Toronto: The Latest Architecture and News

+ 12

• Architects

  StudioAC

• Location

  Toronto, ON, Canada

• Category

  Loft

• Area

  1.686 m2

• Project Year

  2018

• Photographs

  Jeremie Warshafsky

Winter is hardly the high season for Toronto's waterfront. Nevertheless, the annual design competition Ice Breakers aims to draw people back to the outdoors, populating the frozen harborside with installations celebrating the winter. This year's winning designs are currently on show, centering around the theme "Signal Transmission."

For a third year in a row, Ports Toronto and the Waterfront Business Improvement Area (WBIA) partnered to produce this 2019 exhibition. Out of hundreds of international submissions, the winning designs include an illuminated starlight house, kaleidoscopic mirrors, and arches of bells, now on display until February 24.

See all five winning installations with descriptions by the architects below.

+ 11

• Architects

  Diamond Schmitt Architects

• Location

  Toronto, ON, Canada

• Category

  fitness club

• Lead Architects

  A.J. Diamond, Donald Schmitt, Vic Jaunkalns, Derek Revington, Jon Soules

• Area

  14400.0 m2

• Project Year

  1984

• Photographs

  Fiona Spalding-Smith, Lisa Logan, Steven Evans

Five years ago, Raw Design, Ferris + Associates and Curio founded the Winter Stations Design Competition to bring innovative design concepts to Toronto’s beaches in the winter months. This year, four designs were selected from hundreds of submissions and will be joined by two student submissions to dot the beachfront alongside vacant lifeguard stations.

The six successful design concepts explore the concept of “migration.” This concept was internalized by each team who generated six unique and original designs that explore contemporary social issues, political issues, and the human condition surrounding “migration.” From their investigations, each team brought a design to the seasonal waterfront, drawing people to the beach and inviting dialogue.

Bjarke Ingels Group has revealed new images for their King Street West condo community in Toronto. The development was formed as sets of pixels extruded upwards to create space for housing, retail and boutique offices. The concept was made to avoid the footprints of heritage buildings that already exist on site. The latest renderings revealed both interior and exterior images of the striking new development.

+ 11

+ 12

• Architects

  StudioAC

• Location

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada

• Category

  Loft

• Area

  1143.0 m2

• Project Year

  2018

• Photographs

  Jeremie Warshafsky Photography

+ 15

• Architects

  Urbanscape Architects

• Location

  Toronto, Canada

• Category

  Houses Interiors

• Lead Architects

  Ali Malek

• Project Team

  Ali Malek, Tony Dinardo, Daniele Laurentini

• Area

  205.0 m2

• Project Year

  2017

• Photographs

  Revelateur Studio

BIG’s “unzipped wall,” which served as the 2016 Serpentine Pavilion in London, has been opened to the public in Toronto under the new title “Unzipped.” Having been transported to the city and rebuilt in collaboration with Westbank, new photographs by Derek Shapton show the completed pavilion standing as a temporary place of showcase and events in downtown Toronto.

“Unzipped” is the first Serpentine Pavilion to embark on a multi-city tour of this kind, before ultimately landing in a permanent home on the Vancouver waterfront.

+ 5

+ 21

• Architects

  Cumulus Architects

• Location

  301 Front St W, Toronto, ON M5V 2T6, Canada

• Category

  Buildings

• Lead Architect

  Sheldon Catarino

• Designer

  Carolina Mellado

• Designers

  Kyle Benassi, Nathaniel Mendiola, Mitchell Martyn, Denis Lemieux

• Area

  10441.0 ft2

• Project Year

  2018

• Photographs

  Lisa Logan

+ 13

• Architects

  Urbanscape Architects

• Location

  Toronto, Canada

• Category

  Houses Interiors

• Lead Architects

  Ali Malek

• Project Team

  Ali Malek, Aram Vakili

• Area

  205.0 m2

• Project Year

  2017

• Photographs

  Revelateur Studio

Bjarke Ingels Group has received approval for their King Street West condo community in Toronto. Originally proposed in 2016, the development was made as sets of pixels extruded upwards to create space for housing, retail and boutique offices. The concept was formed to avoid the footprints of heritage buildings that already exist on site. Alex Bozikovic, architecture critic of The Globe and Mail, reports that the development is about to start sales as King Street West pushes past its latest development hurdle.

+ 29

• Architects

  Kearns Mancini Architects, Patkau Architects

• Location

  Toronto, ON, Canada

• Category

  Learning

• Associated Architects

  Kearns Mancini Architects

• Project Team – Patkau Architects

  James Eidse, Mike Green, Dimitri Koubatis, Shane O’Neill, John Patkau, Patricia Patkau, Thomas Schroeder, Luke Stern, Michael Thorpe

• Area

  2380.0 m2

• Project Year

  2012

+ 28

• Architects

  Hariri Pontarini Architects

• Location

  Toronto, ON, Canada

• Category

  Sustainability

• Project Team

  Siamak Hariri, Michael Boxer, Jeff Strauss, Edward Joseph, Howard Wong, Cara Kedzior, Rico Law, Andria Fong, John Cook

• Partner in Charge

  Siamak Hariri

• Project Year

  2017

• Photographs

  Doublespace Photography, Hariri Pontarini Architects, Siamak Hariri

Sidewalk Labs has unveiled a new proposal for Toronto's eastern waterfront and a neighborhood development called Quayside. After announcing plans to create a model smart city in Toronto last fall, Sidewalk Labs has been working to pioneer a new approach to future urban developments. Plans for Quayside were revealed during a roundtable discussion on August 14, 2018. As the subsidiary of Google's parent company Alphabet, the team responded to an open call from Waterfront Toronto with a design that features heated pavements, large public spaces and mass timber buildings.

+ 11

The collaboration of Bjarke Ingels Group and Westbank are celebrating two milestones in Canada, as the topping out of their innovative Vancouver House coincides with the advanced construction of their relocated Serpentine Pavilion in Toronto.

The two BIG-designed structures, located on opposite coasts, have both been recognized for their architectural innovation. The LEED-Platinum Vancouver House was awarded the World Architecture Festival’s Future Building of the Year in 2015, while the “unzipped wall” is the first Serpentine Pavilion to embark on a multi-city tour of this kind, before ultimately landing in a permanent home on the Vancouver waterfront.

+ 9

Carlo Ratti Associati, working in collaboration with Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs, has unveiled their design for a modular paving system named “The Dynamic Street.” Intended to make streets “reconfigurable, safer, and more accessible to pedestrians, cyclists, and tomorrow’s self-driving vehicles,” the project will be on display at Sidewalk Lab’s office and experimentation space in Toronto throughout the summer of 2018.

Manifesting as a series of hexagonal modular pavers, the project explores the various patterns which can be created by reconfiguring modules, with a potential future “allowing a street to create an extra car lane during rush hour before then turning it into a pedestrian-only plaza in the evening.”

+ 13