July 8, 2008
Is This The Most Awesome House in Toronto?
There's a real estate company called Prestige Living, founded earlier this year by 22-year-olds Philip Sywash and Casper Larski. As the company name suggests, it's an upscale-only kinda deal, with houses—well, mansions—starting at $1 million. A vast majority of the houses offered are classy and sophisticated, just what you'd expect and hope for on the outskirts of Toronto for the deep-pocketed.
And then there's 2400 Doulton in Port Credit, Mississauga. Currently on the market for $10 million, and thus Prestige's most expensive listing, it features four bedrooms, ten bathrooms, and some fantastically strange design touches that are either the mark of a rich evil genius or a fourteen-year-old starchitect wannabe.
See for yourself if you don't believe us.
| 
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
email this
add to facebook
add to del.icio.us
[ report this ]
So *that's* what it would be like to live in a series of malls, dental office lobbies and drug company lunch rooms!
[ report this ]
The metal and glass railings really do give it a kind of mall vibe and the staging job is terrible. Doesn't really feel like a house so much an exercise in extravagance to me. But hey, I don't have that special multi-millionaire kind of taste.
Last: 10 baths?
[ report this ]
You could shoot some truly excellent porn here.
[ report this ]
so THIS is what happens when you set out to spend as much money as possible on a house with no mind for good taste.
i'd always wondered...
[ report this ]
Miami Vice hotel lobby porn set Robocop law firm nightmare.
[ report this ]
I agree with everything said above.
[ report this ]
Also, bad location, location, location.
[ report this ]
Meh. Whatever. They basically took a few designs for offices like dentists or spas and closed the entrance off to the public to call it a home. Big woop.
[ report this ]
I love bad 90's design.
Anyway way we can find out who lived here?
[ report this ]
Straight out of Logan's Run!
Actually I don't hate it as much as everyone else seems to.
[ report this ]
I love contemporary architecture, and I find that modernist architecture and design is often stupidly discriminated against, but the interior of this home is pretty sterile. I like the exterior, but the interior lacks warmth.
[ report this ]
Who is the architect?
[ report this ]
"...starting at $1 million..."
Does that mean they sell three bedroom "handyman's dreams" in Parkdale as well?
[ report this ]
How can it be the most awesome house in Toronto when it's in Mississauga?
[ report this ]
That crazy dome moonroof thing over the bed so you can see the stars is amazing!
Maybe I don't have refined design esthetic of the rest of y'all, but if I was richer than astronauts I'd totally want to live there.
[ report this ]
jaymo - David jumped the gun. Eventually Toronto will absorb everything from Burlington to Oshawa to become the Omega City of Toronto.
[ report this ]
tyrannosaurus - true enough. For now though, Missy is its own city - and as a life long torontonian - I get pissed off when people refer to it as Toronto.
[ report this ]
Where did he get the maple leaf cover for the bed?
[ report this ]
I had to read this post over a few times before I realized that Prestige Living is just a website to display listings being offered by other real estate agents and NOT a building developer nor a "real estate company".
so who is behind the design of this terrible, terrible building then?
[ report this ]
that shitty architectural design has even left my testicles sterile.
[ report this ]
Well, modern it is, but good it is not and paying 10 mil for it is just silly. We cannot argue about the taste - this might as well be the most awesome house in Toronto (or Mississauga) for some individual who has not seen what awesome modern architecture is all about.
However, it does not change the fact that this design sucks, that material choice is irresponsible, that the size of it is uncalled for, and that whoever designed it, either had no idea what he/she was doing, wanted to poke fun at modernism / client's taste, or was a complete moron.
10 mil can build something truly breathtaking, so wasting money on this piece of crap is just silly. Nevertheless, I am sure somebody will decide to buy it and will live in it happily ever after spending every day in the mall, dentist's office, or Shoppers. It is a shame, though, because some other people will see it and think that this is what modern architecture is supposed be all about.
[ report this ]
I wonder how energy efficient it is? With that much glass, it must get pretty warm in the summer and with all the stone floors and stuff it must be chilly in the winter to walk on. Bring yr slippers if you sleep over.
Also the kitchen doesn't look very kid friendly. Heck, none of it looks kid friendly.
[ report this ]
"not kid friendly"? Dude! There's a goddamn Ferrari in the living room! It's kid heaven!
(Assuming "kid" means "10 year old boy", anyway. This is totally the house Tom Hanks would've bought himself in Big, is what I'm saying.)
[ report this ]
owned by Toni Gigliotti. an article on the design and owner: http://www.interiordesign.net/article/CA6318123.html
[ report this ]
wow.
and check out the design firm's website! suddenly it all makes sense, one animated 3D gif at a time...
http://www.xtcdesign.com/
[ report this ]
Hey, XTC Design stole my plans I drew of my dream home in Grade 9 drafting class. They also seem to have gotten their hands on my bed-spread from 1979. Bastards .... !
Seriously, though, according to their website XTC seem to specialise in bathrooms and kitchens, so every room in this house (no matter "the function") is actually just a bathroom or kitchen with the sinks removed.
Yikes!
Tuds
[ report this ]
This house could be good, but its in Mississauga.
[ report this ]
You know, I don't mind this, either, i.e. it's the sort of place where vulgar ultra-modern pretension winds up kinda redeeming it all. You can just tell that if it survives another 10 or 20 years, it'll be as genuinely loveable as space-age 60s goofing is today. You don't always need Ron Thom or Shim-Sutcliffe, y'know--and in that light, it somehow comes off better than if it were some kind of blatantly plastic French Chateau or Georgian Manor.
Those of you who get all misty-eyed and aw-jeez whenever you see an overwrought 60s-Austin-Powers-contemporary thing (i.e. the sort that would have been sneered at by the architectural intelligentsia even then) in the throes of a pre-demolition "estate sale" know what I'm talking about.
That said, the name "Patrick Bateman" keeps nagging at me...
[ report this ]
This monstrosity -- you can't even call it a "McMansion," because it's infinitely more tacky than one -- makes a lovely residential complement to your soulless corporate office parks and sprawling suburban strip malls.
You know what's really "awesome"? The coming global oil crisis. Gotta wonder what the kind of people who live here would think about that. The fact that they've got not one, but two shrines to pointless fuel-burning in their foyer makes me think they're not heavily concerned.
[ report this ]
my dad actually built this house, and while its not everyones taste (not mine at all) it is a fantastic engineering accomplishment. the house is built out of steel beams and there were many sustainable products and methods used to lower the impact on the site. even though there is a car in the living room, there are some really neat architectural features and some very interesting works of art. there is also a fully contained greenhouse that grows lemons and limes. so judge all you want but you can't deny the fact that it got you talking and that was partially the point.
[ report this ]
talk won't pay the $10 million bill, though...
seriously. unless you're filming Rock of Love 3, who is going to buy this thing?
[ report this ]
this is an absurd waste of money. it pisses me off. $10M could house how many people in toronto for a year?
c'mon.
[ report this ]
Believe it or not, were I blessed with the bucks and inclined to live in this kind of estate-mansion context at all, *I* could live there--maybe with an "irony" card strategically up my sleeve; but, still. "It ain't where you live, it's the way that you live there", perhaps.
Conversely, I'm not sure a lot of the respondents here (and even I, myself, am hedging) would be inclined to live in this context even if we were dealing with a FLW or Ron Thom classic...
[ report this ]
It's architecture like this that makes having hope for the future of humanity nearly impossible.
[ report this ]
For anti-futurist assholes/idiots/morons like you, yes. For those of us who have a little more faith in humanity, and love amazing futuristic design, this house is amazing, and oh yeah, the answer is no.
I love this house, and would live in it if I had the jing, but I don't. The only mitigating factor against this house is that it's in Mississauga, not Toronto, but other than that, to the builders of this house, I say bravo! And don't pay attention to the Chicken Little hatyas like Tanya K., for 'The meek shall inherit the earth; the rest of us will go to the stars.'
[ report this ]
One of the gents at Prestige Living e-mailed me to say they've got a "very wild" new listing on the Bridal Path that's listed for $10.8 million. It is substantially more the kind of modern-looking mansion I would drop eight figures on.