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 1,030sm site. The 49-storey tower is ‘bound’ with crisscrossing aluminum bands on its west and east façades, and its narrow dimensions exaggerated by prominent floor slabs expressed on the north and south elevations. The tower floats above a shadowbox base that plays with the warehouse window grid, angling each pane to disrupt the geometry of the podium. The facetted glazing casts a shower of light over the granite-paved forecourt that engages the public realm and maintains pre-existing sightlines to the Royal Alexandra Theatre.