West Don Lands Block 8 - Winner, 2019 Canadian Architect Award of Excellence
– 29 Nov 2019
From the December 2019 issue of Canadian Architect:
Block 8 is a three-building development in Toronto’s 80-hectare West Don Lands. The brownfield site has a patchwork of neighbours: the brick warehouses of the Distillery District, the glass and...
MOCA moves into an ugly-beautiful building that changed a Toronto neighbourhood
– 03 May 2019
In modelling, the term for someone who possesses unconventional, rough, or odd features is “ugly beautiful.” … If there were some sort of organization for ugly-beautiful buildings, 158 Sterling Rd., built by the Northern Aluminum Company in 1919-20...
Danish firm COBE and architectsAlliance design affordable housing in downtown Toronto
– 19 Mar 2019
Danish architectural firm COBE will be leaving their mark on a new mixed use development in Toronto. A client group consisting of Dream Unlimited, Kilmer Van Nostrand Co. Limited and Tricon Capital Group has commissioned COBE to develop a large...
The Unshowy Showcase
– 21 Feb 2019
A former factory turned intentionally raw gallery, Toronto’s new Museum of Contemporary Art was crafted for the city it serves, not Instagram
When Peter Clewes, principal of the Toronto firm architectsAlliance, was hired to turn an abandoned factory...
Next to the Crystal, Toronto could be getting a grand new golden box.
– 21 Feb 2019
The University of Toronto has submitted plans to the city for a new building just south of the Royal Ontario Museum, where the old McLaughlin Planetarium now stands.
And while it’s a university building, containing a Tetris stack of classrooms and...
New U of T building to create a cultural and intellectual gateway between university and city
– 21 Feb 2019
A proposed new University of Toronto building at 90 Queen’s Park Crescent will bring together academic and public spaces to create a hub for urban and cultural engagement.
…The nine-storey building will be designed by world-renowned architects...
True North
– 01 Feb 2019
Embracing both tradition and modernity, Toronto has a slew of new boutique hotels and one-off restaurants while sympathetically reusing former industrial spaces.
Toronto, or ‘Torono’ as its inhabitants would have it, is North America’s best-kept...
ULX: Multifaced Mixed Use
– 14 Jan 2019
With the popularity of walkable urban environments on the rise, more developers are turning to mixed-use projects, usually bringing together some combination of office, housing, and shops, sometimes with a hotel or community-serving uses. The...
MOCA: Toronto gets a gallery that’s global, local and wide open
– 25 Sep 2018
Believe. That’s the title of the exhibition that reopened the Museum of Contemporary Art in Toronto this weekend. But believe in what?
In the power of art to bring people together, to think across the neighbourhood and across national borders. The...
West Don Lands, 2017–2018 Global Awards for Excellence Winner
– 13 Nov 2017
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Master developer: Waterfront Toronto; precinct plan: Urban Design Associates
Developers: Urban Capital (River City), DREAM Unlimited, Kilmer Group (Canary District), Toronto Community Housing
Public realm and...
2017 Toronto Urban Design Awards
– 01 Sep 2017
From the Jurors’ Report:
Every two years, the City of Toronto Urban Design Awards program provides an opportunity to assess the progress of the city’s built environment, and to recognize those buildings that strengthen the public realm. The program...
Food for Thought: A new condo development in historic St. Lawrence Market
– 15 Aug 2015
Sam Crignano, president of Cityzen Development Group, beams with excitement at the prospect of his latest condo creation — 158 Front. The developer behind the L-Tower and Pier 27 condos, Crignano is billing this development as an especially rare...
Accelerated Urbanism
– 15 Jun 2015
Waterfront Toronto has a long roster of slow-burning projects on its list. But they recently put the pedal to the metal on one of these endeavours— the redevelopment of a 14.3-hectare site bordered by the Don River.
The accelerated developement was...
Toronto Developers Bring New Tower to 150 Redpath
– 06 Jun 2015
Freed Developments and CD Capital are following on the heels of their successful 155 Redpath project with a sister tower called 150 Redpath Condominiums, to be built just across the street from it. Located just north of Eglinton Avenue between Yonge...
ICE Condos East Tower Nearing Completion in Toronto
– 20 May 2015
Recognized for their "swiss cheese" rooftops, Lanterra Developments' ICE Condominiums development consists of a 57-story and a 67-story tower which have expanded Toronto's downtown skyline south over the past four years. Designed by...
Pier 27 condo complex turns conventionality on its side – literally
– 12 Feb 2015
The architecture of spectacle now taking shape on Toronto’s waterfront will be nothing less than a stage set for the 21st-century city. It began in 2010 with Sugar Beach and Sherbourne Common, but has since been taken up by the private sector, most...
2014 International Awards Program for Religious Art & Architecture
– 19 Dec 2014
Renovation Award – St. James Cathedral Centre
Nothing impressed the 2014 awards jury (which met last July to review 134 submissions) as much as the sheer diversity of the submissions across the categories, and the overall high quality of the work....
St. James Cathedral Centre / architectsAlliance
– 13 Mar 2014
The new St. James Cathedral Centre stands in the shadow of the Cathedral Church of St. James. The new administrative and outreach headquarters for the Anglican Diocese of Toronto, described by urban affairs journalist Christopher Hume as “a marvel...
George Brown student residence a life lesson in urban planning: Hume
– 12 Mar 2014
The timing couldn’t be better. Just when Toronto seemed hopelessly mired in official idiocy and public self-hatred, along comes the West Don Lands to remind us the city has a future after all.
An afternoon spent wandering the new neighbourhood is...
The most beautiful in the land
– 01 Dec 2013
Christopher Hume says Canada’s architectural beauty queens stand out for very different reasons
… 5. The Deanery at St. James Cathedral [formal name: St. James Cathedral Centre]
When it opened last year, this breath-taking glass pavilion quietly...
2013 CUI Brownie Awards Results
– 24 Oct 2013
2013 CUI Brownie Awards: Recognizing excellence in Brownfield Redevelopment across Canada
October 24, 2013 - Toronto, ON
The 13th annual CUI Brownie Awards were presented at a Gala Dinner at the Westin Harbour Castle on the evening of October 23rd...
Diller Scofidio + Renfro and architectsAlliance present a Design Vision for the Gardiner
– 13 Jun 2013
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Diller Scofidio + Renfro and architectsAlliance present a Design Vision for the Gardiner
For more information on the DS+R/aA Vision, and the other teams’ proposals, visit Design Ideas.
Following an international call for...
'Blue sky' design ideas for crumbling Gardiner unveiled; including buried highway, eight-lane boulevard
– 13 Jun 2013
by Natalie Alcoba, National Post
The ideas don't come with a price tag, but they span the gamut - everything from building a new Gardiner next to the current one, or replacing it...
The City of Toronto and the agency in charge of waterfront...
Wraps come off plans for the Gardiner Expressway
– 12 Jun 2013
by Elizabeth Church, The Globe and Mail
Conceptual plans to fix, improve, replace or rip down the eastern section of the Gardiner Expressway prepared three years ago by a who's-who of international firms are finally seeing the light of day.
The blue...
PanAm/Parapan Games Athlete's Village Webcam
– 11 Jun 2013
A webcam for the 2015 PanAm/Parapan Games Athlete's Village is now available. Please click through to this link to monitor progress of this exciting project.
2012 Canadian Architect Awards of Excellence winners announced
– 23 Dec 2012
Canadian Architect announces the winners of the 2012 Awards of Excellence, given each year to architects and architectural graduates for buildings in the design stage. One of only two national award programs devoted exclusively to architecture, the...
Christopher Hume picks the best architecture of 2012
– 20 Dec 2012
Given the amount of construction underway in Toronto, it’s no surprise architecture looms almost as large as the towers its practitioners produce. These days, however, those towers are overwhelmingly residential, not commercial, as they would have...
2015 Pan Am/Parapan American Games Athletes' Village | Canary District
– 01 Dec 2012
ARCHITECTS Dundee Kilmer Integrated Design Team: Joint venture of architectsAlliance and Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects in association with Daoust Lestage inc. and MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller ArchitectsLOCATION Toronto, Ontario
Unlike...
At Four Seasons one site fits all
– 11 Oct 2012
Bay St. north of Bloor St. W. has never lived up to its potential. Despite being one of the most desirable neighbourhoods in town, it has that anonymous look you'd expect to find on the city's less prominent thoroughfares.
That started to change in...
Game on! Building for Pan-Am 2015
– 18 Sep 2012
Toronto is arguably one of those great cities whose diversity is as big as its heart. Our urban metropolis — the largest in the country — is a heady mix of many things. Neighbourhoods vary, ethnicities converge and the people who inhabit it are a...
‘A machine wrapped in glass’: Stunning new $112-million Cairns bioscience complex opens
– 14 Sep 2012
“Stunning.”
“Sleek.”
Those were some of the adjectives used to describe the visually imposing impact of the new Cairns Family Health and Bioscience Research Complex that officially opened at Brock University Friday afternoon.
But the hundreds of...
A Toronto tower that aims to 'blend into the sky'
– 29 Aug 2012
While visiting a Rosedale house a few weeks ago, I glanced out an upstairs window and caught sight of the glistening, almost-finished tower of the new Four Seasons hotel and condo complex. I was surprised to see it, since uninterrupted summertime...
Cairns complex holds Niagara's future
– 14 Aug 2012
Brock University’s Cairns Family Health and Bioscience Research Complex has been dubbed a “game changer.”
Not because of its cluster of renown researchers. Not because of the cutting-edge 15,840-square-metre facility. And not because of its Biolinc...
Brock showcases world-class research greenhouse
– 25 Jul 2012
Brock University will soon host a greenhouse that could play a big role in developing materials for bio-manufacturing and valuable drugs for pain relief and cancer treatment.
When it opens in the $111.4 million Cairns Family Health and Bioscience...
Modern city taking flight through Canary
– 18 May 2012
This Canary isn’t in a coal mine, but it’s just as much a sign of things ahead, in this case, entirely positive.
We’re talking about the mixed-use residential neighbourhood now under construction in the West Don Lands. Named for the greasy spoon...
This canary sings a pretty tune for Toronto
– 17 May 2012
When the sod was turned for the 2015 Pan American Games athletes’ village on Tuesday, it felt like a curse on Toronto’s urban fabric and memory was being lifted at last.
The place where the village will be built was, until the 1960s, a busy railway...
Chris Hume: Pan Am Games 2015 Athletes Village a winner
– 13 Jan 2012
Already a river runs through it; but by 2015, when the Pan-Am Games begin, there’ll be a lot more than that to go with the flow.
We’re talking about the West Don Lands, of course, soon to be known as the site of the Athletes’ Village, which for...
Construction Underway for new West Don Lands Community in time for 2015 Pan/Parapan American Games
– 12 Jan 2012
Infrastructure Ontario and Waterfront Toronto announced today that Dundee Kilmer Developments has signed a fixed-price contract to design, build and finance the development that will be used as the Athletes’ Village during the Toronto 2015 Pan/...
Future looking up for tall buildings?
– 22 Dec 2011
Toronto’s towers have grown up, but not its citizenry. Though the real issue is how our buildings behave at street level, the city and its planners remain fixated on height.
“There needs to be intensification,” argues architect Bruce Kuwabara. “What...
United Gulf to build 48-storey towers in Halifax
– 12 Oct 2011
United Gulf Developments Ltd. has unveiled plans for a $350 million, mixed-use project in Halifax, Nova Scotia, designed to reflect the city’s sea-faring traditions and rich maritime history.
The two, 48-storey towers resemble a ship’s twin sails, “...
TOO TALL?
– 30 Sep 2011
How should appropriate building height be determined within the city?
Does tall matter if the streetscape is successful?
How can Toronto neighbourhoods be redefined vertically?
As cities focus on increasing density in urban cores as an alternative...
Topping Off a Construction Milestone
– 29 Nov 2010
A traditional topping-off ceremony was held this morning to mark a milestone in the construction of Brock’s newest research facility, and recognize the workers and contractors who are building the new structure.
More than 60 people gathered for the...