John Bent­ley Mays – Globe and Mail

A work of archi­tec­ture begins its real-world career (as opposed to its life in the designer’s mind and stu­dio) as a hole in the ground. Down­town Toronto nowa­days sports many of these muddy pits in the urban fab­ric. But not all holes are cre­ated equal. Here are a few impor­tant ones that deserve watch­ing in the weeks and months to come.

590 Jarvis St.

One of Toronto’s most fash­ion­able avenues in Vic­to­rian times, Jarvis Street suf­fered badly 100 years ago, when its wealthy res­i­dents decamped to nearby Rosedale. Great Gulf Group’s X The Condominium, at the cor­ner of Jarvis and Charles streets, will be a good tonic for its his­tor­i­cally dilap­i­dated neighbourhood.

The great mod­ern mas­ter Lud­wig Mies van der Rohe inspired the design by Peter Clewes and the late Adrian di Cas­tri of the Toronto firm archi­tect­sAl­liance, and the rad­i­cal spirit of Mies is invoked in every crisp line and strict angle of the tower.

Jarvis and Ade­laide streets

Like X up Jarvis, Aspen Ridge Homes’s Vü — its podium is now peek­ing out of the ground — is a piece of solid city-building. This dense com­plex of high-ceilinged lofts, town­houses and con­do­minium apart­ments will be sit­u­ated on the long-neglected east side of down­town. Or at least the dis­trict was neglected through much of the 20^th cen­tury. Since the turn of this cen­tury, con­do­minium blocks have been going up in the neigh­bour­hood at a fast clip, and Vü will add sub­stan­tially to the momen­tum of this res­i­den­tial revival.

The design is by David Pon­tarini, found­ing part­ner in the Toronto firm Hariri Pon­tarini Architects.

183 Welling­ton St. West

The lux­u­ri­ous Ritz-Carlton hotel and con­do­minium tower is at a stage of con­struc­tion that delights archi­tec­ture afi­ciona­dos: pok­ing up above street level a few storeys, with all its mas­sive con­crete bones show­ing, and no cladding to obscure the crafts­man­ship of engi­neers and technicians.

Designed by the U.S. firm Kohn Ped­er­sen Fox Asso­ciates and Toronto’s Page + Steele Archi­tects, the project will fea­ture an urbane glass podium lifted smartly off the street by con­crete columns. Behind this entry pavil­ion will rise the tower proper, its outer walls tilt­ing out­ward with attrac­tive flair.

330 King St. West at John

Just a few steps north of the Ritz-Carlton, the Bell Light­box will be another tall tower in what’s becom­ing a big clus­ter of them along King. It has been designed by Bruce Kuwabara of the well-known Toronto firm Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blum­berg Archi­tects, and it will house the famous Toronto Inter­na­tional Film Fes­ti­val Group and many con­do­mini­ums up top.

If archi­tects’ ren­der­ings are any­thing to go on, the build­ing will be bright and lively, and crowned with a glow­ing box illu­mi­nated from within by light-emitting diodes — “a ver­ti­cal city of film,” Mr. Kuwabara has poet­i­cally called it.

1 Bed­ford Rd.

Out of this hole in the ground will emerge a tower with 32 res­i­den­tial floors that will likely add a touch of suave to the unsightly north side of Bloor Street, west of Uni­ver­sity Avenue. The scheme, also by Mr. Kuwabara, has had its share of tribulation.

A cou­ple of years ago, you may recall, the mus­cu­lar local cit­i­zens’ group attacked H&R Devel­op­ments and Lanterra Devel­op­ments, whose project this is, argu­ing that grannies would be plunged into dark­ness by the tower, and so forth. The upshot was a deci­sion by the city to shrink the build­ing a lit­tle —not enough, thank­fully, to blunt the con­tri­bu­tion this tower will make to the streetscape.

When this build­ing was being designed, I was both­ered a bit by the architect’s bow­ing to the preser­va­tion­ists and incor­po­rat­ing some scraps from the stu­dio of beaux-arts designer John M. Lyle (the Royal Alexan­dra The­atre, Union Sta­tion), which once stood at 1 Bed­ford. It now appears that these bits and pieces will be inte­grated ele­gantly into Mr. Kuwabara’s mod­ernist etude.

325 Bay St. at Adelaide

When it’s fin­ished, Toronto archi­tect Eber­hard Zeidler’s 60-storey Trump Inter­na­tional Hotel and Tower will make this address in the finan­cial dis­trict one of the swanki­est in Canada.

The peo­ple liv­ing there will have access to all of the lux­u­ries of the five-star hotel on the building’s lower storeys. Cars will be parked by valets. For those who can’t be both­ered to own a car, the man­age­ment will pro­vide round-the-clock use of two chauf­feured Mer­cedes. And there will be lots of room at the top: The pent­houses will be a lav­ish 4,300 to 7,400 square feet in area.

I like the idea of this big dol­lop of ritz in the heart of the city. Along with many of the other holes in down­town Toronto, the one at 325 Bay will soon be fill­ing up with res­i­den­tial archi­tec­ture that adds value to being and liv­ing here.

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