Suzanne Win­trob, National Post

Whether low to the ground or soar­ing into the sky, whether made of shiny glass or exquis­ite stone, there is no doubt Toronto’s newest crop of con­do­minium build­ings is archi­tec­turally intrigu­ing. Devel­op­ers, archi­tects and land­scape pro­fes­sion­als are cre­at­ing dis­tinc­tive, eye-catching spaces that will not only cap­ti­vate dis­cern­ing buy­ers but also tempt curi­ous passersby.

“[Devel­op­ers] con­tinue to look for some­thing that makes their land­mark the land­mark,” says Mark Cohen, senior vice-president and found­ing part­ner of The Condo Store Mar­ket­ing Sys­tem. “Oth­ers are look­ing for some­thing that makes their her­itage preser­va­tion and exist­ing façade inte­grate into a neigh­bour­hood with new con­struc­tion on top [in order] to bal­ance his­tory and the future.”

Mr. Cohen says the look of a build­ing is a key fac­tor in condo sales, with the scale model always the focal point of any sales office. Unlike yesteryear’s pre­dictable tow­ers, he says today’s build­ings boast waves, curves, off­set bal­conies and floors, a mix of inter­est­ing mate­ri­als and her­itage ele­ments that all add to the allure.

“Peo­ple asso­ciate with what build­ings look like — whether they’re provoca­tive, dif­fer­ent, sexy or inte­grate into an exist­ing area,” he says. “Appro­pri­ate­ness mat­ters. Style matters.”

Here, then, is a roundup of upcom­ing addresses that are turn­ing heads:

Five

Gary Switzer thinks the Yonge and Welles­ley neigh­bour­hood “needs a lit­tle love,” which is why he is con­struct­ing a glass tower and pre­serv­ing five her­itage build­ings to perk it up.

Called Five (nat­u­rally), the upcom­ing res­i­den­tial project fea­tures a 40-storey mod­ern glass tower atop a five-storey podium that was once a 1905 Gothic Revival ware­house. ERA Archi­tects is restor­ing the ware­house façade that will become the condo’s entry, as well as five her­itage build­ings fronting on Yonge Street that will become new retail hotspots. The brick façade on adja­cent St. Nicholas Street will be rebuilt “but will have the spirit of Victorian-Edwardian archi­tec­ture,” says Mr. Switzer, with quaint shops and cob­ble­stoned roads. Ris­ing above the façade on St. Joseph Street will be the podium hous­ing her­itage lofts, a rooftop gar­den with 13,000 sq. ft. of out­door ameni­ties, and 10,000 sq. ft. of indoor amenities.

From there rises a slen­der point tower encased with frit­ted glass and undu­lat­ing bal­conies for a shim­mery and wavy feel. Accord­ing to David Pon­tarini of Hariri Pon­tarini Archi­tects, the shaped and sculpted line cre­ated by the front of the bal­conies is a first for Toronto.

“Peo­ple walk­ing along Yonge Street will notice that the her­itage build­ings have been pre­served and cleaned up, and if they turn on St. Joseph Street, they will see ele­ments of the new link build­ing,” he says. “They will also see the preser­va­tion of the 5 St. Joseph build­ing façade. Look­ing up, they will see the line of the sculpted bal­conies against the straight, clean sur­face of the main tower. Turn­ing onto the laneway, they will see a new recon­structed brick façade that matches the scale of the orig­i­nal façade, but incor­po­rates new res­i­den­tial units within the base of the building.”

Mr. Switzer says Toronto has led the way in meld­ing old and new. One exam­ple is City Hall, which he says was built to draw atten­tion to Old City Hall across the street. Five St. Joseph is fol­low­ing suit.

“We’re not try­ing to repli­cate [the past] by doing a Dis­ney­land pas­tiche,” says Mr. Switzer of meld­ing old with new. “Archi­tects like Hariri Pon­tarini spe­cial­ize in com­bin­ing his­toric with some­thing that’s very con­tem­po­rary. You try to set them off, one to the other, so that the old looks bet­ter and the new looks bet­ter by hav­ing that con­trast. You end up con­trast­ing mate­r­ial like the old brick, the old stone with frit­ted glass and stain­less steel.”

Pears on the Avenue

A smidge north of Yorkville — near the cor­ner dubbed “Av and Dav” — Pears on the Avenue will fea­ture an 18-storey, 130-unit sleek glass tower atop a three-storey glass-and-stone podium. The idea, says Mimi Ng of Menkes Devel­op­ments, was to cre­ate a “design-savvy build­ing” that will not only offer some­thing excit­ing to buy­ers but will add “a new dimen­sion” to the neighbourhood.

The high­light, from a design stand­point, is a white steel frame on the north, east and south sides intended to make the build­ing look taller and extend the feel­ing of spa­cious­ness in the suites. The frame con­tin­ues along the bal­cony log­gias for a sense of enclo­sure while still allow­ing dwellers to enjoy the city view.

“The metal frame is a sig­na­ture archi­tec­tural ele­ment which enhances the ver­ti­cal­ity of the prin­ci­pal façades, adding visual inter­est, scale and artic­u­la­tion to what would oth­er­wise have been an undif­fer­en­ti­ated glass façade,” says Man­soor Kaze­r­ouni, exec­u­tive vice-president of Page+Steele/IBI Group Architects.

He says that the “delib­er­ately clean, mod­ernist sil­hou­ette” is both time­less and ele­gant, rather than trendy or gimmicky.

“[This project] is dis­tinc­tive in the sense that it does not sub­scribe to any cur­rent archi­tec­tural trend, which pre­vents it from being dated and allows it to age grace­fully,” he explains.

Gar­ri­son at the Yards

When Vancouver-based devel­oper Onni Group of Com­pa­nies snatched up a par­cel of prop­erty at Fort York Boule­vard and Bathurst Street, the most impor­tant design ele­ment became appeas­ing the neigh­bours. That is because Fort York, an his­toric site museum and home to Canada’s largest col­lec­tion of orig­i­nal War of 1812 build­ings, is sit­u­ated right next door.

“The Fort’s suc­cess lies in its architecture’s direct expres­sive­ness, the some­what ran­dom place­ment of its build­ings, and its sense of main­tain­ing an edge against the advanc­ing city,” says Rudy Wall­man of Wall­man Archi­tects. “All of these char­ac­ter­is­tics must be reflected in the new build­ing if it is to become a wor­thy neigh­bour to the Fort and make evi­dent the Fort’s sig­nif­i­cance to passersby. At the same time, the new build­ing must express the aspi­ra­tions of its occu­pants, many of whom are attracted to the build­ing because of its loca­tion and unique views over the expanse of the Fort.”

Since city guide­lines insisted con­struc­tion can­not cast shad­ows on the fort, Gar­ri­son at the Yards will be a midrise. The eight-storey podium, which Onni spokesper­son Sue Young describes as “shaped like a boomerang,” will fea­ture a pat­tern of ver­ti­cal pan­els of red brick that pick up on Fort York’s her­itage ele­ments. The ran­domly spaced pan­els flank the bal­conies and cre­ate a rus­tic effect against the four floors of glass above. The retail space at grade will have a glass cur­tain wall with recessed entrances, which Mr. Wall­man says will pro­vide visual breaks in an oth­er­wise con­tin­u­ous expanse of glass.

With the Gar­diner Express­way close by, the south wall was given spe­cial treat­ment. Pre­fin­ished alu­minum pan­els will cre­ate a two-tone colour pat­tern reflect­ing the ran­dom brick piers on the east and north façades and will also cap­ture a sense of the move­ment inher­ent in the pass­ing vehic­u­lar traf­fic. Says Mr. Wall­man: “The pat­tern is arranged in a Morse code mes­sage that wel­comes passersby to the Fort York neighbourhood.”

Gar­ri­son at the Yards is the first build­ing in Onni’s master-planned com­mu­nity called The Yards that will add 1,100 res­i­dences to the Fort York neighbourhood.

Chaz on Charles

Just south of the busy Bloor and Yonge inter­sec­tion, the folks behind Chaz on Charles are tout­ing a 39-floor, 420-suite glass tower that will sit atop a five-storey lime­stone podium.

Long­time devel­oper Jason Fane bought the prop­erty in the 1990s and waited for the right oppor­tu­nity to go after his dream of build­ing tow­ers in Toronto and New York. After a chance meet­ing with a city coun­cil­lor sev­eral years ago at a Toronto Inter­na­tional Film Fes­ti­val gala, Mr. Fane learned the city was encour­ag­ing increased den­sity near sub­way sta­tions and he knew the time was right. The only ques­tion was what look to go after.

“There are a large num­ber of build­ings [in Toronto] that, how­ever well they are exe­cuted, are just glass shoe­boxes turned on end,” Mr. Fane says. “This was a great archi­tec­tural inno­va­tion but it goes back almost 60 years now. We decided to take a dif­fer­ent approach and have a more inter­est­ing shape.”

Chaz on Charles eschews the tra­di­tional rec­tan­gu­lar. Rather, Mr. Fane calls it a “com­pli­cated” shape that involves 45-degree angles, eight cor­ners, and columns exposed over five floors at dif­fer­ent heights. The intrigu­ing design means two-thirds of the units are cor­ner units — or eight per floor. Crown­ing off the build­ing will be the Chaz Club, a two-storey party zone encased in floor-to-ceiling win­dows for a spec­tac­u­lar down­town view.

At pedes­trian level, the tower will be set back from the side­walk to encour­age a feel­ing of dis­tance between Chaz and the build­ings on the other side of the street. The side­walk will be widened and flower-filled, mak­ing the frontage “feel like a great boule­vard,” Mr. Fane says. The top of the five-storey podium will be at the same height as the build­ing next door, “allow­ing for a five-storey street wall.” A num­ber of three-bedroom con­dos will be sit­u­ated in the podium.

For the moment, Mr. Fane is con­tent to con­tinue dream­ing about his Man­hat­tan high-rise while he puts his ener­gies into Chaz on Charles.

“Peo­ple here have dif­fi­culty imag­in­ing just how bad things are in a lot of other places like Las Vegas, Miami, Greece and Spain,” he says. “Toronto is a happy city. By com­par­i­son to just about any place in the world, this is the place to be.”

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laura sec­ord 60 bathurst street

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