Text: Christopher Hume

Source: The Toronto Star, 04.18.09

There’s nothing unusual about the appearance of a new tower in Toronto, but a new office tower is something different. After a break of almost a decade, the corporate skyscraper is back.

Suddenly it seems the slick facades of highrise corporatism are everywhere. Just weeks ago it was the opening of the Bay-Adelaide Centre, a tall glass box wrapped around the remnants of an office block from an earlier era.

Now it’s the RBC Centre. Occupying the southwest corner of Wellington and Simcoe Sts., this huge project includes a hotel and condo component, as well as an office tower. The latter, which also opened recently, faces onto the intersection. Though the Residence at Ritz-Carlton remains under construction directly to the west, the corporate piece is complete.

Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox of New York with Bregman and Hamann of Toronto, this is a complex of rare elegance. It also happens to be a thoroughly urban addition to the streetscape and the skyline, one of those exceptional developments that work both as a landmark and a place to be.

From a distance, the tower is all transparency, a glass-clad lantern. The architects have avoided the threat of post-traumatic tower disorder by subtly manipulating the façades. They become a series of planes that behave independently of the expected geometry of the building. A few metres above grade, for example, the east façade starts the slant inward. As it rises the full height of the tower, 43 storeys, that same front emerges as a separate architectural element in its own right.

The surprisingly modest entrance leads to one of the most striking lobbies this city has ever seen. Minimal to the point of sparseness, the space is divided by a row of large bulkheads that divide banks of elevators. The furniture, a pair of black stone benches and a matching security desk, is so cool it squeaks. The space achieves a kind of perfection.

Outside, the block-long development brings a new level of activity and life to long-suffering Wellington. Keep in mind that west of Simcoe, it is a street of loading docks, back doors and garage entrances, all necessary, but hardly the stuff of great urban moments.

That didn’t stop the designers from engaging Wellington directly. The most dramatic feature is a 10-storey podium, glass and steel, that comes out to the sidewalk. Though unfinished, the street-level element of the hotel/condo next door is already attracting attention. Above, an enormous cornice, about five or six storeys high, reaches out from the building, a gesture as protective as it is eye-catching.

Not so long ago, a bank tower such as this would have been inconceivable anywhere west of University Ave., especially on Wellington. There are other big structures in the neighbourhood – the CBC Broadcast Centre to the west and Metro Hall to the north – but no one would have expected to find them in the Financial District. Historically, that’s where a project such as RBC would have gone.

It says much about the growing maturity of our city that bankers are now comfortable building on land outside their traditional Valhalla at King and Bay. And nobody could argue a tower of such quality isn’t infinitely preferable to the parking lot it replaced.

The third new highrise is the Telus Tower on Bremner Blvd. at York St. Again, it’s on the wrong side of the tracks, but on a site that makes a lot of sense.

For a community awash in residential construction, the advent of three distinctly nondomestic towers reminds us that the city is more than just a place to live and play. The condo-ization of every neighbourhood in Toronto, including the Financial District itself, comes at a cost, namely that of diversity. Though it’s unlikely anyone will thank the Royal Bank, we should be happy it decided to stay downtown. In recent decades, financial institutions have been quietly heading for the asphalt hills of Mississauga.

The fact that that has started to change says something important about where Toronto’s going. Even before Richard Florida and the Gospel of the Creative Class came along, it was clear that cities represented the future.

The fact that the RBC was also designed to meet LEED green building Gold certification – meaningless in a suburban setting – also speaks volumes about the goals of contemporary corporate architecture. Informed by the need for urbanity, the KPF scheme represents a genuine act of city-building, not just another tower.

And so one more gap in the urban fabric has been filled, a tear repaired. Though Toronto remains a work in progress, the RBC Centre brings it one step closer to completion. Other buildings will have to go so that work can continue, but this new complex is a keeper. It deserves to stay.

 

Design: KPMB Architects

Image Credits: Tom Arban

The Royal Conservatory of Music’s Koerner Hall, which opened its doors this past Friday, boasts 1,137 new seats under stunning, undulating ribbons of oak, adding a new Toronto venue "of international importance" to KPMB’s portfolio. Acoustical panels and lights are detailed into the split of these waves, creating a path for both sound and experience. 

 

 

 

 

The design of the 1135-seat concert hall is based on the classic shoe-box shape of some of the world’s finest concert halls, and features two balcony tiers above the main orchestra level, and a third technical balcony. Juxtaposed against the shoebox form of the hall, the wood balcony fronts and curving walls create a warm, sculpted ‘liner’ within the rectangular form. Sightlines and adjustable acoustics allow for a broad range of concert types including live televised broadcast.

The signature element is the ‘veil’ of undulating oak ‘strings’. The ‘veil’ forms the backdrop for the chorus at the first balcony level, then hovers over the stage below the fixed acoustic canopy, extending into and over the hall at the technical balcony level. The strings act as part of the acoustic reflection when under the canopy, and then become acoustically transparent over the rest of the space. Balcony fronts and seats, as well as the hall floors are natural oak, contrasted against undulating black plaster panels that line the hall and resonate the dark stone that wraps the exterior of the Hall. 

 

Design: Stantec Architecture Ltd.

Image Credits: Stantec Architecture Ltd.

Once the home to McGregor Sock Factory, this heritage building was first built in 1905 and was recently repurposed as a home for Stantec’s own multi-disciplinary office space. The warmth of the space is achieved throughout by using reclaimed 500-year-old white pine timbers and revealing much of the building’s original structure.  

An incision was made through the space to create a two storey volume which connects the two levels via a public zone featuring shared reception, meeting rooms, design library and café spaces. An internal stair connects the space and encourages casual interaction and collaboration among multi-disciplinary professionals.

The open studio environment features a low-profile, open and flexible layout that maximizes daylight and views for all occupants. A raised floor system offers underfloor air, power and data distribution, exposing the beautiful wood structure to emphasize the industrial heritage of the building.

Design: Moriyama & Teshima Architects

Image Credits: Tom Arban Photography

The design of this Prayer Hall combines two existing, triangular-shaped stepped lecture halls into a new, single level, symmetrical, east oriented room for two hundred worshippers. The space is spiritually evocative and uses light and material to accommodate those faiths that worship iconographically and those that worship iconoclastically.

The expression of light is the distinguishing feature of the space. Framed in Venetian Plaster is 80 square meters of glowing, back lit ceiling and front wall. The onyx is panelized using sacred numerology and geometries to create a ceiling mosaic that subtly references the religious structure of all faiths. The gesture is minimal with a custom support ceiling system and hidden alcoves on the front wall which, when open, reveal the icons of four of the most active faith groups on campus.

Design: Kohn Shnier Architects

Image Credits: Tom Arban Photography

The complex program of this building accommodates a specialty school that emphasizes the arts through an enriched curriculum. As such, the spaces are flexible and thoughtfully arranged over three levels.

The rectangular building hews closely to the street on its dense inner-suburban site, and the spectacular honeycomb facade, looking out over the schoolyard, communicates with passing traffic.

From the elevated front doors, the plan is highly transparent. A light-filled atrium to one side reveals a corridor below (wide enough to accommodate rolling bass drums and other equipment). A nearby peephole gives the school’s artistic director a bird’s-eye view of the atrium. And an off-kilter composition of fluorescent lighting tubes adds a bit of whimsy to a wall for student art. To allow for large uninterrupted spans, the architects specified a structural system of precast concrete planks. Because these provide inherent fire separation, there was no need for drop ceilings, creating studio-like spaces with exposed ducts and extra height.

Will Alsop, the architect behind OCAD’s audacious Sharp Centre for Design and the remarkable WESTside Lofts sales centre, has just been announced to join the faculty at Toronto’s Ryerson University architecture department.

"Let’s put it this way," says the unconventional architect/painter, "if Harvard were to ask me to do something, I’d probably say no."

As the man who always cheers for the underdog explains it, "I like the graduate department at Ryerson because it’s fairly young, it’s only been around for a few years, and I like things that are new."

Read Christopher Hume’s Toronto Star article here.

It is always a pleasure to discover contemporary houses being added to the urban landscape of Toronto. Here are three notable examples, the final products of which are eagerly anticipated:  

 

Location: Bernard Avenue and Admiral Road 

 

Location: Heath Street West and Dunvegan Road 

 

Location: Winnett Avenue and Durham Avenue 

Source: Torontoist, 06.12.09 

Image Credits: Miles Storey

This morning marked the official opening of the Simcoe WaveDeck, the latest milestone in the ambitious central waterfront transformation. In total, four of these curvy, boardwalk-meets-bridge structures will be open by 2012, each at the base of a major waterfront street. The award-winning Spadina WaveDeck opened late last summer, the Rees WaveDeck is on schedule for a launch later this season, and the Parliament WaveDeck is working its way through the design development phase. Aptly named, each WaveDeck is a variation of a multi-layered, undulating ribbon of wood, rising as tall as six feet above the ground and dipping to almost skim the water’s surface.

West 8, the Rotterdam design and architecture firm behind the project, along with Toronto-based du Toit Allsopp Hiller, were awarded this commission in 2006, after winning an international design competition. There are two major objectives to this design initiative, which the WaveDecks so clearly illustrate [PDF]. The first is to introduce continuity along the water’s edge, on both architectural and functional levels. Architectural continuity, in this case, is the iconic language of the wooden curves. Now that two WaveDecks are open to the public, this “consistent design signature” will help Torontonians immediately identify it with the Central Waterfront. Alternatively, a basic example of functional continuity is the ability to walk along the water’s edge from one end to the other.

Traces of commercial activity that once dominated Toronto’s shoreline now act as barriers between pedestrians and the blue water’s edge. Slips, those water-filled spaces cut into the land, were built as part of the Toronto Harbour to facilitate trade from the St. Lawrence Seaway. They were where ships once loaded and unloaded. In total, there are eight heads of slip—Portland, Spadina, Peter, Rees, Simcoe, York, Yonge, and Jarvis—over which the walkable surface area will be expanded. Each segment will be joined together via new and existing walkways to produce a fully connected promenade along the water’s edge, spanning three kilometres from Bathurst Street to Parliament Street.

The second objective introduces specific design projects for each of the eight heads of slip, such as the proposals for the redevelopment of the Jarvis Street slip. These designs will each establish a unique space at the terminus of the respective north-south street and act as a gateway between Queens Quay Boulevard and sparkling Lake Ontario.

In the case of the Simcoe Street slip, the WaveDeck achieves all of the above. The forms, ranging from subtle to dramatic, are inspired by the obvious visual metaphor of the water, but also provide the perceptual serenity that people seek from the water’s edge. Physically, the wave shape satisfies the need for an enveloping interface of systems: the varying slope angles help indicate whether a particular area is intended as a space for chilling, a space for playing, or both. The flexibility of the curves can promote a range of activities such as kayak-launching, speed-walking, bubble-blowing, or any number of other experiences. One of the greatest benefits of this project is that it will connect its users with the activity and opportunity that already exists at the waterfront.

Design: superkül inc.

Image Credits: Tom Arban Photography / Lorne Bridgman

The conversion of an industrial shed—from a blacksmith shop built in the early 1880s through a variety of industrial and commercial uses—to a single family home in 2009 is an example of a beautiful approach to urban sustainability and revitalization, laneway housing, and smaller footprint living.

Located on a 40’ x 18’ lot, it is built to the property lines on three sides, with 2’ to spare on the fourth. Current zoning regulations don not allow for additional openings in any of the walls, so the design strategy was to draw additional light, air and views from above. A light shaft topped by skylights runs the length of the west wall of the building, broken only by a courtyard on the second floor. The shaft brings light to the ground floor, and provides passive ventilation. On the second floor, a glass and wood wrapped courtyard separates the two bedrooms. From the courtyard, with its primary view to the sky, there is a small stair up to a roof garden.

The existing rusted steel cladding panels on the building were catalogued before they were removed. They were then brake-formed with a flat-lock seam and re-installed as the primary building skin. Black-stained knotty cedar clads the remainder of the building.

 

Design: Taylor Smyth Architects

Image Credits: Taylor Smyth Architects

This successful conversion from graphic design office into a residence for a bachelor relies heavily on its material composition and play between privacy and natural light. The exterior palette consists of simple raw materials that resonate with the urban environment—black zinc, grey concrete block, stucco, clear anodized aluminum and ipe. Natural light penetrates deep into each room as a result of the strategically placed linear skylights and glass slots. The house is a series of glass courtyards, provoking unique relationships between each of the spaces. 

 

 

On a narrow street of Victorian, working class cottages in Toronto’s Yorkville neighbourhood, Bishop Street Residence is the conversion of a post-industrial building from a graphic design firm to a bachelor’s residence. The design negotiates the tightness and public nature of its urban site, while playing out desirable scenarios of a contemporary, urban retreat.
White walls and ceilings with black feature walls showcases the owner’s extensive collection of furniture, photography, lighting, and sculpture. This gallery-like concept is accentuated by the use of a tinted, hydronically heated concrete floor. In the dining room, a custom wine cooler is encased by floor to ceiling glass that creates illusions of floating wine bottles inside clear plexiglass boxes Blackened steel lines the staircase and continues to the upper hall floor, where a glass floor slot runs directly below one of the linear skylights, drawing more light onto the ground floor.