18 YORK
PwC Tower for GWL Realty, bcIMC
Toronto, 2011
PROJECT DETAILS
LOCATION
18 York Street
Toronto, Ontario
SIZE
850,000 sf
CLIENT
Great-west Life Realty Advisors
COMPLETION
2011
ALL CLEAR
To become an elegant ‘grey flannel suit’ tower for Toronto’s newest business district – South Core.
PUNCHING BIGGER THAN ITS WEIGHT
The generating idea was to produce a 28-storey office building that would prove a big draw in the Toronto marketplace, enabling its south- of-the-tracks site to soar as a new business address.
KEY IDEAS
The key ideas to achieve this goal were as follows:
- Highly efficient floor plate with good dimensions
- Urban forest on terrace between building and tracks – as an amenity but also as an object of desire as viewed from the street or train below
- Chicago scale lobby that can double as a theatre/ communication space
- Taut skinned, all transparent, high performance envelope producing a lean, clean, elegant look
- Visibly green roof by look, feel and performance, behind lattice screen at top
- LEED gold
CREDITS ↓
ARCHITECTS
KPMB Architects: Thomas Payne (Design Partner), Christopher Couse (Associate-in-charge), Takuma Handa, Kevin Thomas, Thom Seto, Safdar Abidi, John Allen, Glenn MacMullin, Bill Colaco, Jose Emila, Victor Varzon, Ramon Janer, Rita Kiriakis, Carolyn Lee, Robin Ramcharan, Garth Zimmer, Razvan Ghilic Micu, Richard Lam
CONSULTANTS
Urban Strategies Inc. (planning and development), Halcrow Yolles (structural), The Mitchell Partnership Inc. (mechanical), Mulvey & Banani International Inc (electrical), Soberman Engineering (elevator), Corban and Goode (landscape), Leber/Rubes Inc. (code), Extreme Measures Inc. (area measurements), Lea Consulting Ltd. (civil, traffic, parking), Marshall Macklin Monaghan (surveyor), E.R.A (heritage), Halsall (sustainability), RWDI (wind), Aercoustics Engineering Ltd. (acoustics), Terraprobe Ltd. (geotechnical), Standard Parking of Canada (parking controls), Cini-Little (waste handling), Bhandari Plater / Entro Communications (signage), HydroSense (irrigation design), Turner & Townsend cm2r (cost), Brook Van Dalen & Associates Ltd. (façade consultant)
PHOTOGRAPHY
Tom Arban, Maris Mezulis