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John Street Square, so named for the purpose of the competition, is to be installed at the currently-underutilized southeast corner of King and John Streets. The square is envisioned as the central gathering place for Toronto’s Entertainment District, linking the upcoming John Street Arts & Culture Promenade with major attractions on King Street, including TIFF Bell Lightbox, the Princess of Wales and Royal Alexandra Theatres, Metro Square, and Roy Thomson Hall.
The following are the top five finalists for John Street Square as chosen by an esteemed panel of judges. Members of the public are encouraged to vote for their favourite of these proposals.
FINALIST #1 – KING ST. TERRACE
King St Terrace aims to create an attractive and inviting multi-purpose cultural space for John Street Square, encompassing an information / ticket kiosk; grassy relaxation areas; a stepped terrace with functioning restaurant beneath; a large backdrop stage used for outdoor cinema, theatre performances, and concerts; and a diagonal, lit pathway serving as a catwalk for Fashion Week. King St Terrace’s signature element is a graphic pattern of white LEDs embedded in the ground, which amplifies the square and gives guidance through it without physically partitioning it.
FINALIST #2 – KING ST. STAIRCASE
King Street Staircase imagines transforming the strategic intersection of King and John into a monumental staircase in the spirit of Sacré-Coeur in Paris, The Met in New York, and the Vancouver Art Gallery in Vancouver. The stair would provide a desperately-needed place to sit, linger, and gather for the Entertainment District’s 50,000 workers, 10,000 residents and countless visitors. The staircase at John Street Square would be a dynamic piece of urban sculpture and a destination in itself; its shape taking cues from surrounding buildings and pedestrian movements and its forms supporting major events in the area.
FINALIST #3 – URBAN BALLROOM
Urban Ballroom proposes making John Street Square an exciting and playful multi-functional outdoor room for gatherings and events and as a place to linger. The space would be open to visitors from all directions and be furnished with intermingling zones of occupation, scaled from the crowd to the individual. The ceiling of Urban Ballroom is made from a web of solar-powered globe lights which illuminate the space, define it spatially, and compress it by way of a catenary bulge. The ground plane rises subtly to meet the curve of the ceiling, allowing for views over the crowd. The east and west ends of the square are filled with balls of various sizes arranged into informal seating clusters.
FINALIST #4 – ENTERTAIN ME
Entertain Me seeks to enhance and extend John Street Square with a highly-visible and unified paving pattern, suggesting film strips or folded theatre curtains, running right to the frontages of surrounding buildings and along the entire length of the new John Street Promenade. Inside the square, the paving is extruded into three-dimensional wooden forms accommodating seating for large and small gatherings. Interspersed in this landscape are trees planted in bioswales, lit from within at night to compliment the plaza’s other lighting effects, including LEDs set in some of the paving units and new neighbourhood light poles.
FINALIST #5 – ORACLE SQUARE
Oracle Square is conceived as a loose savannah of vertical and horizontal forms, delineating and intensifying John Street Square within the Entertainment District. Oracle Square contains 27 cylinders, three meters in diameter and 25 meters high, with fully programmable translucent skins. These are planted in a floor of undulating permeable stone, circular garden patches, and reflecting pools, with three dimensional ‘mushrooms’ offering cover and protection. Suspended fifteen meters above is the Filigreed Fog, a light mesh ceiling lit at night for added effect.
