A building with issues

I’m on a roll with the signage thing - more here - though it would appear my summer reading comes in a much shorter format than other CBC bloggers. I’ve been focusing on CBC signs for the past week, but let’s branch out to some signs just outside Fort Dork.

You may recall that there’s a giant pit just to the east of the CBC’s Toronto HQ. It’s part of the construction of the new Ritz-Carlton hotel and RBC Centre office tower at Wellington and Simcoe streets. (I’ve been snapping some photos along the way and putting them in a Flickr folder - maybe in two years I can create a time-lapse animated .gif, or something.)

Construction is apparently moving apace, despite a strike that nobody noticed from the Laborers’ International Union of North America (L.I.U.N.A. Local 506). That strike consisted of a chain across the entrance way for a few days - no picketers, no website, no concerts by the Barenaked Ladies.

Anyhow, what interests me about this site at the moment is the “branding” on the construction hoarding that surrounds the east end of the site. The RBC Centre is being branded not as “the first new Toronto office tower in a decade”, or “a really tall, expensive container for bankers to roll around in your money”, but something more homey - and ridiculous.

Apparently this is not a building. It’s your new best friend.

It claims to be:

• A building with a work/life balance
• A building that pays its way
• A building comfortable in its own skin
• A building with a conscience
• A building that works for employees
• A building that is breaking ground
• A building that makes an impression

WTF? Is this building actually alive, with blood and emotions and some sort of benign Hal 9000 brain? Are they building it not with jackhammers and concrete and steel, but with spoonfuls of love, group hugs and fluffy bunnies?

Yeah, I get the idea. Personalize the space, appeal to our softer instincts, make it sound as different as possible from the cold, cash-driven sort of banking towers they fly planes into. But come on - it’s an office tower, not a loft, or mom’s house, or a hippy commune.

This sort of cloying anthropomorphism really burns my britches. Anyone who has kids knows what I’m talking about - it’s cute for a while, when little Sally says “that car is happy” or “the sky is crying.” But last week my daughter asked me, “why does the toilet like to eat poo and drink pee?” Yeargh!

If the RBC Centre wants to pretend it’s your cousin, fine. Here are my suggestions for construction hoarding slogans:

• A building that will take out your garbage
• A building that loves long walks on the beach
• A building that would open its windows if they weren’t sealed shut
• A building with an extensive shoe collection
• A building that is a little afraid of lightning
• A building with a degree from Yale
• A building that once had a tryout for the Ti-Cats
• A building with erectile dysfunction
• A building that served three years in the National Guard
• A building that feels guilty when birds hit it
• A building that thinks your weight is just fine
• A building that took a year off to “find itself”
• A building that promises not to shed large pieces of marble

So, what human trait describes the building you work in? (Mine likes to eat poo.)

Posted by: Paul Gorbould | 08-03-2007 | 05:08 PM
Posted in: Apocalypse signs | Toronto