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2006 05 16
Toronto Waterfront Innovation
The five finalists in the Waterfront Design Competition unveiled their proposals to an enthusiastic crowd last night. Hundreds came to the BCE Place atrium to be part of this landmark event. The jury will makes its selection next week. The work presented is exceptional and I have a favourite. I'll have more on this story after the MESH Conference at MaRS finishes later today.
I’m disappointed that most submissions didn’t really deal with the gaps in the water’s-edge promenade. Today, you’re actively discouraged from strolling a long way along the shoreline, because each time you get to a slip you have to trek back up to Queen’s Quay. Only West 8 proposes a bridge at each slip to provide a continuous pathway (Foster & Partners has a swing bridge at Spadina). As much as this competition needs to go way beyond walkways, it’d be sad if millions of dollars later the basic walking/biking experience was still broken.
Oh, and did anyone else who was there find the 1st presentation (PORT) incredibly grating? I’m not talking about the proposal itself (love the skating rink), but the way the slides relentlessly flipped by completely out of sync with what the presenter was saying. For me it was the PowerPoint equivalent of scraping fingernails across a blackboard.
