A Look At The Five Teams Vying To Reinvent Toronto’s Birthplace
Posted February 10, 2010 11:11 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Five architectural teams face the challenge of reinventing a site considered to be Toronto’s birthplace.
The city plans to replace the utilitarian St. Lawrence Market North building with a new multi-storey structure that will host the weekend farmers and antiques markets, provide retail and community space and house traffic courts.
The finalists in the North Market Design competition were announced this month. The plan is to rip down the bland box, originally erected as a temporary measure back in 1968, and replace it with a contemporary design worthy of its important address at 92 Front St. East.
The tradition of the weekend farmers market dates back to 1803 and the north building has gone through several incarnations since the first official wooden structure was erected on the corner of Front and Jarvis Streets in 1820. A new brick edifice went up in 1831 and when Toronto was incorporated three years later it became city hall. A fire destroyed the building in 1849 and it was rebuilt in 1851, again in 1904 and once again in 1967 to celebrate Canada’s centennial.
Click on the video at the bottom of the page for a look inside the empty north building.
“If you were to say what happens throughout the world … when people decide to get together and start something off and start a town or a village, or anything, it’s usually the market. It’s that kind of ‘X’ in the ground where you begin and this site is like that for Toronto,” one of the short listed architects, Charles Hazell, told CityNews.ca. “It’s exactly where the ‘X’ occurred historically.”
The city is aiming to have the new building up and running by 2014. Architects face the interesting challenge of designing a public space that projects Toronto’s future in both look and function (the city requires innovative green technologies) but still conveys the historical significance of the site by tying it into the St. Lawrence Market across the street, the St. Lawrence Hall directly behind and the surrounding neighbourhood.
The first stage of the competition drew 30 submissions and now the remaining five teams must submit their schematic plans by April 28. A seven-member jury will then review the blueprints and announce in June who will helm the $58.1 million project.
Each team brings a specific set of expertise to this competition, whether it be extensive experience working with fresh food markets, courts or the restoration and rejuvenation of heritage sites.
Here’s a look at the short listed firms:
Adamson Associates Architects and Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (joint venture)
“We’re very excited to be selected. I think this is one of the choice projects you could ask for in the city. It’s an incredibly important site,” Nick Zigomanis of Adamson Associates Architects explained.
Adamson will be working alongside UK firm Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners.
“I think it’s a building, because of its prominence, that has a lot of expectations put upon it. I think it really has to be an exemplar building for the new way forward in terms of building in Toronto and the world.”
Adamson is responsible for the restoration and renovation of the MaRS Centre at College and University. The project included the reformation of the College Wing of the historic Toronto General Hospital and stitching that into contemporary buildings and public atrium space.
“From the point of view of historic context and the sensitivity to tying together the new and the old that is a very good example of what we can do,” Zigomanis said.
Cohos Evamy + Hotson Bakker Boniface Haden Architects
B.C.-based Hotson Bakker Boniface Haden has extensive experience with fresh food markets across Canada.
“I’ve worked on probably more than 20 markets in various parts of the world including all the major markets across Canada, at least, Toronto and westwards,” architect Norm Hotson said.
“It’s an area we’re pretty versed in and amongst many other things that our firm does, this is just one small corner of our practice, but certainly one that we’re very comfortable with.”
The firm merged with Cohos Evamy and has a Toronto office.
Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects
This firm was behind the recent restoration of existing structures and the construction of the new Telus Centre for Performance and Learning for the Royal Conservatory of Music at 273 Bloor St. West.
KPMB also carried out the 2006 Gardiner Museum renewal project and the 2005 National Ballet School’s Project Grand Jete, which weaved together both new and heritage structures.
NORR Limited, Architects Engineers Planners
NORR has extensive experience working on courthouses and recently won the Waterloo Courthouse project this past December.
“We were also the design architects in collaboration … on the Calgary Courts Centre, which is Canada’s largest courthouse,” NORR senior vice president Silvio Baldassarra said.
Renfrew County Courthouse was a particularly important project for the firm, he said. “That courthouse has been recognized with four awards.”
It’s a heritage courthouse and NORR tripled the size by building on the side and behind the existing structure, which was incorporated into the overall design.
NORR is also the firm in charge of the $450 million Union Station redevelopment, which involves the renovation and restoration of the entire building and the creation of an additional underground floor for retail.
This firm won the 2003 design competition for the Canadian Plaza at the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie, Ont. The building opened last year.
“It’s a pretty unique design. It’s a wood structure – it’s actually an upside down canoe over top of the building,” Baldassarra said, adding the firm has received seven awards for that idea.
NORR has an office in Abu Dhabi and virtually 75 per cent of the work they have in the region is won through international design competitions. Projects include the National Bank of Dubai and the Emirates Towers.
Taylor Hazell Architects and Montgomery Sisam (joint venture)
“[The North Market] has a connection to something very deep and of great interest, I think, to the city. It’s a kind of, sort of an ethos, or a place where you go and you’d say I understand something much better about where I live and the people who have come before me and where we’re going. That is the challenge of this site,” architect Charles Hazell said.
“I think it’s like a mirror of the city back to itself. I think that’s what’s going to occur on this site.”
Taylor Hazell is the firm responsible for the restoration project at Casa Loma and the ongoing renovations at Osgoode Hall.
“Our firm has a specialty in working with existing sites and adapting them to different uses,” Hazell explained.
The firm also converted a former psychiatric hospital in Etobicoke into the Robert E. Gordon Learning Centre.
