A tense group of eight people stand outside City Hall’s Committee Room 2, licking their wounds and wondering what to do next. An emergency meeting? A young woman is clutching a white Styrofoam replica of a proposed condo development. She is nodding earnestly. “They said it was an urban building,” says one man and, in this case, “urban” means “ugly.”

Moments earlier, six members of Toronto’s Design Review Panel voted unanimously that Graywood Developments “redesign” their proposal for a waterfront tower and two other complexes off Lakeshore Boulevard West. The voting system is something straight from a TV game show. Instead of deal or no deal, it’s refine or redesign.

“The architectural elevation is a bit disturbing somehow…. It doesn’t seem like a waterfront-feeling building,” commented Paul Ferris of Ferris Architects.

“I’m uncertain that the new tower will be as interesting as you think,” said Robert Allsopp of du Toit Allsopp Hillier.

Ralph Giannone of Giannone Associates is the closest thing the panel has to Simon Cowell: “It should be sitting in a parking lot in the suburbs, not on a main street.”

Ouch.

Like American Idol judges, the panel, made up of 12 top industry professionals, is purely advisory. And as a pilot project covering a handful of specially designated zones, it’s very much a work in progress. The wording of its support/non-support vote has changed five times since it starting reviewing developments in July 2007. Of the 30 projects it’s looked at, it’s supported about two-thirds of them.

Design aficionados hope the panel can persuade developers and architects to make the city’s buildings and public spaces better-looking and more sensitive to their surroundings. But with one year down and one year to go in its mandate, it’s still unclear where the panel fits into the city’s frenetic development sector, already overrun with planners, designers, developers, architects, community advocates, politicians, the Ontario Municipal Board and lots and lots of lawyers. Are its members design consultants, offering specific solutions to problems? Or are they critics, offering headline-grabbing reviews that will flatter or embarrass? Without any official powers, members must leverage their smarts and charm to get their way. Otherwise, they’re just another bureaucratic hoop to jump through.

“I thought I was in front of royalty. The only thing missing was the wine and cheese,” says Babak Eslahjou of Core Architects, after the meeting on his 330 King East condo. “For these guys to sit down and in 15 minutes say, ‘This is too high,’ that doesn’t work for me.” The panel voted 4-2 to “refine” the 14-storey Corktown project. Eslahjou respects the panel members, but doesn’t have much incentive to take their suggestions seriously, especially considering the project is already being marketed. “They made comments about having a more robust design,” he says. “But you can’t say that and then ask for three setbacks.”

Eslahjou fears that the panel’s advice might not always be taken the right way. He says he knows of one architect who was fired from a job after a poor review. “It’s because of misunderstood comments by the panel and it’s not the architect’s fault,” he says. “The format they have isn’t going to meet their objectives.”

Les Klein of Quadrangle Architects has had two major projects before the panel. In March, his design for Streetcar Development’s lofts along King Street East received a unanimous thumbs-down. It had a “lack of fit” with the neighbourhood. When he brought his revisions back in June — taking to heart suggestions like getting rid of the continuous decks on the upper floors — Klein’s building got a thumbs-up. In July, Klein’s tower design for South Beach Development’s Shore Club won unanimous support on its first try. “Peer-review panels are very good tools that help the quality of design,” says Klein. “But architects that participate have to leave their egos at the door…. Some panellists treat the process more like giving comments on a school project than on a real project in the real world.”

So what kind of advice should the panel be giving?

THE VANCOUVER EXPERIENCE 

Toronto’s Design Review Panel is modelled on Vancouver’s Urban Design Panel, which has been reviewing projects since 1998.

“There were all these articles in the press about Vancouver’s panel,” said Robert Freedman, the city’s director of urban design. “Vancouver was wonderful. Toronto, not so wonderful. Toronto had no panel. So a panel might be the magic word.”

Vancouver’s panel has certainly helped the city avoid architectural disasters, but few would argue it has nurtured excellence. Many buildings built there in the last decade are safe, cookie-cutter towers of light-blue glass. The panel is known for micromanaging, even offering suggestions for the colour of tiles. (Beige is popular.)

“The Vancouver panel is good at urban design in the public realm, how the buildings affect the city’s shape,” says Trevor Boddy, a Vancouver architecture critic and curator. “But you only have to walk around downtown Vancouver to see they haven’t had much effect on improving architecture.”

The Vancouver panel, like Toronto’s, is purely advisory. But the Lotusland regime gives it much more influence. British Columbia has no equivalent of the Ontario Municipal Board, whose famously legalistic hearings give developers an opportunity to have city-level decisions overruled. As well, Vancouver’s politicians have a more limited role. Boddy says Vancouver’s council and planning department don’t care much about the form of buildings, once issues of green space, public amenities, height and density are settled.

Ah, height and density. While well-built and well-designed buildings are obviously desirable for any city, the importance of height and density usually outweighs all other factors. A beautiful building that’s too big can hurt a neighbourhood more than an ugly building that’s the right size. Height and density are supposed to be determined by the city’s plans and guidelines, channelled through negotiations with developers and residents. But it’s hard for a design review panel to resist talking about these key issues, even at the risk of appearing to thumb its collective noses at months of negotiations, years of planning.

“You can’t use design review to decide density,” says George Baird, the dean of architecture, landscape and design at the University of Toronto. “You have to assume density is a given. Otherwise it’s a density lottery.”

The panel shines when it puts its finger on problems that may have been lurking unexpressed in the minds of other involved parties. For example, Adam Vaughan, city councillor for Trinity-Spadina (Ward 20), says the panel “probably prevented a disaster from happening” with the Bathurst Street bridge redevelopment. The original plan had a pedestrian environment the panel called “unpleasant” and “unsafe.” It went back to the drawing board.

During the review of the Graywood Humber Bay Shores development, the panel pointed out that maybe a waterfront pedestrian green space wasn’t the best place to put a loading dock. It’s the kind of detail easily forgotten during all the bureaucratic hoop-jumping, but also the kind of detail that, if unaddressed, will annoy residents for years to come.

Lewis Poplak, design director at Context Development, prefers dealing with the panel over dealing with the city itself — they speak the architectural language that planners, who frequently don’t have the same training, lack. He’d like to see the panel given teeth, but only if the city streamlines other parts of the process. “When we presented Market Wharf [a condo development at the bottom of Jarvis] to the panel, it felt like a vindication because we fought with the city about it for so long and so hard,” says Poplak. “The problem is the city can’t have its cake and eat it too. I’d love to have this step added. But only if something else was taken away.”

Gordon Stratford, panel chair and director of design at HOK Canada, has few doubts that the panel’s doing great work.

“Everybody’s buying into the concept,” says Stratford. “It’s a lot of fun. The fascinating thing is that there’s finally discussion about design that goes beyond the legalities and guidelines.” And, in this city, that’s something.