Recapping our 2023 Building Tours Season
September 12, 2023
With last night’s building tour of Massey Hall, our 2023 Building Tours season has come to an end.
Designed for architects by architects, TSA Building Tours provide special behind-the-scenes access to some of our city’s newest buildings—some still under construction—in tours led by the people behind the design including architects, owners, engineers and consultants. With a strong focus on professional education, these tours provide a unique glimpse to the design and construction process and allow attendees to learn directly from those involved in translating ideas into built realities.
This year’s Building Tours season kicked off with an under-construction tour of Mirvish Village, a new mixed-use development that brings together rental housing, public spaces and retail on the former site of Honest Ed’s. Led by the team at Diamond Schmitt Architects, attendees had the opportunity to explore and learn about this multifaceted project: from the integration of heritage structures to the new small-scale retail, pedestrianized streets, and apartment towers reshaping the site. We can’t wait to visit again once construction has been completed!
In July, our tour attendees were able to explore Waterworks, an award-winning adaptive reuse project that has transformed a former industrial site—the 1933 Art Deco Water Work Buildings by City Architect J.J. Woolnough—into a multi-use complex that includes a Food Hall, retail, a fully-equipped YMCA, and a 288-unit midrise condominium. This time our tour leads included both architects and developers, with representatives from Diamond Schmitt Architects, ERA Architects, MOD Developments, and Woodcliffe Landmark Properties, all sharing their roles and insight into the project.
And what better place for a season finale than one of Toronto’s best known performance spaces: the legendary Massey Hall. Guided by Graham Baxter of KPMB Architects and Sharon Vattay of GBCA, this year’s Building Tour season was capped by an insider’s peek into the revitalization of Canada’s oldest concert hall, and the new seven-storey addition that will support its continued use for years to come. From the role of acoustic plaster to the challenges of accessibility retrofits, the tour was packed with insightful tidbits and memorable moments we won’t soon forget.
None of this of course would have been possible without this year’s Building Tours Program Sponsor STEIN + REGENCY Construction Management and we want to take a minute to say thank you for their ongoing support!
While our 2023 season has come to an end, we are already hard at work planning next year’s roster with an expanded offering so that more people can explore and learn about our built environment. If you or your studio are currently working on an under-construction or recently completed project, or if there’s simply a project in Toronto that you’d love to learn more about, and you think it would make a great Building (or Landscape) Tour, please let us know!