Off the Rails

Maybe it's the heat, but Bad Buildings woke up in a nasty mood this weekend. Sweaty and angry -- not the best way to start your Saturday. Like, at all. But how else to react to the slowly-festering news of the city's latest sell-out -- this time, the Roundhouse to (excuse us whilst we barf in our mouths a tad) Leon's?

Bad Buildings' has no beef with discount furniture chains. Hey, people with no taste or style gotta sit somewhere, too. Nor does your humble critic really harbour precious notions of "heritage" buildings and their appropriate usage (we rather like the Roundhouse residence undertaken by the Steamwhistle Brewery, for example; it's a nice nod to both the railway heritage of the building and the city's industrial past -- not to mention a favourite activity undertaken by no small number of railboys back in the day. Ah, booze and heavy machinery -- a timeless pair).

Back to the point: We're particularly not too terribly fussy in the case of the city's old building stock; we're big fans of the Jacobsian notion (as in Jane) that damn near any use of a serviceable building is better than no use at all.

But at the risk of sounding like a broken record, people, Bad Buildings has to use a favourite term again, and it's this: Context. Instead of belabouring the point with more blather, we'd like to employ a more efficient mode of expressing a couple thousand words. Namely, what could this:



And this:



... possibly have in common? Let's see, one is a prized, deeply urban remnant of an industrial identity, when buildings were still assumed to be permanent (can you imagine?); the other is a flimsy icon of mass-suburbanization, necessitated impermanence, and throwaway culture. Hmmm, we can't see why that would be a bad. fit. Neither did city council, apparently, who allowed this crap to happen.

One can safely assume that Leon's, with its bizarre stab at new market segments with their freshly-launched (gag) "urban line," saw an opportunity with the appalling Cityplace cluster of condo badness in various states of completion nearby (though it's safe to say Leon's gear wasn't featured in the whitewashed, ultra-urban-pitch for these awful little patches of skyscape.)

Shame, really, that the city didn't see an opportunity themselves; more than poofy pleather couches and do-not-pay-a-cent fibreboard dining room sets, Bad Buildings notes to self that people, without exception, need to eat. So how about something a little more contextually relevant -- not to mention actually useful and integrated into the needs of a community -- to the good old railhouse -- like, say, a vibrant, St. Lawrence-esque food market, the likes of which the spanking-new insta-'hood sorely lacks?

But no, that would take energy, imagination, and respect for the environs -- something the city, in allowing the construction of Cityplace in the first place, proved it simply does not have. Good luck, Leon's. In the grand mistake by the lake, you'll fit right in. You deserve each other. But the Roundhouse deserves better.