New Guidelines aren’t Such a Tall Order
By Sam R on May 28, 2013
The City of Toronto has adopted updated city-wide Tall Buildings Design Guidelines, and with Tee-Dot growing ever upwards, it’s time, even though the last guidelines were brought in a mere seven years ago. The new guidelines update and replace the 2006 Design Criteria for the Review of Tall Building Proposals, as well as consolidate and “substantially replace” Downtown Tall Buildings Vision and Performance Standards Design Guidelines (2012). (Area-specific aspects of the Downtown Guidelines remain in a consolidated Downtown Tall Buildings: Vision and Supplementary Design Guidelines. One wonder how much meeting time is devoted to the conception and approval of the titles alone.)
According to the city, these guidelines focus on “how the design of new tall buildings should be evaluated and carried out to ensure that tall buildings fit within their existing and/or planned context and limit local impacts. (They) do not address where tall buildings should be located or how tall they should be on a specific site. Instead, when it is determined that a tall building is supportable and represents ‘good planning,’ the Guidelines will then apply to inform the site and building design.”
Preservation of views, honouring neighbourhood context, and the pedestrian experience are among the most noteworthy tweaks, along with a suggestion that balconies have at least a metre and a half of space and a rectangular shape.
The general content is similar to existing planning documents, but with more specific language and clearer graphics, as a result of lessons learned in the years since the last guidelines appeared, as well as feedback from developers and residents.
Under the new guidelines base buildings (which in condo parlance means podiums) should be in line with the consistent building heights of the neighbourhood; if there is no consistency, the base should be 80% as tall as the adjacent street, giving the opposite side of the street at least five hours of sunlight in spring and fall. A new cap of 24 m (seven storeys) for mixed use buidings is there for wider streets. The narrow tower/broad base equation seems to have become the ideal condo design model over the last few years, partly because narrow towers cast narrow shadows — the evolved model fits the new guidelines well.
An new emphasis on heritage includes “heritage view corridors,” such as Queen’s Park and city hall, “to protect some of the key iconic views in the city, to try to make sure that new development doesn’t interfere with those view corridors,” said Councillor Peter Milczyn (Etobicoke-Lakeshore), who chairs the planning and growth management committee. The new guidelines say that when a tall building is next to a smaller heritage property, the existing character of the heritage building should be integrated into the base building, and additional setbacks considered. Toronto’s director of urban design Robert Freedman told the Star that might mean relocating a building so it frames the heritage property, or creates a view of it. Say the guidelines: “There may be instances where conservation principles outweigh the goals of intensification and redevelopment and may limit the construction of tall buildings or require additional ‘breathing space’.” The guidelines also include stronger wording for protection of parks and public spaces.
Freedman said the guidelines aren’t a checklist, but rather that review staff should be asking themselves whether an applicant meets the “spirit and intent” of the guidelines.
Quadrangle principal and chair of the Canadian chapter of the council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat Richard Witt said in the Toronto Star that he supported the guidelines but that using them as gospel was a mistake: “There is a fine line between allowing great architecture and restricting bad architecture.”
The Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) pointed out in a letter to the city that the industry has already been living with many of these principles, and that although the organization doesn’t support all the guidelines, they are able to come to consensus on “mutually beneficial changes.”
The guidelines document is 92 pages but worth a look. You can check it out here:
The insights in the first section, which looks back at the history of tall buildings in Toronto and the evolution of the guidelines, is interesting reading. (“Tall” is defined as a building higher than the width of the adjacent street right-of-way, which in Toronto are typically between 20 and 36 m.) The guidelines themselves bring up some interesting questions, particularly in light of Witt’s statement. One of the guidelines, for example, says that “the tops of tall building, including upper floors and roof-top mechanical or telecommunications equipment, signage and amenities spaces should be designed primarily through tower massing and articulation, and secondarily through materials, to create an integrated and appropriate conclusion to the tall building form.” It’s easy to overlook the top of a tower as a design element, but it reminded me of the impact made by several tall buildings that loom large from the 401, in particular a pair of condos in the east end whose tops bring to mind the Art Deco NY classic Chrysler Building. I smile every time I see them.
While suggesting that tower design minimize impact on surrounding streets is too vague (and sounds next to impossible) to be very useful, the guidelines do point out that tower placement and design play an “important” role in meeting sustainability objectives. Free-standing towers without bases are discouraged, as are “big, boxy, dominant massing” and “large, elongated or slab-like floor plates.” Developers are encouraged to be innovative but appropriate, and to embrace creativity and variation including in tower shape, orientation and façade design.
While not earth-shaking (or rather city-shaking-up) and largely too nebulous to be useful in a specific sense, hopefully our city officials will embrace some out-of-the-box thinking, our residents not cling quite so tight to the status quo, and our developers push the design envelope — all the way up to the top. May we all look forward to further integration of sustainability elements like cycling infrastructure and green roofs, think at street level, and continue the evolution of Toronto as the next great skyscraper city.
