When the time came to build on the north­ern end of the block, GPA embraced the oppor­tu­ni­ty to push the bound­aries of mid-block pub­lic space – lit­er­al­ly. With care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion for the building’s ground lev­el con­fig­u­ra­tion, we dis­cov­ered we could pro­vide a new out­door space for the com­mu­ni­ty of the block while also cre­at­ing an alter­nate more shel­tered pub­lic space par­al­lel to Queen’s Quay.

The North Block is designed to respond to the nuances of its imme­di­ate urban con­text on the ground, to vir­tu­al­ly expand the unique yard to the south, and to con­tribute cre­ative­ly to the large-scale con­text of Toronto’s Water­front, as it ris­es above.

Not a court­yard or a lane, the new mid-block space acts more as an indus­tri­al yard: space adja­cent to the build­ing that serves a func­tion­al pur­pose for the cre­ative com­mu­ni­ty who use it. It’s designed to be a walk­a­ble pub­lic space to linger or sit while pro­vid­ing spill out space for the cul­tur­al pro­grams. The podi­um hous­es a uni­ver­si­ty with grade relat­ed retail, gal­leries, and res­i­den­tial lob­bies for the res­i­den­tial tow­ers above.

The podi­um, accor­dion-like, push­es and pulls around its perime­ter to cre­ate depth and shel­ter that invite peo­ple in. Its intri­ca­cy is bal­anced by the sim­plic­i­ty of the tow­ers above, where ceram­ic frit pat­terns, inspired by the near­by wind and water, pro­vide tex­ture to its oth­er­wise sim­ple forms and con­struc­tion. A two-dimen­sion­al treat­ment employed to cre­ate three-dimen­sion­al move­ment whether approach­ing from the near­by ele­vat­ed express­way, from the water, a dis­tant point in the city, or even look­ing up from the street below.

The sim­plic­i­ty and econ­o­my of the tow­ers allow the podi­um to become more rich­ly respon­sive to the con­text at street lev­el by focus­ing archi­tec­tur­al inten­si­ty on the pub­lic spaces shared by all inhab­i­tants and vis­i­tors of the build­ing. The result is a new urban refuge for cre­ativ­i­ty in its many forms.

Every great part­ner­ship is defined by how each part­ner responds to the needs of the oth­er. Work­ing in part­ner­ship with Daniels, one such moment defined the project. “In order for us to cre­ate this new idea of the yard and podi­um the tow­ers have to be sim­ple.”