The Queen, Beverley, Phoebe and Soho Streets area is a historic part of Toronto with a heritage of diverse uses, building types and styles. The project site is at the confluence of these diversities, in the midst of a trend changing this area into a fashionable neighbourhood. The flavour of medieval “live / work” blends with Georgian formality and industrial detailing in this neighbourhood.  New buildings with an overriding single architectural statement were not seen as the correct expression for a site as large as an entire city block. Instead, the total allotted density has been deployed in increments from a low of three storeys to six then nine storeys in a manner respectful of its immediate neighbours. The increments derived from shadow and impact studies then became responsible for the overall massing, which in turn determined the housing form. The variety of street edge types and the researched target market appeared to encourage unusual layouts. Accordingly, there are five building types in three visibly differentiated buildings in this project.

The buildings systematically follow the streets and provide a formal landscaped court in the centre. The elevations of the buildings are totally uninterrupted by car or service related components all along the three streets.

The resultant streetscape could be entirely dedicated to uniform residential detailing. In order to express the nature of the site and the neighbourhood, it was decided, however that further fragmentation was not only in keeping with the incremental nature of massing, but was desirable in its own right as an interpretation of the spirit of the area. Hence, a further layer of diversity was injected by a variation in the façade treatment of the typical bays from one building to the next and the Phoebe building was expressed more as a townhouse structure rather than as an apartment as a result. Parts within each individual building have been further differentiated to serve as emphasis for specific entrances and features to reduce the perceptible size of any building plane and to approach the scale prevalent in the neighbourhood. Proportions and some details of the buildings are reminiscent of parts of older buildings in the area.