This two phase project, built in 2003 and 2005, is at the confluence of a high intensity urban corridor (the Bayview Sheppard Shopping Centre and new high-rise towers) and tranquil single-family houses along Spring Garden Avenue.

The urban design task was to balance the seemingly opposing objectives of urban and suburban scales and lifestyles by designing a project, which fits into both of these settings. Townhouses designed adjacent to the existing residential houses serve as a buffer while the apartment building addresses the Sheppard frontage. The apartment itself was designed so that its massing is fragmented to smaller, visually identifiable parts, compatible with the existing Sheppard Avenue streetscape.

The intent of the project was to portray a moderately conservative image in deference to the existing neighbourhood and the expected purchasers, rather than yield to a temptation of the high-tech presence of the subway, the shopping centre, and other new high-rise towers to the southeast, and their associated images.

This project is a “gateway” to an existing, established, elegant neighbourhood that required an air of understated elegance, though not pure simplicity. Consequently, the entire façade design is built up from smaller building elements which themselves appear to be small buildings within the building. Thus, the closer each building element is to the viewer the more prominent the smaller elements of the building become for the viewer and the more the background planes diminish in importance. In other words, there is a hierarchy of detail from large to small, which creates visual interest from far as well as from close up. The overall building massing culminates to a focal point at the street intersection.

The main entrance to the apartment building is exactly at this important point of inflection satisfying the need for project identity while reinforcing the project’s transitional value to the neighbourhood.

Differentiation of heavy and light, solid and void, bright and dark materials on the façade create variety within an otherwise disciplined geometry in pursuit of the aesthetic objective of “unity in variety”. This design truthfully represents the functions within and outside of the building. The building is in harmony with its overall context and successful in the way the aesthetically desirable views to and from these buildings, are deployed.