Projects
  • Don Mills Jamatkhana and Ismaili Community Centre
    Toronto, ON ● In Design 2025
    institutional
    Ismaili Centres are found in 25 countries, marking the presence of this branch of Shi’a Islam in communities around the world. When complete, the Ismaili Centre & Jamatkhana of Don Mills will celebrate more than 50 years since the first immigration of Ismailis to the Greater Toronto Area, and mark the site of the first Ismaili prayer hall in Ontario. The site is located in a low-density employment zone in Toronto’s Thorncliffe Park, a suburban Toronto neighbourhood near the Don River. Thorncliffe Park was established in the 1950s as an employment and residential node, and is still constrained by the segregated land uses imposed by mid-century urban planning. The Don Mills Jamatkhana re-defines what constitutes “highest and best use” in …
  • 2025 Richmond & Ontario Residences Toronto, Ontario 24,000 m2 residential ● commercial ● mixed-use
  • 2024 Sugar Wharf LCBO Lands Toronto, Ontario 394,525 m2 residential ● commercial ● mixed-use
  • 2023 Crosstown Block 5A Toronto, Ontario 34,850 m2 residential ● mixed-use ● institutional ● commercial
  • Escarpment House
    Ontario Escarpment, ON ● Completed 2023
    residential
    Escarpment House is a multigenerational retreat for a couple, their adult children, and grandchildren, located on a 20-hectare site within a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. It rises up from and rests gently atop the Niagara Escarpment, a ridge of dolomitic limestone circling the western end of Lake Ontario and sweeping northwest to Georgian Bay. Depleted by a century of agricultural use, the terrain is reverting to native species partially through the efforts of landowners including a—A’s client. Embracing this natural richness, the house merges into the crest of the landscape and sits below the brow of a dramatic 30% slope overlooking a spring-fed pond. Set in a planar arrangement of terraces and retaining walls and clad in local …
  • West Don Lands Blocks 3/4/7
    Toronto, Ontario ● In Design 2023
    residential ● mixed-use ● commercial
    A three-block site in the West Don Lands offers a new interpretation of the neighbourhood’s language of courtyard buildings and a new take on a–A’s sensitive reinterpretation of the WDL’s heritage warehouse architecture. Vibrant high streets, sheltered publicly accessible courtyards, and intimate residential enclaves combine to augment the creative, ‘coherent diversity’ of Toronto’s eastern waterfront precinct. Blocks 3/4/7 sit immediately north of the Distillery District and west of the Canary District, where a–A established master plans and executed a number of residential and mixed-use projects. The form and massing of the blocks explore the same language that a–A and its collaborator, Cobe, developed for the WDL Block 8. Facetted …
  • 2022 33 Yorkville Toronto, Ontario 101,402 m2 residential ● commercial ● mixed-use
  • 2022 Adelaide Street Hotel Toronto, Ontario 3,905 m2 residential ● hospitality
  • Junction Point
    Toronto, Ontario ● In Construction 2022
    residential
    Junction Point serves as a monument to the Junction itself, marking the neighbourhood’s eastern boundary and encapsulating its distinct architectural character: a street of Victorian storefronts and early 20th century warehouses encircling blocks of single-family century homes like a rampart. The three-sided site requires Junction Point to respond contextually to the intensity of Dundas Street West and to quiet residential sides streets. At grade, townhouse units are set back from the street to create a generous public promenade, and screened with brick screens. Above grade, a two-storey expression and terraced west facade break down the massing of the building and preserve the privacy of adjoining homes. Junction Point is the first …
  • Pickering Library
    Pickering, ON ● In Design 2022
    institutional ● mixed-use
    The new Pickering Public Library is a focal point for a new urban community located on lands made available by demolishing the southeast section of the Pickering Town Centre shopping mall. The redevelopment masterplan, created by the architects on behalf of the City of Pickering and the mall owners, weaves housing, retail tenancies, and iconic civic buildings into an active public realm organized around a new Public Square. The Library, a new performing arts space, and seniors and youth centre cluster around the perimeter of the Square and form the living heart of the new community that will be the keystone of Pickering’s Downtown Redevelopment Plan. Highly active public zones such as the learning centre and children's area are located on …
  • Pickering Performing Arts Centre
    Pickering, ON ● In Design 2022
    institutional
    The City of Pickering was looking to redevelop and redefine its urban downtown core as a singular, walkable neighbourhood that arises from the merging of municipal infrastructure retail services and residential intensification. The masterplan developed by architects—Alliance incorporates housing, a central library, youth and seniors centre, and a civic plaza addressing the Pickering City Hall and Esplanade Park. The Pickering Performing Arts Centre (PPAC) will become a key component of this initiative, providing a building that fits within the design aspirations of the masterplan. The PPAC will be the heart of a vibrant new ‘downtown’ community, to be located on a 15-acre site created by partial demolition of the existing Pickering Town …
  • 2022 Via Bloor Toronto, Ontario 61,720 m2 residential ● commercial ● mixed-use
  • West Don Lands Block 8
    Toronto, Ontario ● In Construction 2022
    residential ● mixed-use
    Block 8 opens the latest chapter in the redevelopment of Toronto’s 80-hectare West Don Lands. The project, a City of Toronto pilot, addresses a pressing need for purpose-built high-quality rental housing at all income levels. a-A and its collaborator, Danish architects Cobe, drew heavily on Block 8’s context of vibrant street life, wild ravines, vestiges of 19th century industry, and intimate Victorian side streets. These elements are reinterpreted into a stacked massing of a robust, low-slung podium, followed by a finely detailed mid-rise component, and topped with sculpted towers that identify the new neighbourhood on the skyline. By 2022, the site will be transformed into a diverse, welcoming new downtown community of 770 units of …
  • 2021 Chateau Laurier Addition Ottawa, Ontario 1,193 m2 residential ● hospitality
  • West Block
    Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2020
    residential ● commercial ● mixed-use
    aA breathed new life into a listed heritage waterfront building on a challenging waterfront site – bisected by a regional expressway that stranded the former Loblaws Groceteria building and rendered it commercially unviable for over a decade. aA devised a mixed-use plan that inserted significant residential density at the north end of the site, with servicing and parking access slipped beneath the expressway. The value unlocked by this strategy financed the restoration and expansion of the Art Deco brick building, which has been reborn as a retail magnet for the fast-growing Fort York neighbourhood. A four-storey commercial annex sits lightly atop the 1928 heritage structure, clad in glass with a steel bris soleil and set back from the …
  • 2020 55 Charles Toronto, Ontario 44,453 m2 residential
  • 2020 Art Shoppe Toronto, Ontario 222,500 m2 residential ● commercial ● mixed-use
  • Burnt Barns
    Creemore, Ontario ● Completed 2020
    residential
    This private residence sits on the brow of the Niagara Escarpment, a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve, overlooking the historic village of Creemore. Located on a high grassland edged with mature woodlands, the residence consists of four linked pavilions, their simple geometric forms inspired by the local vernacular of barns and outbuildings and fortified by envelopes of shou sugi ban siding. The plan is also inspired by local traditions of farmhouse architecture, in which paths or breezeways link the main house, ‘summer kitchen’ and ancillary buildings. In this interpretation, the individual pavilions are arranged axially with glazed connections, oriented to face the edge of the escarpment and create a direct relationship between interior …
  • Centre for Civilizations, Cultures & Cities
    Toronto, Ontario ● In Design 2020
    institutional ● academic
    A collaboration between a–A and Diller Scofidio + Renfro of New York City, the CCC will provide a new home for the University of Toronto’s School of Cities, the Faculty of Arts & Science [including history, and Near and Middle Eastern civilizations], as well as the Institute of Islamic Studies, an arm of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies, and the Archaeology Centre. The new building will also provide facilities for the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Music, with a special performance hall and a 400-seat event space overlooking the downtown skyline. The nine-storey building will foster a collaborative, interdisciplinary environment, and draw the public into ongoing discourse on modern and ancient civilizations and culture. …
  • 2020 FORM Toronto, Ontario 13,910 m2 residential ● commercial
  • 2020 Halo Toronto, Ontario 37,566 m2 residential ● commercial ● mixed-use
  • Pier 27 Phases 1 & 2
    Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2020
    residential ● commercial
    Pier 27 is an example of iconic architecture that enriches the public realm while raising the bar for future waterfront development. The first phases of the project consist of four rectilinear pier buildings arranged in pairs, each pair connected by a three-storey cantilevered “bridge” that evokes the gantries used to load cargo on and off freighters in Toronto Harbour. The piers, organized on a north-south axis, frame views of the lake from Yonge Street and gives pedestrians access the public promenade that run along the water’s edge. To maximize lake views, the piers pivot slightly off the north-south axis on upper floors; in the bridge component, all units have views of the lake or the city. A slender tower stands where Queen’s Quay …
  • Ravine House
    Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2020
    residential
    This private residence, an original modernist house designed in 1960s by one of Canada’s most significant post-war architects, is set into the edge of a tree-lined ravine in an exclusive Toronto neighbourhood. a–A reimagined the residence’s interior architecture, arranging overlapping planar volumes to allow light to flood into the core of the house. A restrained palette of materials and simple, industrial detailing creates a counterpoint with the organic forms, colours and textures of the ravine setting—the classic minimalism of the former framing the cyclical changes of the latter.
  • 2020 Sterling Residences Toronto, Ontario 4,000 m2 mixed-use ● commercial ● residential
  • The Farm
    Niagara Escarpment, Ontario ● Completed 2020
    residential
    The Farm is located on a rolling field on the Niagara Escarpment that is one of Canada’s most significant landforms and a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. The area, a major agriculture and logging centre throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, is now a popular location for second homes owned by residents of the major cities of southwestern Ontario’s “Golden Horseshoe”. The owners of the Farm are one such family. The Residence is located at the crest of a slope that falls away diagonally across the site from northeast to southwest. The built form of the Residence is inspired by the 19th century farms still visible throughout the Valley, and their vernacular of strong, rectangular forms that hug the landscape. Traditionally, the main …
  • The Grand at Sky View Parc
    New York, NY ● Completed 2019
    residential
    The second phase of Sky View Parc is a composition of three slab buildings stacked atop a multi-storey shopping centre in a vibrant multicultural neighbourhood in Queens. The three structures, angular and transparent, are oriented on an east-west axis to frame views of the Manhattan skyline. A curtain wall envelope and continuous wrap-around balconies flood residential units with natural light. Themed courtyards between the slabs effectively turn the ‘waste space’ of a mall rooftop into a series of luxurious amenities – a pool and cabana, contemplative garden, and outdoor terrace – set into an expansive 5,110sm planted roof. A dedicated elevator housed in a transparent shaft rises to the courtyard level and lets out onto a covered walkway …
  • 2019 Smart House Toronto, Ontario 14,678 m2 residential
  • 2019 Yonge Street Residences Toronto, Ontario 23,580 m2 mixed-use ● commercial ● residential
  • 2018 60 Colborne Toronto, Ontario 20,000 m2 residential ● commercial ● mixed-use
  • Museum of Contemporary Art
    Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2018
    institutional ● commercial ● mixed-use
    a–A transformed the Tower Automotive Building, a heritage-designated warehouse in Toronto’s Lower Junction, into a new cultural hub anchored by the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada [MOCA], Canada’s newest public gallery dedicated to international contemporary art. MOCA combines a ground-floor public meeting hall, café and temporary exhibit space, with four floors of exhibition halls, workshops and maker spaces, administrative offices and libraries. The top five stories of the building will be occupied by creative practices that are remaking the Lower Junction. The key to the building's revival was a series of unobtrusive interventions that reveal the bones of this extraordinary building – mediations rooted in the history of its …
  • 11 Charlotte
    Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2016
    mixed-use ● residential ● commercial
    The 11 Charlotte condominium building is embedded in an area characterized by vestigial warehouse buildings and service laneways in Toronto’s King West entertainment district. The challenges of the compressed site are addressed with a composition of stepped and stacked boxes. The transparent double-height base, programmed with the residential lobby and a popular local restaurant, steps back from the street edge and south to meet the principal east-west laneway, animating the lane and creating a generous boulevard along Charlotte Street. A five-storey shadowbox clad with alternating vertical bands of masonry and vision glass tops the base, and projects west toward the street. The slender tower steps east and south again, with a strong …
  • 2016 Brant Park Toronto, Ontario 15,080 m2 residential ● commercial ● mixed-use
  • 383 Sorauren
    Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2016
    residential
    As intensification radiates from Toronto’s downtown core, the focus of residential development has fallen on sites along the rail corridors linking Toronto's former industrial precincts. 383 Sorauren occupies one of these interstitial sites, on the boundary between the West Toronto rail line and the Victorian Roncesvalles Village. At a distance, 383 Sorauren reads as a pure sculptural form, its brick faces carved with deep rectangular recesses that evoke its warehouse milieu. From the street, it reveals a tripartite scheme. Atop a transparent base of double-height townhouse units, a middle layer stands within the brick frame, stepping back from the west face on Floors 7 and 8 to expose the brick supporting structure of the building. On …
  • Harbour Plaza
    Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2015
    mixed-use ● commercial ● residential
    Harbour Plaza is a-A’s most ambitious new mixed-use project located in the rapidly developing area of Toronto's new southern Financial core and Union Station. It is composed of two 70-storey residential towers, a 37-storey office tower and a 4-storey commercial/retail podium, creating an island of urbanity within a dense area of transportation infrastructure between Lower Simcoe, Bay Street, the CN Rail Corridor and Lake Ontario. The massing and form of the development organizes substantial density that maximizes pedestrian amenity, by articulating the podium to create a vibrant streetwall along Harbour Street. The modernist commercial tower meets the ground simply, while the residential tower is raised above the street on pillars, …
  • Pan/Parapan American Games Athletes' Village
    Canary District, Ontario ● Completed 2015
    mixed-use ● residential ● institutional ● commercial
    a-A co-led the design and realization of a unique mixed-use development that provides 253 units of affordable housing and 787 units of market housing, and serves as a major building block in Waterfront Toronto’s revitalization plans for the West Don Lands. The Integrated Design Team [architectsAlliance, KPMB Architects, Daoust Lestage inc., and MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects] designed a cohesive yet diverse fabric of buildings that gives every resident access to fresh air, natural light and beautiful public green space. The new community reads like an established neighbourhood, with mid-rise courtyard buildings with setbacks, high levels of sustainability, accessibility to a broadly-abled range of residents, and connections to …
  • Theatre Park
    Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2015
    residential ● mixed-use ● hospitality
    Theatre Park stands at a focal point of local culture and history, inserted beside the Beaux-Arts Royal Alexandra Theatre, facing Arthur Erickson’s Roy Thomson Hall, and surrounded by the fabric of Toronto’s 19th-century industrial core. a–A’s design response reinforces the heritage character of the block and drolly acknowledges its compressed 1,030sm site. The 49-storey tower is ‘bound’ with crisscrossing aluminum bands on its west and east façades, and its narrow dimensions exaggerated by prominent floor slabs expressed on the north and south elevations. The tower floats above a shadowbox base that plays with the warehouse window grid, angling each pane to disrupt the geometry of the podium. The facetted glazing casts a shower of light …
  • 2013 Clear Spirit & The Gooderham Toronto, Ontario 54,300 m2 residential ● commercial ● mixed-use
  • ÏCE at York Centre
    Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2013
    residential ● commercial ● mixed-use
    Ïce is a three-tower complex that is transforming the former CN Railway Lands at the foot of Toronto’s York Street. Each tower has a distinct personality that reflects its program. The office tower – modernist, rational, transparent – incorporates innovative ‘double-skinned’ building technology that controls solar gain. Two slender residential towers have sculpted, highly articulated profiles that frame views of the Lake. Despite the substantial increase in density, existing view corridors through the site are preserved. Seven-meter high open spaces are situated at the base of each tower, linked by a series of public promenades, open-air walkways and a landscaped urban plaza. A raked podium – the first of its size in Toronto – links the …
  • 2013 Market Wharf Toronto, Ontario 54,242 m2 residential ● commercial ● mixed-use
  • Cairns Family Health & Bioscience Research Complex
    St. Catharines, Ontario ● Completed 2012
    institutional ● academic
    The Cairns Complex supports Brock University’s mandate as a regional centre of academic excellence and cutting-edge research, with health science, biotech and biology labs, and facilities for the Niagara Campus of McMaster University’s Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine. The Centre connects north and west to adjacent buildings via elevated bridges over rolling terrain and allow students and researchers to move easily between buildings. Angled columnar supports beneath the bridges screen a protected courtyard, echoing the modern monasticism of architect Raymond Moriyama’s original plan and architectural designs for the Brock Campus. The Complex achieves LEED® Silver accreditation with ‘green’ design features that include construction …
  • Four Seasons Hotel & Residences
    Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2012
    residential ● commercial ● mixed-use ● hospitality
    a–A designed a landmark mixed-use development for Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts and Menkes Developments Ltd., featuring a five-star hotel and luxury condominiums, located in Toronto’s exclusive Yorkville district. The project comprises of two buildings: a 46-storey condo-hotel tower at the southwest corner of the site, and a 30-storey tower on the northeast portion of the property. The base of the first tower includes hotel and residential lobbies, and a Four Seasons restaurant and bar, while the tower itself contains 254 hotel rooms, and 108 Four Seasons-branded residential condo units. An eight-storey extension at the north end of the building houses hotel ballroom and conference facilities, and a 1,858 m2 Four Seasons spa, health club …
  • 2012 Parc Lofts Toronto, Ontario 7,505 m2 residential
  • St. James Cathedral Centre
    Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2012
    institutional
    a–A was initially asked to undertake extensive restoration and upgrading of the Parish Hall to house outreach programs and the Diocesan archives, and to address a number of pressing structural and maintenance issues. Subsequently, the brief grew to include quarters for the Dean of the Cathedral and accommodations for visiting clergy and laity. The historic facade of the Hall was retained, with three levels of new construction. The program includes grade-related outreach and community assembly space, fronting on to Adelaide Street East and in to St. James Park; below-grade archival, choir and instructional space; and second and third floor administrative and residential space. A new extension reinterprets the traditional cloister, linking …
  • 2009 Beaver Valley House Beaver Valley, Ontario 325 m2 residential
  • 2009 NXT Toronto, Ontario 62,460 m2 residential
  • 2009 Sackville Dundas Apartments Toronto, Ontario 18,187 m2 residential
  • Canadian Chancery Expansion
    The Hague, The Netherlands ● Completed 2008
    institutional
    The Canadian Chancery is a “country within a country” – a part of Canada within a foreign land. Its role is both protective and expressive: it offers refuge to Canadians abroad, while expressing our national character to foreign hosts. The brief for Canada’s mission to the Netherlands allowed us to explore ideas of connection and distinctiveness, tradition and innovation, and public/open versus protected/secure space. Our new annex to the Chancery is linked with the existing structure across a transparent courtyard, and houses expanded immigration, consular offices, and international business development facilities, and a new reception room for 100 guests. Sustainable design features meet the stringent Dutch building code. State-of-the-art …
  • Thompson Hotel & Residences
    Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2008
    residential ● mixed-use ● commercial ● hospitality
    The Thompson Hotel and Residences, combining private and highly public, socially active spaces, represents a type of development that is relatively new to Toronto and which has reimagined an important 19th century reighbourhood. The program of residential, hotel and hospitality uses is clearly expressed in the built form. Three rectilinear buildings span a city block from north to south, linked by a fourth building set along the northern edge of the site. The first building, clad in clear and translucent glass, houses the 95-room boutique hotel and rooftop lounge and marks the intersection of Bathurst and Wellington as a social destination. The remaining three buildings house private residences, and the bays between each form a pair of …
  • 2007 Spire Toronto, Ontario 33,000 m2 residential
  • 2006 Radio City Toronto, Ontario 32,515 m2 residential
  • Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomolecular Research
    Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2006
    institutional ● academic
    The University of Toronto is a world leader in the field of genome research. Together, architects–Alliance and Behnisch Architekten designed and created an advanced research facility that reflects the University’s leadership in the quest for links between genes and disease. The facility is a sustainable, transparent building that promotes collaborative research within flexible, loft-style laboratories. On the ground floor, a planted multi-story atrium connects the Centre to an adjacent heritage campus building. Above, winter gardens and staff lounges punctuate a system of open corridors and stairwells between lab floors, encouraging the informal, serendipitous, interdisciplinary contact on which scientific discoveries are built.
  • Fred Kaiser Engineering Building
    Vancouver, British Columbia ● Completed 2005
    institutional ● academic
    Open, welcoming and transparent, the new Kaiser building establishes a strong presence for the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering on UBC’s Main Mall. The building form – an elegant glass box slipped over an existing structure and linked directly to another – clearly expresses the program of teaching, research and administrative space, and creates a new entry into UBC’s engineering precinct. Light floods the engineering complex. Offices arranged around the perimeter have floor-to-ceiling windows, fritted with a subtle organic pattern that gives solar protection and suggests reflections from the oaks of Main Mall. Windows at the ends of all corridors provide light and outside views. Even labs receive indirect, controllable …
  • Pond Road Student Residence
    Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2005
    residential ● institutional ● academic
    The Residence responds to its long, narrow site, sandwiched between existing buildings and looking south onto a major campus roadway. The L-shaped podium extends over 90 meters along Pond Road, a patterned glass and concrete box that appears to hover above a transparent ground floor. A nine-storey residential tower caps the east end of the podium, creating a U-shaped form that shelters a new courtyard to the north of the residence. The Residence adds urban vitality and contemplative green spaces to a suburban campus. As the first sustainable student housing built to withstand the +40° / -40°c climactic extremes of central Canada, the Residence significantly advanced York’s green design agenda. It uses the same energy as conventional …
  • 2005 Reflections at Bloomington Central Station Minneapolis, USA 26,477 m2 residential
  • 2004 Woodsworth Student Residence & Classroom Complex Toronto, Ontario 16,359 m2 institutional
  • 2003 Mozo Toronto, Ontario 18,265 m2 residential
  • 2001 District Lofts Toronto, Ontario 16,725 m2 residential
  • 1997 Twenty Niagara Toronto, Ontario 3,250 m2 residential
  • Toronto, ON ● In Design 2025
    institutional
    Ismaili Centres are found in 25 countries, marking the presence of this branch of Shi’a Islam in communities around the world. When complete, the Ismaili Centre & Jamatkhana of Don Mills will celebrate more than 50 years since the first immigration of Ismailis to the Greater Toronto Area, and mark the site of the first Ismaili prayer hall in …
  • 2025 Richmond & Ontario Residences
  • 2024 Sugar Wharf LCBO Lands
  • 2023 Crosstown Block 5A
  • Ontario Escarpment, ON ● Completed 2023
    residential
    Escarpment House is a multigenerational retreat for a couple, their adult children, and grandchildren, located on a 20-hectare site within a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. It rises up from and rests gently atop the Niagara Escarpment, a ridge of dolomitic limestone circling the western end of Lake Ontario and sweeping northwest to Georgian Bay. …
  • Toronto, Ontario ● In Design 2023
    residential ● mixed-use ● commercial
    A three-block site in the West Don Lands offers a new interpretation of the neighbourhood’s language of courtyard buildings and a new take on a–A’s sensitive reinterpretation of the WDL’s heritage warehouse architecture. Vibrant high streets, sheltered publicly accessible courtyards, and intimate residential enclaves combine to augment the …
  • 2022 33 Yorkville
  • 2022 Adelaide Street Hotel
  • Toronto, Ontario ● In Construction 2022
    residential
    Junction Point serves as a monument to the Junction itself, marking the neighbourhood’s eastern boundary and encapsulating its distinct architectural character: a street of Victorian storefronts and early 20th century warehouses encircling blocks of single-family century homes like a rampart. The three-sided site requires Junction Point to respond …
  • Pickering, ON ● In Design 2022
    institutional ● mixed-use
    The new Pickering Public Library is a focal point for a new urban community located on lands made available by demolishing the southeast section of the Pickering Town Centre shopping mall. The redevelopment masterplan, created by the architects on behalf of the City of Pickering and the mall owners, weaves housing, retail tenancies, and iconic …
  • Pickering, ON ● In Design 2022
    institutional
    The City of Pickering was looking to redevelop and redefine its urban downtown core as a singular, walkable neighbourhood that arises from the merging of municipal infrastructure retail services and residential intensification. The masterplan developed by architects—Alliance incorporates housing, a central library, youth and seniors centre, and a …
  • 2022 Via Bloor
  • Toronto, Ontario ● In Construction 2022
    residential ● mixed-use
    Block 8 opens the latest chapter in the redevelopment of Toronto’s 80-hectare West Don Lands. The project, a City of Toronto pilot, addresses a pressing need for purpose-built high-quality rental housing at all income levels. a-A and its collaborator, Danish architects Cobe, drew heavily on Block 8’s context of vibrant street life, wild ravines, …
  • 2021 Chateau Laurier Addition
  • Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2020
    residential ● commercial ● mixed-use
    aA breathed new life into a listed heritage waterfront building on a challenging waterfront site – bisected by a regional expressway that stranded the former Loblaws Groceteria building and rendered it commercially unviable for over a decade. aA devised a mixed-use plan that inserted significant residential density at the north end of the site, …
  • 2020 55 Charles
  • 2020 Art Shoppe
  • Creemore, Ontario ● Completed 2020
    residential
    This private residence sits on the brow of the Niagara Escarpment, a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve, overlooking the historic village of Creemore. Located on a high grassland edged with mature woodlands, the residence consists of four linked pavilions, their simple geometric forms inspired by the local vernacular of barns and outbuildings and …
  • Toronto, Ontario ● In Design 2020
    institutional ● academic
    A collaboration between a–A and Diller Scofidio + Renfro of New York City, the CCC will provide a new home for the University of Toronto’s School of Cities, the Faculty of Arts & Science [including history, and Near and Middle Eastern civilizations], as well as the Institute of Islamic Studies, an arm of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish …
  • 2020 FORM
  • 2020 Halo
  • Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2020
    residential ● commercial
    Pier 27 is an example of iconic architecture that enriches the public realm while raising the bar for future waterfront development. The first phases of the project consist of four rectilinear pier buildings arranged in pairs, each pair connected by a three-storey cantilevered “bridge” that evokes the gantries used to load cargo on and off …
  • Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2020
    residential
    This private residence, an original modernist house designed in 1960s by one of Canada’s most significant post-war architects, is set into the edge of a tree-lined ravine in an exclusive Toronto neighbourhood. a–A reimagined the residence’s interior architecture, arranging overlapping planar volumes to allow light to flood into the core of the …
  • 2020 Sterling Residences
  • Niagara Escarpment, Ontario ● Completed 2020
    residential
    The Farm is located on a rolling field on the Niagara Escarpment that is one of Canada’s most significant landforms and a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. The area, a major agriculture and logging centre throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, is now a popular location for second homes owned by residents of the major cities of southwestern …
  • New York, NY ● Completed 2019
    residential
    The second phase of Sky View Parc is a composition of three slab buildings stacked atop a multi-storey shopping centre in a vibrant multicultural neighbourhood in Queens. The three structures, angular and transparent, are oriented on an east-west axis to frame views of the Manhattan skyline. A curtain wall envelope and continuous wrap-around …
  • 2019 Smart House
  • 2019 Yonge Street Residences
  • 2018 60 Colborne
  • Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2018
    institutional ● commercial ● mixed-use
    a–A transformed the Tower Automotive Building, a heritage-designated warehouse in Toronto’s Lower Junction, into a new cultural hub anchored by the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada [MOCA], Canada’s newest public gallery dedicated to international contemporary art. MOCA combines a ground-floor public meeting hall, café and temporary …
  • Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2016
    mixed-use ● residential ● commercial
    The 11 Charlotte condominium building is embedded in an area characterized by vestigial warehouse buildings and service laneways in Toronto’s King West entertainment district. The challenges of the compressed site are addressed with a composition of stepped and stacked boxes. The transparent double-height base, programmed with the residential …
  • 2016 Brant Park
  • Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2016
    residential
    As intensification radiates from Toronto’s downtown core, the focus of residential development has fallen on sites along the rail corridors linking Toronto's former industrial precincts. 383 Sorauren occupies one of these interstitial sites, on the boundary between the West Toronto rail line and the Victorian Roncesvalles Village. At a distance, …
  • Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2015
    mixed-use ● commercial ● residential
    Harbour Plaza is a-A’s most ambitious new mixed-use project located in the rapidly developing area of Toronto's new southern Financial core and Union Station. It is composed of two 70-storey residential towers, a 37-storey office tower and a 4-storey commercial/retail podium, creating an island of urbanity within a dense area of transportation …
  • Canary District, Ontario ● Completed 2015
    mixed-use ● residential ● institutional ● commercial
    a-A co-led the design and realization of a unique mixed-use development that provides 253 units of affordable housing and 787 units of market housing, and serves as a major building block in Waterfront Toronto’s revitalization plans for the West Don Lands. The Integrated Design Team [architectsAlliance, KPMB Architects, Daoust Lestage inc., and …
  • Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2015
    residential ● mixed-use ● hospitality
    Theatre Park stands at a focal point of local culture and history, inserted beside the Beaux-Arts Royal Alexandra Theatre, facing Arthur Erickson’s Roy Thomson Hall, and surrounded by the fabric of Toronto’s 19th-century industrial core. a–A’s design response reinforces the heritage character of the block and drolly acknowledges its compressed …
  • 2013 Clear Spirit & The Gooderham
  • Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2013
    residential ● commercial ● mixed-use
    Ïce is a three-tower complex that is transforming the former CN Railway Lands at the foot of Toronto’s York Street. Each tower has a distinct personality that reflects its program. The office tower – modernist, rational, transparent – incorporates innovative ‘double-skinned’ building technology that controls solar gain. Two slender residential …
  • 2013 Market Wharf
  • St. Catharines, Ontario ● Completed 2012
    institutional ● academic
    The Cairns Complex supports Brock University’s mandate as a regional centre of academic excellence and cutting-edge research, with health science, biotech and biology labs, and facilities for the Niagara Campus of McMaster University’s Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine. The Centre connects north and west to adjacent buildings via elevated …
  • Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2012
    residential ● commercial ● mixed-use ● hospitality
    a–A designed a landmark mixed-use development for Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts and Menkes Developments Ltd., featuring a five-star hotel and luxury condominiums, located in Toronto’s exclusive Yorkville district. The project comprises of two buildings: a 46-storey condo-hotel tower at the southwest corner of the site, and a 30-storey tower on …
  • 2012 Parc Lofts
  • Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2012
    institutional
    a–A was initially asked to undertake extensive restoration and upgrading of the Parish Hall to house outreach programs and the Diocesan archives, and to address a number of pressing structural and maintenance issues. Subsequently, the brief grew to include quarters for the Dean of the Cathedral and accommodations for visiting clergy and laity. The …
  • 2009 Beaver Valley House
  • 2009 NXT
  • 2009 Sackville Dundas Apartments
  • The Hague, The Netherlands ● Completed 2008
    institutional
    The Canadian Chancery is a “country within a country” – a part of Canada within a foreign land. Its role is both protective and expressive: it offers refuge to Canadians abroad, while expressing our national character to foreign hosts. The brief for Canada’s mission to the Netherlands allowed us to explore ideas of connection and distinctiveness, …
  • Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2008
    residential ● mixed-use ● commercial ● hospitality
    The Thompson Hotel and Residences, combining private and highly public, socially active spaces, represents a type of development that is relatively new to Toronto and which has reimagined an important 19th century reighbourhood. The program of residential, hotel and hospitality uses is clearly expressed in the built form. Three rectilinear …
  • 2007 Spire
  • 2006 Radio City
  • Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2006
    institutional ● academic
    The University of Toronto is a world leader in the field of genome research. Together, architects–Alliance and Behnisch Architekten designed and created an advanced research facility that reflects the University’s leadership in the quest for links between genes and disease. The facility is a sustainable, transparent building that promotes …
  • Vancouver, British Columbia ● Completed 2005
    institutional ● academic
    Open, welcoming and transparent, the new Kaiser building establishes a strong presence for the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering on UBC’s Main Mall. The building form – an elegant glass box slipped over an existing structure and linked directly to another – clearly expresses the program of teaching, research and administrative space, …
  • Toronto, Ontario ● Completed 2005
    residential ● institutional ● academic
    The Residence responds to its long, narrow site, sandwiched between existing buildings and looking south onto a major campus roadway. The L-shaped podium extends over 90 meters along Pond Road, a patterned glass and concrete box that appears to hover above a transparent ground floor. A nine-storey residential tower caps the east end of the podium, …
  • 2005 Reflections at Bloomington Central Station
  • 2004 Woodsworth Student Residence & Classroom Complex
  • 2003 Mozo
  • 2001 District Lofts
  • 1997 Twenty Niagara