Imperia | 95.3m | 27s | Truman | NORR

CBBarnett said:
This mid-building "amenity vault" is an interesting concept. First full production value, large-scale urban condo development sales website I can remember in a long while! Great to see.

Overall it's good - unfortunately the ground floor has all the charm of an obsolete office tower. It's the type of look that is shiny in a render, but cold and empty in practice. Fast forward a decade or two the ground floor would get confused with any 2000s style oil boom lobby.
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Exactly! I love the tower look but the podium is a deal breaker for me. 🙁 We already have enough glossy shiny towers. We need more emphasis on solid pedestrian-oriented podiums.
 
The lot is no longer be used as a big lay down yard. They cleared most of the equipment and materials from it. It is now mostly used just for parking for the Park Central 2 workers. Let's hope this means they will be starting work on this tower soon.
 
No DP has been submitted for the Imperia design, but Royop did get one approved to use it as a surface parking lot. Until there is a DP reviewed and approved (6 months at least, optimisticly) it will continue to be a parking lot.
 
I'd doubt it'd start before late next year. The sales material says closing will likely be in early 2028, and construction should not take 5 years. I'm pretty sure Truman plans to start the Boward before this one (especially since Boward is already sold out) but even that one won't be finished till 2027 from their marketing.
 
I like this one, but I wonder if this wouldn’t be better without a traditional podium. I get the desire to add commercial, and the need to hide the ugly parts of a residential building (parking, deliveries, refuse, etc.), but the podium in this case also hides the best feature (the exoskeleton).

Would we classify this building as structural expressionism? If so, why hide the structure in the area where it is most dramatic (at the ground floor)? Would a more transparent podium (TD Centre Banking Pavilion in TO comes to mind) be better to show off the structure? Could the podium it be functional if it was that transparent?

I also wish there weren’t balconies, but I get that there is an attachment to balconies.
 
adamyyc said:
I like this one, but I wonder if this wouldn’t be better without a traditional podium. I get the desire to add commercial, and the need to hide the ugly parts of a residential building (parking, deliveries, refuse, etc.), but the podium in this case also hides the best feature (the exoskeleton).

Would we classify this building as structural expressionism? If so, why hide the structure in the area where it is most dramatic (at the ground floor)? Would a more transparent podium (TD Centre Banking Pavilion in TO comes to mind) be better to show off the structure? Could the podium it be functional if it was that transparent?

I also wish there weren’t balconies, but I get that there is an attachment to balconies.
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I think that ground floor retail that provides street life and neighbourhood amenities would be the best feature of any building.

99% of the time you see a building, you are either viewing it from a distance, in which case the ground floor isn't important, or you are walking past it in which case it's good old fashioned urban design that is what's vital. Unless you are taking a photo for an architectural competition or judging an architectural competition, it's not important what the bottom 5% of a building looks like as shot by a drone 100 feet away. Sure, it would be nice if the structure was a little more visible, but given the choice (on a ped-heavy main street like 4th) I'll take the commercial every time.
 
I don't see any reason there can't be retail and also show off the structure. That podium box is just bad. I appreciate the effort from Truman to build distinct buildings with better finishes than the norm. They usually aren't good.
 
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