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• 30 Nov 08
  

  Yule Heibel

  Hume looks at facadism - when it works, and when it doesn't.

  thestar christopher_hume heritage preservation architecture facadism toronto

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      Yule Heibel on 2008-11-30

      - example of facadism at its worst

  • Every major city – Paris, Dublin, New York – does it. It's just that Toronto does it so often.

    "We have a lot of façadism in Toronto," admits one of the city's leading heritage architects, Michael McClelland. "And almost no one likes it. But it's indicative of Toronto's political climate. Though it's easy to deride façadism, what do these people propose in its place? People who simply dismiss it don't understand. It's often the agreed-upon compromise."

    It has also become an acceptable method of balancing civic growth and architectural history. And despite the obvious drawbacks, it's a strategy that can work.

  • 2 more annotations...
  • • "What really bugs me is that people make a fuss about how clever we are at recycling the little things, yet it would never occur to us to recycle whole buildings. People merrily do away with whole buildings but feel good because they religiously recycle all the little things around the house. Recycling a building the size of Riverdale Hospital is the same as recycling 72 million pop cans."
    • It's a conundrum: How do you do this ethically? How do you provide a sense of historical development?"

Public Stiky Notes

• 
  Yule Heibel on 2008-11-30
  - example of facadism at its worst

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