BIG IDEA: Thomson Drafts a Plan for Better Building Design

• Posted on: July 28, 2010
• Submitted by: votetoronto2010 staff

Who: Sarah Thomson

Her Idea: Design Review Panels

The mayoral race so far has featured a lot of talk about transit and governance. But one subject that hasn’t garnered a lot of attention is the built form of the city itself.

Sarah Thomson took aim at this subject last week in a package of proposals designed to improve the city’s architecture and building process. Two of her ideas dealt directly with architecture and design: a proposal to encourage more diverse architecture with a “Design for Excellence Program.”

Thomson’s program — while lightly sketched in her release — would “encourage developers to bring new international ideas to their designs, like adding various cultural features and styles — Chinese, Romanesque, Persian — to the designs they create.”

Her plan would convene a working group that would review “all projects” and promote the ones that met agreed-upon aesthetic standards. The proposal follows a trend towards installing design review panels, which more and more branches of government have been putting in place in recent years.

Toronto introduced a design review panel on a trial basis in 2007, based on its lauded counterpart in Vancouver; the Toronto panel was made permanent in 2009. Its panels of veteran architects and designers review buildings that fall within certain high-profile areas, voting on whether the project should be “refined” or “redesigned.”

The panel doesn’t have binding power, but instead feeds its findings into the existing decision-making process, in which City staff make recommendations to council. Still, the panel can be influential, and designs can be improved through the feedback process.

Not that the process is always harmonious: Back in 2007, Waterfront Toronto’s own design review panel famously gave a raspberry to Jack Diamond’s original design for Corus’ new headquarters. It was only after redesigns (and some acrimony) that the building — which just opened — went ahead.

More recently, the same panel threatened to quit en masse over a proposal to build a Portlands ice rink in a sprawling, suburban style. The uproar led the city to reconsider, and commission a more compact, urban design instead.

Whether a panel of architects will embrace the aesthetics Thomson has in mind, though, remains to be seen.

• Tweet this
• VN:RO [1.8.0_1031]
  (+0)(-0)