海角社区官网

But the worst? It鈥檚 glass.

An ancient material once considered luxurious, it is cheap now and ubiquitous. Ever since outer 鈥渃urtain walls鈥� ceased being what held up buildings 鈥� steel frames and reinforced concrete columns carry that load 鈥� exteriors were up for grabs.

Exteriors could now use lightweight metal frames. Architects could fill them in with anything and they did: panels of metal and other materials; thin veneers; most of all, glass.

Glass can be layered as thick or thin as needed, clear or fashion-tinted in greens, blues and browns 鈥� Toronto鈥檚 latest glass towers look like liquor bottles from the 1970s 鈥� and can cover a building almost entirely, floor to ceiling.

This is plain, boring Modernist architecture, the journalist Tom Wolfe wrote in his devastating book 鈥溾�� imposing sensory deprivation on its unfortunate humans with 鈥渢he whiteness & lightness & leanness & cleanness & bareness & spareness of it all.鈥�

Humans get restless in their glassed, thin-walled, shoebox-style condos with open-plan kitchens and tiny bedrooms. They don鈥檛 like baking in increasingly hot summers or being examined by people in the glass condo tower next door.

They install drapes (most towers mandate identical ones) or place filing cabinets and furniture against the walls. But if you do that, why did you need glass walls in the first place? One yearns for a bit of honest drywall.聽

Another problem: To Toronto鈥檚 horror last week, children die from glass. Why did that Richmond Hill daycare centre have floor-to-ceiling glass walls next to a parking lot? Visiting parents loved the light. But since the glass was frosted anyway, no one could see in or out. Why hadn鈥檛 they built with brick with higher windows that opened?

Why wasn鈥檛 parking angled rather than facing the glass head-on? Why were there no bollards 鈥� a glass wall鈥檚 best friend 鈥� and not stylish metal sticks but tough iron mudders 脿 la ?

These tiny much-loved children were almost defenceless from what appears to be driver error.聽Imagine a glass wall facing bad intent. The Ontario government has temporarily blocked such parking until design regulations are changed,聽but suburban daycares and retail have long looked like this.

Take the new barnlike Mount Dennis , just opened on busy Weston Road. However , they鈥檙e as SUV-adjacent as any utilitarian suburban shed.

Take the new Bloor Collegiate Institute, with an atrium like a glassy oil tanker. It鈥檚 not just schools and daycares. There鈥檚 a reason 海角社区官网gets glassier by the year and it鈥檚 that nobody cares about design. Torontonians are just not that into human-friendly buildings, public beauty, or architecture at all.

Daycares are nests for baby birds, not display cases. But a TMU urban planning professor actually questioned whether the safety measures addressed 鈥渁 systemic problem of broader public interest鈥� or were merely symbolic.

Glass is Toronto鈥檚 systemic problem.

聽鈥淭he first 40 feet make a building,鈥� says British architect Thomas Heatherwick. At street level, stand and stare at endless flat, plain, shiny office buildings鈥� cavernous glass lobbies. This is manspreading in architecture. It鈥檚 empty space. There鈥檚 nothing to do in a lobby but cross it to reach the elevators.

Toronto鈥檚 repurposed storefronts are glass too. Why? Who wishes to see inside banks or drycleaners or dentists鈥� waiting rooms?

Glass鈥檚 main drawback: it only works if it reveals beauty, of which modern 海角社区官网has a shortage. Glass makes most buildings generic. As do flat roofs, beloved of German 1920s Bauhaus socialist worker housing, an ethos that ravaged more cities than the Luftwaffe.

Why flat? Pitched roofs 鈥� the pointy ones that kids always stick on a house when they draw in crayon 鈥� were 鈥渆litist鈥� or worse, 鈥渂ourgeois.鈥� And to this day, most modernist buildings big or small 鈥� Bauhaus鈥檚 notorious 鈥渕achines鈥� for living and working 鈥� terminate like stumps.

Developers and architects like glass monoliths. Humans prefer human scale.

If only we had something to see except sheets and streets of useless glass, a great expanse of nothing.