Project Summary
Building Type: Residential
Customer: Urban Capital
Product: Matte Black and Gloss White ALPOLIC/fr
Area: 543,093 Sq.ft
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Completion: 2015
Architect: Saucier + Perrotte Architectures and ZAS Architects
Contractor: Bluescape Construction Management Inc.
Vision
Along the Don River in downtown Toronto, four unique, sloped-sided buildings with protruding extrusions have taken shape. This new, multi-family housing complex is the vision of Saucier+Perrotte Architectures and ZAS Architects. The ultra-modern façade is completed with ALPOLIC®/fr aluminum cladding in classic matte black and gloss white finish.
"I have a project in my mind," says Gilles Saucier, FIRAC, "which is a black object of 14 storeys—slowly changing, descending into the ground, going under a highway—and then re-emerging in a tower of 28 storeys, with something white and precious contained in it."
Saucier+Perrotte’s award-winning design for River City takes its inspiration from the formerly industrial West Don Lands site. Hard elements contrast with soft, and light with dark. The buildings bring those contrasts subtly into play, creating organic shapes that fit into the landscape – but stand out from the crowd.
“And its textured façade will reflect and freshly interpret the long-standing interest of Mr. Saucier and Mr. Perrotte in the effects of wind and water on stone, and in the natural forces that sculpt the earth, creating places and landscapes from the raw stuff of geology.” – John Bentley says to The Globe and Mail.
The visual effect of the façade and ALPOLIC®/fr varies significantly between the elevations while evoking the mineral-like characteristics of River City. The 28-storey tower is a continuity of angular black and white volumes that give shape to the elements found on the site: angular crystalline minerals of black and white. The tower conceptually erodes to symbolize this dual mineral nature: a solid black object (Matte Black ALPOLIC®/fr) inset with white diaphanous crystals (Gloss White ALPOLIC®/fr).
Alpolic Façades
River City Phase 1 is a darkly beautiful structure with a modern sensibility and a nod to the industrial nature of the area’s past. It combines bold forms and playful angles, dark Matte Black ALPOLIC®/fr panels and transparent glass, raw materials and soft landscaping, all in ways that reflect the unique surroundings.
The façades of Phase 2 are wrapped in ALPOLIC®/fr Gloss White aluminum cladding, forming rectangular extrusions in a somewhat random but deliberate pattern. Residents can identify where they live by the pattern of the balconies, a marker that Saucier likes: "In residential buildings, there can be a repetition that is very alienating," he says.
The 29-storey Phase 3 will also be clad in ALPOLIC®/fr, with half done in the Matte Black and half in Gloss White. The design of the tower is to appear as if it steps down slowly into a thick slab whose edges protrude outward, gesturing across the highway overpass to its neighbours.
Created by Saucier+Perrotte as a dramatic contrast to the edgy, dark exteriors of Phases 1 and 3, the sleek white design of Phase 2 will stand out as a luminescent jewel against the industrial feel of the buildings surrounding it. Three glass mini-towers are connected on each floor with translucent and white materials giving the structure undeniable appeal that’s airy, modern and completely sophisticated.
Saucier + Perrotte architectes teamed with ZAS Architects were announced winners of a Design Excellence Award from the Ontario Association of Architects and a Lieutenant Governor’s Award for the River City project, phases 1 and 2, in Toronto.
Sources:
https://www.alpolic-americas.com/project/river-city/
http://saucierperrotte.com/en/projects/river-city-toronto/
https://www.alpolic-americas.com/news/alpolic-adorns-river-city-project-toronto/
https://www.harris-square.com/
http://www.urbancapital.ca/rc2