Residential
Rafael Viñoly Architects announces four residential towers in Midtown Toronto, the firm’s first project in Canada
Apr 25, 2024Originally Published By: The Architect’s Newspaper
Written By: Daniel Roche | April 25,2024
Madison Group, a Toronto–based development firm, announced recently its plans to build four new towers designed by Rafael Viñoly Architects in Toronto’s Midtown. The towers represent the office’s first project in Canada. The skyscrapers will contain 2,364 residential units with a total 54,506 square feet of public space below. Surrounding the public space will be office and retail amenities, the development team said.
Two towers by Viñoly Architects will be located at 90-110 Eglinton Avenue, and two more at 150-165 Eglinton Avenue East. Turner Fleischer Architects is the architect of record, and MPFP Landscape Architecture is responsible for landscape design.
The towers between 90-110 Eglinton Avenue East top out at 58 stories, and contain 1,035 residential units and 25,565 square feet of public space. The towers at 150-165 Eglinton Avenue East will be 61 stories and have 1,329 units with 28,850 square feet of public space.
All units will be sited in proximity to a public amphitheater, an adventure playground, ample amounts of open space with cafes and patios, and significant retail amenities. The towers themselves are clad in red paneling contrasting with the other more recent towers built in the area, while also seemingly pulling from the brick masonry of others.
Renderings show a piano in the amphitheater, which is certainly no coincidence. The late architect, who passed in 2023, was a world famous pianist atop his passion for architecture. (Last December, a tribute was held at Carnegie Hall indebted to Viñoly where a custom designed piano he made took center stage.) The master plan, Madison Group continued, will reinvent Toronto’s skyline. Madison Group further notes that, before his passing, Viñoly himself championed the project’s public space designed with families and the community in mind.
“We are privileged that our first project in Canada should be so transformative and focused on contributing to Toronto’s public realm,” said Román Viñoly, partner at Rafael Viñoly Architects and TK’s T “Throughout our more than four decades of practice, guided by our founder Rafael Viñoly, we have approached each new engagement with the conviction that every significant investment in the built environment is a ‘civic project’ by default, regardless of use or source of funding.”
Viñoly continued: “Buildings in dense environments are so capital-intensive, unignorable, and enduring that they inevitably impact the lives of every individual in their host communities. Our design ethos is thus rooted in leveraging these enormous commitments of time, capital and passion, to create spaces that inspire and connect people.”
Construction is anticipated to begin in 2025.
