WINNER OF A 2016 CANADIAN ARCHITECT AWARD OF MERIT
In a twist on the rigid appearance of many concrete buildings, modular precast panels are used to produce a dynamic surface that exhibits both continuities and discontinuities.
Liberty Village, one of Toronto?s oldest industrial districts, has become a rapidly intensifying mixed-use neighbourhood. How does one add to the area?s unique building fabric without simply reproducing what is there, or reverting to the contemporary default of a glass curtain wall"
Misfit[Fit], a new boutique office building in Liberty Village, is a compelling answer. The building references the district?s heritage brickwork, while attempting to rekindle Toronto?s faded love affair with precast concrete. Misfit[Fit] capitalizes on the economy of repetition offered by precast concrete without creating a static pattern of solid and void. A key inspiration was the neighbourhood?s old brick buildings?the way bricks protrude, shift and stack to produce ornament. Similarly, individual edges and profiles are pronounced within the precast façades, whose panels are designed with seeming disregard for adjacent units.
The panel profiles are most evident at the building?s corners, where the façade appears like a rough stack of blocks.
Just two façade panels?divided into six sub-panels and created from reusable moulds?are used to produce the office building?s concrete façades. Each façade reads not as a continuous surface, but as an accumulation of in...