The King and Jarvis neighbourhood is a conglomeration of historically interesting building types and styles, which take on an increasingly more industrial look toward the east, yet maintain a consistency of materials and cornice lines, which tie them into more ambitious buildings toward the westerly city center.  This diverse yet unified overall "King Street character" was sought as an architectural theme for the project.  "Brick and stone" of certain hues and textures was mostly responsible for the "flavour" of the streets, while the size of the structural grids and cornice spacing established the scale of building component.  The architect's task was therefore to emulate the scale, materials, textures and colours of diverse old buildings into a modern building.  It was also discovered that the site is virtually an island in the streets with no other tall buildings immediately surrounding it; therefore, a substantially set back tower form would have little impact on anything surrounding it while it would offer views for its residents all around.

In short, the concept is a "residential tower recessed on a commercial and recreational podium, adjacent to a historic park, surrounded, but not crowded by downtown Toronto".

The articulation of the tower into smaller fragments, to emulate the scale of the older buildings, has been accomplished by horizontal and vertical subdivision of the main building mass, where, not coincidentally, the "room-grids" approximate the structual grid of the immediately adjacent historic buildings.  In recongnition of the existing strong street character, a three-storey podium extends the full frontage of both King and Jarvis Streets in a scale and grid pattern respectful of the two historic buildings at the street corners.  Care has been taken not to copy the details of the existing buildings, yet columns, grids, cornice lines and joints create a sufficient family resemblance of geometry, color and texture to make one coherent statement from street intersection to street intersection.

The presence of vehicles on the property is virtually undetectable to the public, in that all access is from the least intense street of George Street through a mid-block connection to Jarvis Street.

As part of the massing criteria, differentiation of fuctions was also essential to create the various images sought for the "retail", "office" and "residential" uses.  The main entrance design attempts to bring the otherwise "recessed" residential component to the front in order to claim a substantial presence on King Street.  Although the entries to the office and residential buildings interrupt the otherwise continuous retail functions on the streets, the similarity of forms and materials continue to tie the full three-storey podium into a coherent composition.