[URBAN NOTE] "Façadism isn’t a necessary evil; sometimes it’s just the right choice"

[rfmcdonald]

Dave LeBlanc's article in The Globe and Mail can be thought of as a counterpoint to Richard Longley's May NOW Toronto article.

A number of years before I introduced myself in these pages – and I have been writing for The Globe for over 13 years – I learned about the possible demolition of the Concourse Building at 100 Adelaide St. W.

I was devastated. In a city with few examples of colourful, expressive Art Deco architecture, its loss would have cut deeper than the loss of a Modernist building (something I also defend vehemently).

Today, I am jubilant. And my joy comes from looking at a well-executed example of façadism. An architectural Frankenstein’s monster, if you will. Something Toronto architect Robert Allsopp at DTAH has called “urban taxidermy” as the bile collected on his tongue. It’s true: The old 1928 skyscraper doesn’t even display the same number of floors any longer. To accommodate the higher ceiling heights of the new, 40-storey, knife-edge tower by Kohn Pederson Fox behind it, the former 16-storey tower now reads as a 14-storey tower.

And I don’t care.

In an essay titled The Ethics of Facadism: Pragmatism versus Idealism, Robert Bargery suggests that our unease with façadism lies in its deception. A building’s façade, he writes, should be “an outward expression of the anatomy and organization of the building.

“At its most extreme, there is in this view a quasi-religious quest for revealed truth.”