On "Infill"

The new home at 65 Victoria Street is gonna be a biggie:

According to this article, the finished building will have six bedrooms, seven baths, parking for six vehicles, and a walk-out basement. Neighbours say it will be 15 ft higher than the homes on either side. Its balcony will tower over the neighbouring balconies, lowering their privacy. 

London's Committee of Adjustment* apparently approved a request to increase the maximum floor area of a building on this lot from 4,000 to 7,400 sq ft., allowing this monster home to be built. The neighbours - NIMBYs or concerned residents, depending how you view them - complained about the increased size at the committee hearing, but were disregarded. Makes you wonder why there are rules in place at all, if an exception can be made for any landowner who asks for one. 

There are lots of questions here I can't answer. Is this really intended to be a single family home? Six bedrooms, each with their own bath, suggests it may be a student residence or Airbnb. Will it be crowded and noisy? I suppose the neighbours will find out. Eventually. 

Old North west of Richmond is already a hodgepodge of buildings from different time periods. Some look early twentieth century but most are mid-century ranch homes or late twentieth-century two-storeys. From an aesthetic point of view, I'm less concerned about a modern behemoth at 65 Victoria than I am in a neighbourhood more uniformly historic. That opinion, of course, shows my personal bias but I find the following contrasts more disturbing: 

  

A central tenet of architectural design used to be respect for context, for the suitability of a new building with its existing surroundings. In other words, a new building should "fit in," not "stand out." Even in the Victorian era, while some owners wanted their homes to catch the eye, practical considerations like building cost, material and height still gave most streets overall consistency of form and character. 

Some newer buildings of the twentieth century looked a little different but they were often isolated examples on a street of nineteenth-century buildings. They added variety and interest to the street while still providing a comfortable sense of continuity. I'm not sure of the date of the house at right in the photo below but it does fit into this row of older homes, not being too tall or too different: 

I'm also annoyed with the use of the term "infill." According to Wikipedia, "infill," in the urban planning sense, is "the rededication of land in an urban environment, usually open-space, to new construction" (the italics are mine). The City of London states here in 3.2.3.1 that "development is only considered infill when it occurs on vacant or underutilized sites within an established residential neighbourhood." 

So, infill means filling empty lots with new development appropriate for the neighbourhood, increasing density within the city limits, and reducing the suburban sprawl eating up our farmland. But the term is often used to mean the demolition of an existing building and its replacement with something huge, often single family, that doesn't solve the city's housing problems. Like at 65 Victoria, where there was an earlier home that was purchased by the current owners in 2015, rented out for a few years, and demolished to make room for the monster. 

In another example, also on Victoria Street, a small home like the one on the left was replaced with the oversize building on the right. The latter is completely out of scale with its surroundings: 

Below, another smaller home was torn down to be replaced by a large, overpowering structure:

So I agree that the character of a neighbourhood, particularly an older one, is valuable, that new construction should correspond to and complement buildings on adjacent properties. New buildings should add to the history of an older neighbourhood, not take it away. 

But the City of London wants development at all costs, regardless of what it looks like or where it is. Who cares if the neighbours can stomach it? Beware Londoners, you'll have to get used to the strangest objects popping up around you. Sorry, Old North.

*The Committee of Adjustment consists of five individuals appointed by City Council to deal with minor variances. This house is a big change for a "minor" variance, isn't it? Rumour has it the committee is pro development and doesn't take complaints by neighbours very seriously.