As a side project I've been modelling the future skyline of KW, inspiration for it was originally taken from pancanadianskylines on Instagram who is ericmacm (first post in this thread is about his model). Since his last post about the model there's been a bunch of additional proposals that have popped up. Roughly 30 or so buildings throughout Kitchener alone (SPA,CoA, ZBA/OPA), not to mention some of the very large projects up in Waterloo, as well I've included the proposals that were made public through the Growing Together documents, which are obviously just concepts but it still allows for a neat perspective into the future skyline.
The massing for the projects is as accurate as I can get with the publicly available documents (CoA, ZBA/OPA), if the height isn't known for the project I generally assumed 3m per floor, however if a developer tends to use a different floor to floor height I used that instead. The models themselves aren't all that detailed, so there isn't any shape changes in the buildings, so if the project uses significant step backs (Charles Place) those aren't included so they may seem slightly bigger than actuality.
I can't find topographical data for KW and putting projects into Google Earth turned into a hassle so everything is all at the same elevation so it's not the best but again it gives a rough estimate.
Regardless it's really interesting to see how 10 years ago a project like 100 Vic were considered tall and now look like babies compared to other projects, same thing goes for Charlie West and Duke Tower. Now our definition of tall are projects like Station Park Tower 5, 417 King St W and 50 Borden and even now we're starting to get multiple projects approaching that height.
In the model I have everything colour coded, Green means the building is complete, Yellow is under construction, Orange means it has approval (ZBA/OPA, SPA), Blue is a proposal, finally Pink is all the new stuff from Growing Together. If there's a close up or an area that you're interested in I can post it on here as well. The 3 pictures I have just provide a general overview.
Downtown from McLennan Park:
Downtown from Union/Belmont:
Downtown from Krug/River:
The massing for the projects is as accurate as I can get with the publicly available documents (CoA, ZBA/OPA), if the height isn't known for the project I generally assumed 3m per floor, however if a developer tends to use a different floor to floor height I used that instead. The models themselves aren't all that detailed, so there isn't any shape changes in the buildings, so if the project uses significant step backs (Charles Place) those aren't included so they may seem slightly bigger than actuality.
I can't find topographical data for KW and putting projects into Google Earth turned into a hassle so everything is all at the same elevation so it's not the best but again it gives a rough estimate.
Regardless it's really interesting to see how 10 years ago a project like 100 Vic were considered tall and now look like babies compared to other projects, same thing goes for Charlie West and Duke Tower. Now our definition of tall are projects like Station Park Tower 5, 417 King St W and 50 Borden and even now we're starting to get multiple projects approaching that height.
In the model I have everything colour coded, Green means the building is complete, Yellow is under construction, Orange means it has approval (ZBA/OPA, SPA), Blue is a proposal, finally Pink is all the new stuff from Growing Together. If there's a close up or an area that you're interested in I can post it on here as well. The 3 pictures I have just provide a general overview.
Downtown from McLennan Park:
Downtown from Union/Belmont:
Downtown from Krug/River: