"What do you think?"

The architecture community has been slightly abuzz lately over a major project along Toronto's main waterfront. Poor urban planning and land reclamation on Lake Ontario has resulted in a substantially disconnected city from a lake it is supposed to be built alongside. The main culprit is the daunting Gardiner Expressway an elevated highway which runs along the southern edge of the city - practically right along the water. A few other near-permanent industrial sites finish off the southern edge of the city with a flourish of train tracks, expressways, smokestacks, parking lots, and historical industrial waste dumps. Photos taken from the CN Tower looking almost straight down show this perfectly. Union Station [don't get me started on that one] is the large white thing and adjacent historical building just left of center; downtown is just to the left of the photo; Gardiner on the right; and Lake Ontario sneaking in the top right.
Honestly the site needs a project so large in scale it makes me think of Boston's Big Dig. But instead Toronto will get a timid half measure which is too little too late, and fails to resolve the problems people have with getting there: Crossing a gauntlet of dank tunnels, highways and various other unpleasantness.
So what do Toronto residents get? Well potentially a diamond on the other side of a mine field.
West8 took top prize in a competition which was closely followed by the architectural community and involved several people I have come to know over the past year living here [the chairwoman of the jury was my studio supervisor for my second semester]. Their project is distinctly Canadian yet smacks a little of cliche. Five teams of finalists were selected from a large hopeful group of firms to present their ideas to the jury:
1- Foster and Partners, London UK and Atelier Dreiseitl, Uberlingen, Germany
2- WASAW
3- Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, New York and Martínez Lapena-Torres Architects, Barcelona
4- West 8, Rotterdam and du Toit Allsopp Hillier, Toronto
5- And Team P.O.R.T. made up of: Snohetta, Norway, Sasaki Associates, New York, nARCHITECTS, New York, Weisz + Yoes Architecture, New York, H3, New York, Balmori Associates, New York and Halcrow Yolles HPA, New York

I'm curious what people who read this blog think of these projects as almost all of you are not architects. In my next post, after I read some responses from all of you, I'll talk about my favourite and why.