Auto Erotica - Quadrangle Architects

DESIGN KATHERINE ASHENBURG
Auto erotica
Made of gleaming glass and steel, BMW
Toronto is as slick and subtle as the cars it
sells. Inside a six-storey shrine to speed
horse track in the J850s. it became Union
Course, but it couldn't compete with
Woodbine and eventually went unde1: For
a decade beginning in 1886, Toronto's first
prolessiona.1 baseball park stood here, a
gingerbread-trimmed wooden stadium
that held 2.200 seats and the legendary
"twirler" (pitcher in 19th-century par­
lru1ce) Ned "Cannonball" Crane.
The land saw more prosaic uses iu the
20th century. BMW Toronto's new ad­
dress is 11 Sunlight Pal'k Road. which
sounds optimistic and bucolic. [n fact, it
refe1·s to the Sunlight Soap Works, found­
ed by William Hesketh Lever in 1892 and
still operating at the southern end of the
lot. (On rainy days, the smell of soap trav­
els as far as the BMW building, a congen­
ial accompaniment to its air of hygienic
perfection.) The soap works. now known
as Lever Ponds. had built a hulking, glass­
and-concrete office building in the '70s. In
2001. that structure. along with a few sur­
rounding buildings and approximately
10 acres, became available.
Most automotive retail spaces are one
storey because, as BMW Toronto's prind­
pal architect, Roland Rom Colthoff of
Quaclr:mgle, says. "ears luwe dilliculties
with stairs." But there was a compelling
reason to keep the skeleton of the Lever
Ponds building: if BMW had erectt1d
something new, they would never have
been permitted to site it so close to the
highway. Not only the location but the
dowdy offices promised the car company
a new way to µresimt itself: they could re­
frame the public's idea of a11 auto show­
room into something smart and vertical.
That thought sustained BMW through
protracted dealings with tbocity. The soil
needed extensive remediation. and the
pt'oximity to the Don River meant they
had to devise a swale with bio-retentive
vegetation to purify storm watel'. The
presen(.'e of' migratory birds necessitated
THE LOT THAT WOULD BE BMW TORONTO'S downward-facing lights and a computer­
new home was no stmnger to masculine ized system that dims the perimeter
dreams of speed and prowess. at least in lights Mter dark.
its first half-century. Levelled to make a
The building. designed by the same
WHERE THE DON VALLEY PARKWAY MEETS
Eastern Avenue, a gigantic vendiug ma­
chine beckons. High in the sky, six bright­
ly lit boxes, stacked two deep, display real
cars: choose your model, insel't your
money. and out pops a Bimmer. The ct'­
lestial Automat is pm 't of Toronto's most
dazzling new billl,oard.
Behind the six-storey, blue-glass
fa.; ade lies $20 million worth of show­
rooms, offices and service bays, Canada's
biggest cat· retail spaC'e. But don't dismiss
the façade as window dressing. Its com­
ponents were as carefully conceived and
engineered as the BMW 5 Series, and it's
working as hard as the mechanics in the
immaculate service department. Call its
job image making or branding or what
you will; BMW takes it very seriously.
Bayerische Motoren Werke has gradu­
ally come around to the importance of
image, from its beginnings in aircraft,
through to motorcycles and luxut'y cars.
In Canada, the company's head office in
Whitby recently provided a graphic illus­
tration of the effoc'.tivenesi. of Hrchitec­
ture as statement. Designed by Qlladran­
gle Architects and Omniplan Automotive
Retail Facility Planners as corporate of­
fices that would make a dramatic point
from the 401, the building attracted so
many would-be customers that BMW
added a retaiJ showroom.
All the more reason to rethink BMW
Toronto. The showroom at Adelaide and
Parliament was stuck on a one-way
street. strapped for space. with no pres­
ence and no visibility from afm: However
renovated. the building was never going
to become the cal1ing card BMW wm1ted.
When Hendrik von Kuenheim, the presi­
dent of BMW Canada, saw an available
site ne,w Eastern and Broadview, his lir!it
thought was what a good display it would
make from the DVP and the Gardiner.
92
continued
team that did the Whitby head office, is
complex, supei·bly functional and taste­
ful-like a BMW, which is the point. Its
100,000 square feet incorporate 24 service
bays for cars and two for motorcycles;
separate showrooms for new cars, used
cars and motorcycles; offices and client
amenities, such as lounges and a "lifestyle
boutique."
DESIGN
SENDING A WRITER WHO DRIVES A "PRE·
loved'' Honda to the new car palace on
Sunlight Park sounds like casting pearls
before swine. But an auto ignoramus
brings a certain purity of "ision. When I
enter the main door, a car greets me.
That is, I'm face to grille with the BMW
745i Sedan, in Sterling Grey Metallic
($108,200). To its right, 13 cars are parked
whose indeterminate quality contrasts
with the hard, sleek cars. The self-effacing
details, designed to focus attention on the
product. include ceilings that don't meet
the perimeter walls but appear to t1oat
above the cars.
Although most of the visible customers
are wearing suits and talking into cell­
phones when not slowly circling a poten­
tial purchase, the merchandise in the
lifestyle boutique is designed for the
young and sporty. It ranges from the X5
cap ($18.50) to the SlideCarver (scooter
meets BMW. $998.50), the StreetCarver
(a n1eld of skateboard and snowboard,
$798.50) and the Z4 Pedal Cm· ($279..50.
for ages three to five!). Everything here
meets BMW's enginee. ring standards: the
StreetCarver features BMW 5 Series sus­
pension components; the digital watch
and t.he special wax used to shine them
makes these second-hand specimens look
factory fresh. Pait of this floor is also oc·
cupied by the lower level of what Rom
Colthoff calls the "matchboxes," the six
cars shelved in the fa�aqe. When cus­
tomers apprehend the shapes behind the
sandblasted glass, they invariably say.
"So they're real!"
The idea behind the matchboxes­
to break up a relatively dark, unrelieved
e.Aterior-came from a higher-up at Omni·
plan. At first, they were going to be out·
side, but that pt·oved impracticable. In­
f
stead, they're set of with a white frame
and enclosed in ultra-clear glass. (Most
glass has a faintly g1•eenish colom:) The
sandblasted glass panels behirrd the cm·s
are backlit so t.hat they glow at night..
The sombre fai;ade inspired another
AS W I T H
McDONALD'S AND TH E CATHOLIC CH URCH, YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO WA LK I N TO A
BMW S HOWROOM ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD AND KNOW W H ERE YOU ARE-NOT FROM T H E BIG MACS
OR THE LITURGY, BUT FROM THE FLOOR TILES AND THE BLACK, BLUE AND W H ITE ROU N DEL
in a loop, mimicking an autobahn, but one
reserved for the elite. A model in Mystic
Blue Metallic and another in lmola Red
are the only cars to stray from an under­
stated palette of grey, black and bl'Onze.
At first, I'm impressed with the obvious­
that the least e...xpensive new car ($35,000)
costs more than 1 paid for my first house,
and the most expensive ($195,000) is
more than I paid for my cunent one.
Next, I'm struck by the prevailing neu­
tt·ality of the space. While the designers
grappled with a new showroom form,
they also had to obey the Bivrw style
bible. As with McDonald's and the
Catholic Church, the idea is that you
should be able to walk into a BMW show­
room anywhere i.n the world and know
where you are-not from the Big Macs 01·
the liturgy, hut from the floor tiles (grey in
the showrooms and offices, brick red . in
the service bays); the familiar sans-se.rif,
silver-on-black BMW logo on the blue and
white roundel; the lavish use of glass. 'rhe
Munich-mandated colom scheme is
white and grey, so the Toronto designers
teased, "What shade of gtey should we
choose?" (To compensate the chroma­
starved staff, their second-floor cafe­
teria-oft�limits to customers-has red
and plum seats. ) The BMW customer
doesn't necessarily register any of the de­
tails beyond the lqgo, much less realize
'that he's experiencing a gJobal brand
identity, but he has a feeling of beautifuJly
engineered, precise sw·roundings.
Luckily, Rom Colthoff enjoys working
with constraints, adjusting the BMW
template to the site's unique characteris­
tics. Inside, he crafted deferential spaces
94
($1,398.50) has a "balanced weight gener­
ator .and drive combination with quartz­
controlled digital module."
To the left of the main entrance. a cir­
cular staircase of glass,_granite and steel
spools its way around a transparent ele­
vator also made of glass and steel. The
stairs at'e glamorous; the honest elevat,or
displays its top-drawer engineering for all
to see-the two faces of BMW.
Once you've left your car for service,
you have options; you can take the free
shuttle downtown or a car on loan, or you
can head upstairs to the second floor, to
the customer waiting lounge. There. over­
looking the service bay, you can read
Town & Country in a black leather club
chair, admire the 50-inch Plasma screen
TV, or work in one of sbi: modules with
desk. Aeron chair and Internet hookup.
For fuel, there's an impressive Van
Houtte machine that produces very de­
cent cappuccino, espresso, latte and
Americano. (At the building's opening
party in November, BMW Canada chief
von Kuenheim joked that the baseball
stadium on the site was built in 1886 for
$7,000, and he had just paid nearly the
same price for a coffee maker.)
The third storey-devoted to motor­
cycles and big pictures of exotic locales
with hairpin turns-caters to a clientele
mo1•e apt to talk business on bar stools
than on office chairs. Or at least that
seems to be BMW's supposition, judging
by the lic1uorless bar and chic bfack
leather stools (imported from Germany).
The fourth floor belongs to "pre-owned"
cars, although some mystical combina­
tion of BMW's seven-step paint process
dramatic conceit, this one devised by
Colthoff. To highlight the product and to
allow clear views of the showroom floor,
he lifted up and shifted the building's
glass pane so that the glass skin projects
above the roof and to the north.
He won't say what kind of car he drives,
othei· than to mourn ''an intense, seven­
yeat; relationship with a vintage 1973
2002 tii coupe1 which sadly had to end
when my life rl'quired four doors." Per­
haps that's why his favourite spot is the
vehicle delivery area at the top of the
building, although you don't have to yearn
for a BMW to admfre this two-storey
space. During the first month of the de­
sign work, driving east on the Gai·diner,
Colthoff realized that the fifth floor was
just about level with the expres.sway and
that there should be a "large, bright,
glazed volume" on the west side. It was
contral'ian and bold, but the designers
placed new-vehicle delivery-the joyful
place where the owner is introduced to all
.his car's features-not at grade in the
usual way, but at the top of the building.
The all-glass space, with the floor t.iles
laid out in eight angled "area rugs" to ac­
commodate multiple buyers, showcases
cars to highway drivers while celebrating
the client's purchase. The client pockets
his new keys in front of what Colthoff
justly calls a "stunning view of' the down­
town core." A tip for BMW buyers:
arrange to take possession in late after­
no()n, overlooking Toronto as it spreads
west and north against a purply pink sun­
set. As the BMW ads might put it, it will
compound your feeling of being on top qf
the world.
F•bruerv 2004 Toronto LIie