The new Pickering Public Library is a focal point for a new urban community located on lands made available by demolishing the southeast section of the Pickering Town Centre shopping mall. The redevelopment masterplan, created by the architects on behalf of the City of Pickering and the mall owners, weaves housing, retail tenancies, and iconic …

Ismaili Centres are found in 25 countries, marking the presence of this branch of Shi’a Islam in communities around the world. When complete, the Ismaili Centre & Jamatkhana of Don Mills will celebrate more than 50 years since the first immigration of Ismailis to the Greater Toronto Area, and mark the site of the first Ismaili prayer hall in …

A collaboration between a–A and Diller Scofidio + Renfro of New York City, the CCC will provide a new home for the University of Toronto’s School of Cities, the Faculty of Arts & Science [including history, and Near and Middle Eastern civilizations], as well as the Institute of Islamic Studies, an arm of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish …

Escarpment House is a multigenerational retreat for a couple, their adult children, and grandchildren, located on a 20-hectare site within a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. It rises up from and rests gently atop the Niagara Escarpment, a ridge of dolomitic limestone circling the western end of Lake Ontario and sweeping northwest to Georgian Bay. …

The City of Pickering was looking to redevelop and redefine its urban downtown core as a singular, walkable neighbourhood that arises from the merging of municipal infrastructure retail services and residential intensification. The masterplan developed by architects—Alliance incorporates housing, a central library, youth and seniors centre, and a …

Junction Point serves as a monument to the Junction itself, marking the neighbourhood’s eastern boundary and encapsulating its distinct architectural character: a street of Victorian storefronts and early 20th century warehouses encircling blocks of single-family century homes like a rampart. The three-sided site requires Junction Point to respond …

a–A transformed the Tower Automotive Building, a heritage-designated warehouse in Toronto’s Lower Junction, into a new cultural hub anchored by the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada [MOCA], Canada’s newest public gallery dedicated to international contemporary art. MOCA combines a ground-floor public meeting hall, café and temporary …

a-A co-led the design and realization of a unique mixed-use development that provides 253 units of affordable housing and 787 units of market housing, and serves as a major building block in Waterfront Toronto’s revitalization plans for the West Don Lands. The Integrated Design Team [architectsAlliance, KPMB Architects, Daoust Lestage inc., and …

Harbour Plaza is a-A’s most ambitious new mixed-use project located in the rapidly developing area of Toronto's new southern Financial core and Union Station. It is composed of two 70-storey residential towers, a 37-storey office tower and a 4-storey commercial/retail podium, creating an island of urbanity within a dense area of transportation …

a–A designed a landmark mixed-use development for Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts and Menkes Developments Ltd., featuring a five-star hotel and luxury condominiums, located in Toronto’s exclusive Yorkville district. The project comprises of two buildings: a 46-storey condo-hotel tower at the southwest corner of the site, and a 30-storey tower on …

This private residence sits on the brow of the Niagara Escarpment, a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve, overlooking the historic village of Creemore. Located on a high grassland edged with mature woodlands, the residence consists of four linked pavilions, their simple geometric forms inspired by the local vernacular of barns and outbuildings and …

a–A was initially asked to undertake extensive restoration and upgrading of the Parish Hall to house outreach programs and the Diocesan archives, and to address a number of pressing structural and maintenance issues. Subsequently, the brief grew to include quarters for the Dean of the Cathedral and accommodations for visiting clergy and laity. The …

The Cairns Complex supports Brock University’s mandate as a regional centre of academic excellence and cutting-edge research, with health science, biotech and biology labs, and facilities for the Niagara Campus of McMaster University’s Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine. The Centre connects north and west to adjacent buildings via elevated …

The Farm is located on a rolling field on the Niagara Escarpment that is one of Canada’s most significant landforms and a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. The area, a major agriculture and logging centre throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, is now a popular location for second homes owned by residents of the major cities of southwestern …

The Residence responds to its long, narrow site, sandwiched between existing buildings and looking south onto a major campus roadway. The L-shaped podium extends over 90 meters along Pond Road, a patterned glass and concrete box that appears to hover above a transparent ground floor. A nine-storey residential tower caps the east end of the podium, …

Theatre Park stands at a focal point of local culture and history, inserted beside the Beaux-Arts Royal Alexandra Theatre, facing Arthur Erickson’s Roy Thomson Hall, and surrounded by the fabric of Toronto’s 19th-century industrial core. a–A’s design response reinforces the heritage character of the block and drolly acknowledges its compressed …

This private residence, an original modernist house designed in 1960s by one of Canada’s most significant post-war architects, is set into the edge of a tree-lined ravine in an exclusive Toronto neighbourhood. a–A reimagined the residence’s interior architecture, arranging overlapping planar volumes to allow light to flood into the core of the …

As intensification radiates from Toronto’s downtown core, the focus of residential development has fallen on sites along the rail corridors linking Toronto's former industrial precincts. 383 Sorauren occupies one of these interstitial sites, on the boundary between the West Toronto rail line and the Victorian Roncesvalles Village. At a distance, …

The Canadian Chancery is a “country within a country” – a part of Canada within a foreign land. Its role is both protective and expressive: it offers refuge to Canadians abroad, while expressing our national character to foreign hosts. The brief for Canada’s mission to the Netherlands allowed us to explore ideas of connection and distinctiveness, …

The University of Toronto is a world leader in the field of genome research. Together, architects–Alliance and Behnisch Architekten designed and created an advanced research facility that reflects the University’s leadership in the quest for links between genes and disease. The facility is a sustainable, transparent building that promotes …

A three-block site in the West Don Lands offers a new interpretation of the neighbourhood’s language of courtyard buildings and a new take on a–A’s sensitive reinterpretation of the WDL’s heritage warehouse architecture. Vibrant high streets, sheltered publicly accessible courtyards, and intimate residential enclaves combine to augment the …

Pier 27 is an example of iconic architecture that enriches the public realm while raising the bar for future waterfront development. The first phases of the project consist of four rectilinear pier buildings arranged in pairs, each pair connected by a three-storey cantilevered “bridge” that evokes the gantries used to load cargo on and off …

Open, welcoming and transparent, the new Kaiser building establishes a strong presence for the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering on UBC’s Main Mall. The building form – an elegant glass box slipped over an existing structure and linked directly to another – clearly expresses the program of teaching, research and administrative space, …

Block 8 opens the latest chapter in the redevelopment of Toronto’s 80-hectare West Don Lands. The project, a City of Toronto pilot, addresses a pressing need for purpose-built high-quality rental housing at all income levels. a-A and its collaborator, Danish architects Cobe, drew heavily on Block 8’s context of vibrant street life, wild ravines, …

The Thompson Hotel and Residences, combining private and highly public, socially active spaces, represents a type of development that is relatively new to Toronto and which has reimagined an important 19th century reighbourhood. The program of residential, hotel and hospitality uses is clearly expressed in the built form. Three rectilinear …

The second phase of Sky View Parc is a composition of three slab buildings stacked atop a multi-storey shopping centre in a vibrant multicultural neighbourhood in Queens. The three structures, angular and transparent, are oriented on an east-west axis to frame views of the Manhattan skyline. A curtain wall envelope and continuous wrap-around …

The 11 Charlotte condominium building is embedded in an area characterized by vestigial warehouse buildings and service laneways in Toronto’s King West entertainment district. The challenges of the compressed site are addressed with a composition of stepped and stacked boxes. The transparent double-height base, programmed with the residential …

aA breathed new life into a listed heritage waterfront building on a challenging waterfront site – bisected by a regional expressway that stranded the former Loblaws Groceteria building and rendered it commercially unviable for over a decade. aA devised a mixed-use plan that inserted significant residential density at the north end of the site, …

Ïce is a three-tower complex that is transforming the former CN Railway Lands at the foot of Toronto’s York Street. Each tower has a distinct personality that reflects its program. The office tower – modernist, rational, transparent – incorporates innovative ‘double-skinned’ building technology that controls solar gain. Two slender residential …