07-03-2021, 12:53 PM
(07-03-2021, 12:37 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:(07-03-2021, 12:17 PM)ac3r Wrote: Hah, sadly not. This is what you end up with when you don't emphasize architectural creativity. We've got plenty of buildings like this here already, mostly in Waterloo. It's disgusting and I don't know how anyone could not advocate - if not demand - better design. These horrible buildings, for example, will out live each one of us (and are already falling apart in some places): https://www.google.com/maps/@43.4796133,...384!8i8192
Yeah, I really appreciate you calling my home disgusting and horrible.
That being said, your example is one of the plainest building in KW, few to no other buildings look that way and the proposed building certainly does not.
Of course, I would STILL advocate for housing, because I'd rather live in a home in that city than be homeless in what you feel is a nicer city.
Look, I get your point. All I am saying is that we live in a nation/society where we can (though arguably, we're not doing it ideally) both construct homes and make them look nice. If a building looks bad, why should it get approved? These buildings are going to be here for decades. Do you really want a city filled with ugly high rises everywhere you look? They tried that in Russia and ended up with Khrushchyovka. There is plenty of architectural and psychological research that has been done on how the "aesthetic beauty" (or lack there of) impacts the psychology of those people who live within them. This was one reason why public housing projects in North America generally turned into very undesirable, hostile places. The uglier your surroundings are, the more negative your experience will be. And often, it contributes to a faster decline in desirability.
Now, 890-900 King Street West is not social housing, nor are the student condos in Waterloo. But nonetheless, the uglier the building, the greater the negative impact is on those people who live there. We can have both ample housing and make it look good. This is just extremely lazy architecture. Cheap developers, hiring cheap architects, giving them a very limited budget which results in ugly buildings all so they can make...profit. The people who live there don't matter to them, they just see them as $ signs.
Frankly, I'd rather we develop Waterloo Region in a way where our living, working and shopping spaces are aesthetically pleasing and inviting rather than, well, ugly.