"Podiumism" and it's Discontents

Developer Brad Lamb is cranky about urban planners' insistence on building tall buildings on podiums that meet the street, then taper off in the Vancouver style to let in light and views.

1 minute read

March 26, 2011, 11:00 AM PDT

By Tim Halbur

Reporter John Bentley Mays talks to Lamb for The Globe and Mail. Lamb coined the term "podiumism" to draw attention to the Toronto planning department's insistence that buildings downtown have a certain structure:

"There's tremendous pressure from the planning department to create podiumism," Mr. Lamb told me last week at his corporate headquarters on King Street West. "You have to build a podium to your lot line, then you do a 10- or 20-foot setback, then you build a little more tower, then you do another setback. It creates the kind of wedding-cake architecture that exists in this city [and] that drives me mad."

FULL STORY: Breaking free of ‘podiumism’

Friday, March 25, 2011 in The Globe and Mail

Architecture Ontario Toronto Podium Construction

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