Every weekday morning, bright and early, we feature a photo (or two) from a photographer in the Torontoist Flickr Pool. It's our way of giving the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention that they deserve. Unsafe at any speed BY GHOST-RIDER RELATED ON TORONTOIST: Inside the ROM Crystal: A First Look, The Daily Photoist: ROM Roundup, March Madness: Finals, An Expensive Crystal, Bad Buildings: Buildings With Balls, Is Toronto Ugly?, The Daily Photoist:......

Photo by phirleh from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. Bad Buildings needs an award. Merely shaking the trees hasn't brought any accolades raining down on our heads so we're just going to make one up. An award that really has nothing to do with our core competency, nor even with the product that we're trying to sell. We're going to accept this award just so that we can call this column "award-winning." Therefore, we graciously......

Bad Buildings recently had the unusual ambivalent fortune (that is to say, neither good nor bad; we're reserving judgment lest you get the impression we're an urbanity snob—heaven forbid) of traveling north on Hurontario Street in Mississauga, past the intersection of Burnamthorpe Road. For the urbanity snobs among you, this would be Mississauga downtown—a nifty bit of urban planning that says, hey, we CAN build a "city" out of nuthin'. (Note ambivalent tone torquing only-and-ever-so-slightly)......

Vancouver Central Public Library photo by lindn. Bad Buildings has always looked around this town of ours and bemoaned its lack of architectural cojones. For the most part, our buildings are safe, functional and dull (Four Seasons Centre, we're looking at you). Now and again, though, we've been graced (or cursed) with real bursts of boldness—risky designs that challenge the monotone drabness that pervades our built environment. The question is, though, is it enough......

Ladies and gentlemen, your humble critic is a little verklempt. Quite touched, were we, by the outpouring of support for our endeavour, and the flood of new Facebook friends we’ve open-armedly received since our maiden voyage on Torontoist last week. We have, it seems, touched a nerve; we're grateful to Torontoist for helping us, er, touch it. But on with the show. All the wishes Bad Buildings received were not sunshine and roses. Oh, no.......

We don't normally post ridiculously open-ended questions on Torontoist, but the discussion about the Sam the Record Man sign and the excitement over a new column about Bad Buildings in the city got us thinking about that whole "Toronto aesthetic" thing that keeps coming up time and time again in our city. Not about defining that aesthetic, though (there isn't an over-arching one—if anything, the lack of an aesthetic is our aesthetic), and more......

Welcome to Bad Buildings, Torontoist's new resident (anonymous, outspoken) architecture critic. Bad Buildings will appear every Wednesday. Hi there. So glad you could make it. Then again, you didn't really have a choice, did you? This being Toronto, bad buildings, alas, are all around you. Which is why we at Bad Buildings exist—not merely to chastise, decry, ridicule and spite (though there will be plenty of that) but, ultimately, to make our own selves obsolete.......