URBAN INFILL IN YORKVILLE

In contrast, a mixed-use replacement for an old building in the Yorkville district of Toronto was shoehorned into a five-meter-wide slot on a street that still boasts some handsome Victorian houses. The neighborhood has gentrified, and the clients wanted a high quality building with retail at street level, and three floors of live-work spaces above. The architects saw an opportunity to raise the bar, and their intervention is far more respectful of the past than its bland 1970s neighbors. The steel frame that supports the heavy timber floors is boldly expressed on a façade that has the depth and muscularity of a 19th-century cast-iron warehouse. Slender brick piers on the upper levels evoke the buildings that defined the city before the influx of curtain-wall towers over the past 50 years. To stay within the permitted height level on the street, the third floor is set back behind a roof terrace. You can glimpse the entire building from a passage across the street. The generosity of proportion is even more evident on the three upper levels, which are served by a central, sky-lit stair hall, linking spaces at front and back. A folded steel staircase with wood treads has a laser-cut steel balustrade and wood handrail. Carlo Scarpa would have approved the elegant craftsmanship with which each element is shaped and assembled. Light washes down from above, and the warm tones of Douglas fir play off the blue of the party walls. There’s a feeling of spaciousness and transparency within the narrow confines of the tall volume, a triumph of creativity over physical constraints.

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