Regent Park Block 22

Toronto, Canada

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Regent Park Block 22

Toronto, Canada

Firm

Giannone Petricone Associates Inc. Architects

Type

Residential › Apartment Multi Unit Housing

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2015

SIZE

100,000 sqft - 300,000 sqft

BUDGET

Undisclosed

As a neighborhood fabric building, tailored tightly into the secondary streets and public spaces of the revitalized Regent Park neighborhood, ‘Block 22’ is an instrument, rather than an object.

Its architecture is conceived much like a woven textile whose loose perimeter threads extend to a more translucent skin edge, which allows the building to act at once as a kind layered interface between the intimate, family spaces of the interior and inner block, and the open, collective spaces of the street, of the neighborhood, and of the city. Richness in texture is achieved by the creative combination of basic parts and modest materials such as standard brick, precast panels, and window wall.

In true Toronto form, ‘Block 22’ affirms the typical distinction between the formal, street-scale front and informal, intimate back. A textured wrapper of precast panels provides this requisite, protective outer shell as the public face of ‘Block 22’ towards the Nelson Mandela Park to the east, which it helps to define; while a three-story, striated brick, precast, and glass fabric lines the secondary Regent Park streets which surround ‘Block 22’ to the north, south, and west. The fabric liners are loosened and frayed, so to speak, towards the rear yards, outdoor amenity, and laneways.

‘Block 22’ in Regent Park’s revitalization plan required an integrated design approach to prioritize architectural excellence while respecting a lean budget and aggressive efficiencies to maximize quality of life and an improvement to our maturing city. The design approach allows us to take on the responsibility of imbuing ‘Block 22’ with the charge of being instrumental in providing the necessary rich texture of public space and urban building so critical in the Regent Park mixed use community plan.