A potential second act for an aging performing arts complex that has served as a beloved cultural anchor in downtown Toronto for more than five decades, has come into focus.

The winner in a design competition seeking proposals for a dramatically revamped St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts (STLC) was announced late last week by multi-arts organization TO Live, which operates the dual-theater complex, and the (relatively new) centralized city real estate agency CreateTO. Selected by a seven-member jury panel from a shortlist of five concepts, the winning proposal was submitted into the two-staged competition by a team led by hometown firm Hariri Pontarini Architects (HPA) and joined by Seattle’s LMN Architects, Danish landscape and urban design studio SLA, and two Indigenous-owned practices: the Ontario-based Smoke Architecture and Tawaw Architecture Collective, based in Phoenix. Dubbed Transparence, the proposal envisions rotating the central axis of the building’s main theater by 90 degrees to make way for a new public plaza while also cloaking the Brutalist landmark in a high-performance transparent facade.