Red Mars
Senior Member
Pic taken June 15, 2017
...At the Well, a mixed-use development at Front Street and Spadina Avenue on The Globe and Mail’s old location, Mr. Cormier is designing a network of privately owned, publicly accessible laneways and arcades. These will run between new buildings of retail and office use, and mix passages with patios.
“We’re trying very hard to make this not like a mall,” he said. “We are combining it with the public realm to create a very urban feeling.”
On adjacent Wellington Street, that means a five-metre-wide strip of plantings: elms, flowering crab apples and magnolias “that will create a sense of place for the neighbourhood,” he said. “We’re interested in quality and creating a magical place.”
Across the street, its developers are meeting a city requirement by adding a new public park. Mr. Cormier will design it. The theme: a classical promenade, accented with sculptures of cats. “Dogs for the east side, cats for the west side,” Mr. Cormier said. If any Torontonian designer suggested this, it would sound like a joke. But Mr. Cormier is serious – and so are his clients. The new Toronto is already going to the dogs; now the cats will get a piece, too.
The image AoD posted, along with the one below (also from the CC page that AoD linked to) got me wondering: is Wellington getting a (much needed) road diet as a part of this development? I never saw reference to it in the planning docs, but I really hope that's indeed the case.
Heads-up: office tower aside, the residential towers look very different than what is depicted in the model. The podiums are what we've seen so far, though.
It depends if you're a fan of recent aA work or not. Some familiar details and motifs, but edited, rejigged, and combined in new ways.
Good to hear, thanks. Their work can get a little formulaic, but more often than not well executed. The only concern I have is it being in close proximity to the Clarence Sq. project may make for monotony.
AoD