Toronto: The Latest Architecture and News

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Today marks Canadian Thanksgiving, and to celebrate the occasion we've rounded up some of Canada's best architecture. Our five selections represent five Canadian cities, each with a unique architectural sensibility. We begin in Toronto with the Royal Ontario Museum addition by Studio Daniel Libeskind, a striking intervention using prisms of glass and steel fused to a 102-year-old museum structure; next we go to Montréal for Habitat 67 by Moshe Safdie, an interlocking modular housing project designed for the World Exposition of 1967; to Calgary for Santiago Calatrava's understated Peace Bridge, a stunning glass-encased red lightning bolt spanning the city's widest waterway; then to Winnipeg's Old Market Square Stage by emerging firm 5468796 Architecture, a chameleonic performance space wrapped by a mesh curtain of steel cubes; and finally to the outskirts of Vancouver for the Richmond Olympic Oval, a masterpiece of engineering and the centre of attention during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. Enjoy, eh.

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Videos

Developer Ivanhoé Cambridge has confirmed plans for a major, multi-phased office and transit development in the heart of Toronto’s financial core, just east of Union Station. Designed by London-based Wilkinson Eyre, following an international competition, the two-tower development will rise on both sides of the railway tracks and connect via an elevated public park. The South tower will include a major new GO Bus Terminal serving Union Station and will be topped with commercial retail.

More on the development, after the break.

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Designed for a laneway inside the Little Portugal neighborhood of Toronto, Flipping Properties tests the boundaries between architecture and furniture. The exhibition, created by Jiminez Lai and his team, Bureau Spectacular, unravels the traditional pentagonal shape of a house to create ‘super-furniture.’ Super-furniture is defined by Lai as “too big to be furniture and too small to be architecture.” The large installation pieces are meant to encourage dialogue on unused urban spaces in Toronto, while creating a novel way to interact with those spaces. Despite their size, the pieces can be rearranged within the laneway, allowing for a variety of assemblages to be created. Flipping Properties opened July 11th, and will be in place until September 14th in the laneway between Sheridan Avenue and Gordon Street in Toronto. Admission is free to the public. See the full gallery of exhibition photos, after the break.

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According to the most recent national census in Canada, almost half of Toronto residents are immigrants, one-third of whom arrived in the past ten years. To allow the city to adapt to this surging flow of immigrants, Architecture for Humanity Toronto (AFHTO) has called upon students and professionals from various backgrounds to rethink Toronto's urban fabric - and, in particular, its high-rise developments - by establishing a series of lectures and workshops entitled "Incremental Strategies for Vertical Neighborhoods."

At the inaugural event a few weeks ago, Filipe Balestra of Urban Nouveau* was invited to speak about his work and contribute to a design charrette inspired by the City of Toronto's Tower Renewal program. For more on Balestra and the event, keep reading after the break.