Our mas­ter­plan for the Don Mills rede­vel­op­ment project is test­ed here with one of the first res­i­den­tial build­ings for its inte­gra­tion of mod­ernist ide­olo­gies bor­rowed from the mid-cen­tu­ry plan, now inten­si­fied with the mul­ti­va­lent and diverse infu­sion of mixed-use archi­tec­ture.

Two 11-storey tow­ers are con­nect­ed by a podi­um bridge. Togeth­er they intro­duce the new­ly imag­ined Don Mills Cen­tre with an unex­pect­ed archi­tec­ture wrapped by bal­conies of undu­lat­ing rib­bons of glass and per­fo­rat­ed met­al. The project expands the entire site, and address­es res­i­dents approach­ing the build­ing from the mall or street side with­out feel­ing like one is more impor­tant than the oth­er.

Bor­row­ing from sculp­ture prac­tice, the build­ing is con­ceived ‘in the round’ mean­ing it has been designed with equal con­sid­er­a­tion for all sides. No units are priv­i­leged over oth­ers.

Ulti­mate­ly the build­ing enve­lope is extrud­ed to max­i­mize effi­cien­cy, while sub­tle shifts in each pro­ject­ing bal­cony cre­ate a con­tin­u­ous and shift­ing flow in the build­ing shape to offer flex­i­bil­i­ty in unit dis­tri­b­u­tion where suite designs ben­e­fit from unique two-part balustrades that bal­ance abun­dant light and views with pri­va­cy for res­i­dents. The strength of this approach is that we elim­i­nate the prob­lem­at­ic ‘inside cor­ner’ and every unit effec­tive­ly becomes a desir­able ‘cor­ner unit’.