Upcoming Events

TSA’s Toronto Building Tours program is an annual series of building tours by Architects for Architects, exclusive to TSA members.

The 2016 season will begin with a tour will be led by Andrew Filarski, Janouque LeRiche, and Jason Wah from MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects (MJMA), as well as Alex Versluis, VP of Property Management at the YMCA of Greater Toronto. The Cherry Street YMCA, also known as the Cooper Koo Y, is part of a comprehensive design supporting the West Don Lands Precinct Plan. This particular quarter, now known as the Canary District, was designed by a collaborative architectural team consisting of architectsAlliance (aA), KPMB, Daoust Lestage, and MJMA. It originally functioned as the Athlete’s Village during the 2015 PanAm /Parapan Am Games, while its final (Legacy) use consists of market housing, assisted housing, student housing (George Brown College), and of course a YMCA Community Centre. Interspersed through the district is a curated retail presence.

The tour will describe the joys and perils of integrating the YMCA into a site below and adjacent to the George Brown Student Residence and into the overall “Village” development, all during a fast-track Design-Build pursuit run by Infrastructure Ontario (IO), overseen by Waterfront Toronto, and subject to review by Olympic and Paralympic committees as well as the ultimate owners and clients. The tour will explore how a few basic and clear moves in the initial design strategy created a clear parti for accommodating the multiple functions and scales of the YMCA and the Residence, and how this clarity was carried into the design of the YMCA space and the site as a whole.

After the tour, we invite you to join us for dinner at Il Ponte at 625 Queen St East! (All attendees are welcome but please note that dinner/drinks are not included in the cost of the ticket.)