rong>The old Royal Ontario Museum with its new extension
On the quieter side street
The new Royal Ontario Museum extension
built by Jewish Polish architect Daniel Libeskind
On the busy Dundas Street
I wrote yesterday about a heritage building that had partially collapsed. I opined (and some forums and blogs have a similar assessment) that renovations on the building probably caused some structural damages, which caused it to collapse.
Throughout Toronto, there are many projects involving "renovating" or destroying heritage buildings in order to build high rises, or to accommodate retail stores.
In this post, I describe how crafty real estate developers manage to circumvent development regulations in order to tear down old buildings and replace them with condos.
Some are using the facades of these buildings to incorporate them onto the new high rises, but the original structure is no longer there.
I had left this topic dormant for a while, but the recent incident with the collapsed building made me realize that this problem is here to stay.
I discuss some of the causes of accelerated development in the city, including overzealous architects, immigration, and a changing urban aesthetics.
One of the very first posts I wrote on "Architecture" invovled the dismantling of one such building (which I named "The Lilac House"). As I predicted in that post, the building was replaced by a condo very soon after.
Later on, I wrote a number of posts on the Royal Ontario Museum renovations. In fact, one of the posts is titled "Collapsing Architecture," describing the new ROM extension.