As a series of inter­ven­tions at a vari­ety of scales, these projects car­ry an inher­ent atti­tude, a defined and some­what artic­u­late val­u­a­tion of both the exist­ing and his­toric rich­ness of the neigh­bour­hood, as well as the latent oppor­tu­ni­ties intrin­sic to a range of scales here.

Urban Surgery: Yorkville 2.0 exam­ines the urban impli­ca­tions of nudg­ing the scale and den­si­ty dis­tri­b­u­tion with infill projects such as 80–82 Bloor, 771 Yonge Street, and 321 Dav­en­port, as well as new tex­tures at the pedes­tri­an scale. When these tall projects hit the ground and expand to a redesigned Cum­ber­land Ter­race, what hangs in the bal­ance is a less than sys­tem­at­ic approach of fine to coarse grain inter­ven­tions from street to sky.

771 Yonge: At its base, a 19th C. her­itage struc­ture cre­ates an under­stood street scale. In the mid­dle, ‘glass state’ bal­cony box­es as closed and open log­gias. At the top, pin wheel rota­tion cap­tures south and west axes between exist­ing tow­ers.

Cum­ber­land Ter­race: At its base, an out­door pub­lic park and paved pedes­tri­an laneways cov­ered by a gauzy ceil­ing of light; while the square rein­vig­o­rates the sur­round­ing Vic­to­ri­an rem­nants and draws them into focus. In the mid­dle, var­i­ous mul­ti-sto­ry por­ti­coes cul­mi­nate into two tow­ers that anchor each end of the block. At the top, future obser­va­tion decks min­gle with mechan­i­cal pent­hous­es designed to be viewed from sky­ward neigh­bours.

Eataly & Over the Rain­bow: At its base, sewn into the icon­ic, 1960’s Man­ulife Cen­tre are lin­ings of wood, ter­raz­zo, forged met­al, and felt.

80–82 Bloor: At the base, the podi­um is stitched and tai­lored to the exist­ing street relat­ed fab­ric. In the mid­dle, a tex­tile that drapes, tucks, and pleats over an oth­er­wise orthog­o­nal vol­ume. At the top, the “fringe” of the glass tex­tile tapers to pro­nounce a strong uni­fied iden­ti­ty on the city sky­line.

Three Twen­ty One Dav­en­port: At its base, con­trolled and ‘tucked’ against the res­i­den­tial neigh­bours, and volup­tuous and ‘untucked’ at the curv­ing main street. In the mid­dle, new datum lines are defined by the archi­tec­tur­al ele­ments to set the scale for future infill of the midrise devel­op­ment along Dav­en­port Road.