Canada-based firm Saucier + Perrotte architectes has designed an apartment building located between Bathurst and Portland streets in downtown Toronto, Canada. The project comprises two parallel buildings with dual frontages facing to both the streets, thanks to the series of rhythmic glass boxes pushing in and out where the living spaces and the private balconies take place, as a result to create an interesting expression to the facades.
The overall intention is to recognize the individuality of each person living in the building — addressing the human scale — while preserving a coherent understanding of a larger, complex building texture at the scale of the city. The result is a building that communicates at two scales, the collective and the individual.
Saucier + Perrotte architectes
+ Project description courtesy of Saucier + Perrotte architectes
Located between Bathurst and Portland streets in downtown Toronto, the project is formed by two parallel buildings, one facing King Street West, the other fronting onto Stewart Street . The two residential blocks, sharing the same formal language, are linked by a continuous lobby that runs along an exterior public passage between King and Stewart. The north and south facades, facing the street, gradually transform from the ground up.
At street level is a series of large boxes, two to three storeys high that continue the existing urban fabric. This platform features restaurants, shops and the main residential lobby.
Above, rising straight up without stepping back, is the rhythmic façade, based on a stacking of the project's building module, i.e., the basic single living unit. The modules/units are first stacked and then pushed back and forth consistently throughout the building to create alternating private balconies and to give the building its distinct expression.
The balcony setbacks get deeper on the upper floors along King Street to create a subtle deformation in the façade's pattern without breaking the vertical plane. In this way, while the overall volumetric composition remains intact, the facades themselves possess a vivid three-dimensionality.
The courtyard facades, less homogenous than the street faces, interact with one another in an interplay of setbacks, shifts and overhangs, sculpting an elevated courtyard/garden in the space between them. These variations in the courtyard façade pattern come from programmatic requirements and the face-to-face, dialectic nature of the project's two main volumes. The overall intention is to recognize the individuality of each person living in the building — addressing the human scale — while preserving a coherent understanding of a larger, complex building texture at the scale of the city. The result is a building that communicates at two scales, the collective and the individual.
+ Project credits / data
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Client: Freed Developments
Architects: Saucier + Perrotte architectes
Structural: Halcrow Yolles
Mechanical / electrical: MCW
Landscape: GH3
Program: condominiums, retail, roof pool and bar construction
Total area: 25 455 m2 / 274 000 sq.ft.
Status and schedule: Planning
Rendering credits: DesignStor / Saucier + Perrotte architectes
