One of the world’s great architecture patrons has hired two distinguished architects—the Indian Modernist Charles Correa and Pritzker Prize winner Fumihiko Maki—to design a $200-million cultural and religious complex in Toronto.
An energy plant that’s a showcase for sustainable and excellent design—that’s the agenda for a new project by Steven Holl Architects in Toronto. The city’s waterfront redevelopment agency announced last week that it hired Holl’s firm for the new District Energy Centre, an approximately 37,700-square-foot facility that will power a new neighborhood on the city’s lakefront. Image courtesy Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Toronto planners looked to the Whitney Water Purification Facility and Park, in New Haven, Connecticut, for a model of how urban infrastructure can integrate successfully with a natural setting. Related Links: Van Valkenburgh to Remake 2,400 AcresLandscape/Architecture Firms
Cities across North America are struggling to undo the mistakes of 20th-century public housing. Some are finding that a clean slate also presents opportunities. In Canada, the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) is pushing the agenda on design and sustainability with a $1 billion effort to rebuild an inner city housing project. Images courtesy Diamond and Schmitt A team of architects including architectsAlliance and Diamond and Schmitt has prepared plans to redevelop Regent Park, a 1950s-era public housing complex in Toronto. Breaking apart superblocks, it will replace 2,000 townhouse and mid-rise apartments with more than 5,000 housing units in townhouses
The British architect Will Alsop doesn’t do quiet buildings, so it’s fitting that his latest North American project will be an icon for an equally bold development project: a plan to build one of the largest film studios on the continent in Toronto. Images Courtesy ALSOP/Quadrangle A view of the main entry at Will Alsop’s Filmport tower in Toronto (top). The rear elevation of Alsop’s Filmport tower features a curving facade screen (above). Unveiled last week, Alsop’s design calls for a cantilevered 280,000-square-foot building that will function as a gateway to the new Filmport complex, now being constructed in the
Remaking the mouth of a river while carving a new neighborhood and parkland out of a post-industrial landscape is challenging enough. But the winners of the Lower Don Lands design competition in Toronto, Canada’s largest city, are also taking on a job with real symbolic weight: rejuvenating a 2,400-acre swath of polluted lakefront land that was thought to be beyond repair. Courtesy The Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation The Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation announced last week that a team led by Michael van Valkenburgh Associates won the competition. The team also includes Behnisch Architects, Greenberg Consultants, and Great Eastern Ecology. They