Apropos to 1960s planning (below) and the talk tonight by Toronto urban critic Christopher Hume at SFU Harbour Centre, here’s an intriguing project underway in TO, sent in by Matt Blackett from Spacing:
I was recently hired by ERA Architects here in Toronto to help them develop a blog for one of their projects. It’s called the Toronto Tower Renewal project, and it focuses on reinvigorating the slab towers that were built in the 1950s-1970s.
Toronto is a unique place for slab towers — we have the second most in North America behind NYC. What is interesting is that these slabs appear all over Toronto and in its surrounding suburbs, not just in small clusters. But as some of them reach their 50th anniversary they are in need of retrofits.
But the project goes beyond retrofits — it entails how to make them much more environmentally sustainable while addressing a number social issues like creating commercial space at the base of the towers for residents to start their own businesses. Many of the residents in these towers are new arrivals to Canada and can often feel trapped in these slab tower developments because of poor transit and a lack of community services.
This project is really unique and presents a holistic approach to dealing with the city’s inherited built-form.
Check out the TTR blog here.
