasp that. To the initiated eye, it’s a jumble of intentions and results. Nothing adds up; the sum is not greater than its parts. Given the number of poorly designed buildings along Bay, and the indifferent public transit service, it’s amazing Bay has managed to retain any cache at all.
chume@thestar.ca
Condo Critic
The Lumiere, 770 Bay St.: On any stage, this building would stand out; on Bay St., it steals the show. That’s not saying a whole lot, but even the Peter Dickinson building directly north of it looks unresolved by comparison. With its huge and elegant podium — glass walls outlined in black cladding — Lumiere presents something a little more interesting than the usual Bay St. fare.
This podium anchors a glass tower, relatively tall and thin, that reaches too high to be a presence on Bay. Because it eschews the contemporary model of retail at grade, Lumiere looks as much like a hotel as a condo. In any case, it has strong firm with the street; also nice to see that the loading docks have been put elsewhere, which leaves the front facade uncluttered and free to do what it needs to do.
Grade: B+