The practice of orienting a home to the path of the sun is as old as civilization itself, and in nature, significantly predates it. Just as plants and flowers orient themselves to the sun through phototaxis, the newest building designed by ODA New York, appears to be doing the same.
King Street West is set in a transitional area of Toronto. From the tall towers of the Central Business District to the East, to the low-rise neighborhoods in the Northwest, the skyline is a mark of the city’s progress. Located at the meeting point of three 20th century neighborhood parks, BIG and Westbank propose a mixed use development with a public plaza that will create a new center for the community while connecting the various pedestrian pathways that crisscross the area.
In 2013, a couple in their 50s, came to Solares Architecture with an important request – to transform their 1911 Toronto semi-detached home into a beautiful, modern, and, most importantly, accessible house.
In 2006, the husband and father of the household had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and was soon in need of a mobility device. Once the family began looking into buying an accessible home, they realized how few there were on the market. Usually, accessible houses are built-as-needed, and the option of buying one is hugely expensive. Even a bungalow would need major renovation work to become fully accessible. After assessing these costs, the family decided to instead renovate their existing home, bought in 1989.
Setting benchmarks worldwide for engineering education, The Bergeron Centre for Engineering Excellence re-thinks campus hierarchy to foster modern ways of learning. Resulting from an intensive design process between ZAS Architects, The Lassonde School of Engineering, and York University, the world-class facility challenges past models with a modern approach rooted in student learning and empowerment.
Abacus Lofts sensitively responds to its diverse context, setting a strong precedent for midrise, mixed-use intensification in the City of Toronto. Located in the Little Portugal neighbourhood, just east of bustling Ossington Avenue on Dundas Street West, the area is dotted with gleaming galleries, boutiques and restaurants that are popular with the city’s young and trendy. Traditional churrasqueiras, bakeries and narrow, red brick homes root the long-standing Portuguese and Brazilian community. The 39-unit, eight-storey Abacus, which replaces a rundown auto services centre on an 8,000-square-foot site, plies both realms thoughtfully and artistically.
Photography: Michael Muraz, Ben Rahn, Unique Urban Homes
Software used: Autocad, Rhino
Client: DAZ
Architecture and Interior Design Team: Quadrangle Architects Limited Design: Raw Design (Richard Witt, Principal in Charge); Construction Documents and Review; Quadrangle Architects Limited; Les Klein, Richard Witt, Kenzie Terzic, Cory Fletcher, Derek Towns, Jamie Alcantara
Article source: Kleinfeldt Mychajlowycz Architects Inc.
The BMX Supercross Legacy Project is difficult to categorize. It is a structure within a park that accommodates the park’s storage needs, two permanent Start Ramps for BMX Supercross events, one at 10 meters and the other at 5 meters high, a permanent, concrete and steel screened structure and a 517 meter, ephemeral dirt track. It is a board formed retaining wall of over 27 meters length and ranging in height from 0.5 to 6 meters high. It is an object in a landscape and a landscape in its own right.
“Design belongs to everyone.” Says Reza Aliabadi, the architect of “Shaft House”.
The Shaft House idea was derived from the architect’s concerns about the affordability of design. Walking down on Danforth and Woodbine avenues in Toronto, an affordable neighborhood with not too many different building types one might not expect to see a contemporary building in the area let alone a contemporary house. “This neighborhood is full of houses that look all the same. People think it is expensive to own designs. But Toronto deserves to have more of these” says the architect while pointing out to a house in Lumsden Avenue that looks fairly surreal comparing to the surroundings. Traditional modeled dwellings with their brick façades are allowing rusted steel and untreated wood panels, mysteriously covering two small windows, to be an unexpected exciting discovery in their neighborhood.
The project is located on the southern edge of Lansing, which is a small neighbourhood in the North York municipality in the Greater Toronto Area. Thorax House is a minimalist two-storey wood structure that carefully responds to the needs and lifestyle of the client whileit has not forgotten the basic logic, plan and simplicity of the bungalow it replaced: the new project sits exactly on the small foot-print of the one-and-a-half storey bungalow that had occupied the site.
The Massey Tower by MOD Developments is a 60-storey, luxury condominium currently under construction in Downtown Toronto. It takes its name and design inspiration from nearby Massey Hall, completed in 1894 and cherished today as Toronto’s premier live-music venue. The project’s sales centre by Cecconi Simone is housed within the adjacent Canadian Bank of Commerce building of 1905, a designated building to be restored and integrated into the base of the future high-rise.
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