Condo goals prove too lofty?

September 18th, 2008  |  Darrell Corriveau

British architect Will Alsop received props in a recent review in The New Yorker magazine for his work on the Sharp Center for Design at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto. In the article, author Paul Goldberger mentions Alsop’s other completed Toronto project, a sales center for Westside Lofts on Queen St. West right across the street from the Drake Hotel.

The structure is described as “a three-story plywood box whose sides are punctuated by amoeba-shaped windows with frames in green, orange, yellow, white, black, and pink. These walls do double duty as giant billboards, with huge letters advertising lofts at nine hundred and ninety dollars a month.”

It’s too bad then that the playful design of the building obviously wasn’t enough to sell units as quickly as the developer would have liked. Now giant clashing fabric banners touting a sweeter deal than the original aforementioned “nine hundred and ninety dollars a month”, drape both sides of the structure. It’s probably safe to say that Alsop Architects wasn’t consulted on the change of plans and the subsequent defacement.