Can Toronto Use a Design Like Doninpark?
By Penny on Aug 27, 2014
Combining urban and suburban architecture, Doninpark is an eight-storey project located in Vienna, Austria that has combined the two opposing lifestyles into one incredible building.
Developed behind the Kragraner Platz subway stop as a mixed-use office, retail and residential building, the designers planned to have the east side as a dense, city-like area with extensive infrastructure, contrasting the west side, which is more suburban with several single-family and multi-family homes and sporting area.
© Jasmin Schuller
Spanning across 100,000 to 300,000 square feet, if the scale of this building alone doesn’t impress you, the “radical pragmatism” in the design will. Explained to be the founding idea behind the design, radical pragmatism means “doing exactly what one is allowed to do,” in a sense it is as though the building was thus created by the city itself. Another interesting feature is that the window openings and projecting alcoves are sporadically spread across the facade of the building in a way that makes it impossible to view the building from any point and understand the true dimensions of it.
© Jasmin Schuller
Vienna’s masterplan originally called for a building this size and LOVE architecture and urbanism maximized these limitations by producing such an interesting design that features ground floor shopping, second floor restaurants and offices and residential above. With so much emphasis placed on the location being the primary source of creative development for the building, suggesting that this building could only emerge here because it was designed around the city, do you think a building like this would work on the urban/suburban borders in Toronto?
© Jasmin Schuller
Perhaps what Toronto developers could take away from the design is its intricately placed windows that create an optical illusion, contributing dramatically to the aesthetic. Many critics of Toronto will suggest that every building looks the same, we’ve asked before if you think Toronto’s skyline could use a splash of colour, but what if we changed the shapes, sizes and purposes of our buildings? This could be an effective way to encourage families to live in the city. Tell us what you think!
Feature image © Jasmin Schuller. All images via archdaily.com
