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If any current local construction project could be described as a sleeper hit on UrbanToronto, it is the new SickKids Research and Learning Centre tower on Bay Street. This 21-storey tower with its uniquely striped, striated and staggered cladding is one of a very few Toronto buildings that elevates the humble spandrel to art. Diamond Schmitt Architects have turned what could have been merely an efficient, simple box into a funky, colourful, and eyecatching landmark on the city's mid-core skyline. We start a tour of this huge $400 Million complex today, and just start to get an appreciation of just how detailed, advanced, particular, expansive, and exciting this project is.
To start off, we'll take a quick look at the outside before heading in to the main entry.
The building's glazing features "four green and four blue tones, assembled in a polychromatic dance behind a graduated white frit" according to Project Architect Duncan Higgins. The subtle tonal shifts on the exterior express what's occuring inside as well: "the green and blue interchange up the building to define and relate to the neighbourhood groupings within", as specialities within SickKids' research mandate will be grouped in three-floor blocks of space.
The three-floor blocks are most clearly expressed by atriums on the Bay Street elevation, which are hinted at in the image below… but before we delve more deeply into them, we want to look more at what's going on at street level, and just above. Below, this shot of the southeast corner of the building by UrbanToronto Forum member urbandreamer on May 8th captures the exterior on a slightly drier day than when we visited on May 9th.
Most prominent in both the photo above and the rendering below is the diagonal line of the grand stair bringing people up from the lobby into the learning centre part of the building, found on the second and third floors.
Inside the lobby currently one finds a forest of scaffolding as workers prepare to install finished surfaces and fittings.
Below, this area will eventually feature warm steamed European beech fittings contrasting with sleek glass and stainless steel.
The stair currently. It will get stone treds.
Above, how the grand stair will look, and how it looks now, below.
A temporary floor is held up by scaffolding, providing a place for workers to install the ceiling.
Above the main entry on Bay will be a multi-purpose room, meant for receptions, conferences, and gatherings of all sorts. The orange and yellow hues seen below will be beech slats in the finished building.
Below is how this room looks now. A steel frame separates the future folding door system from glass partition walls.
The multi-purpose room is partialy vaulted over Bay Street. Crystal-clear low-iron glass will provide a view to the activity below, while giving passersby outside a look into SickKids' day-to-day acitivities.
Further into the building on the same floor will be a teaching auditorium.
The room currently features another temporary floor, allowing workers to complete plasterwork on the ceiling.
Up another couple of floors and we see our first typical lab floor. A long hallway extends the north-south length of the building connecting labs on either side with vertical circulation in the core. By running the full length of the building, the hallways have windows at the north and south ends, helping those inside to remain oriented.
Labs will look as below when built out. HDR Architecture are tacking the design of the flexible working spaces here. Diamond Schmitt has fashioned the volumes of the rooms so that they are expansive near the windows, allowing daylight to penetrate deeply into centre of the building, while the inner side of the labs feature lower ceilings and more human-scaled space. Plumbing in these areas will provide permanent locations for, alternately, lab sinks, kitchenettes, and washrooms.
A construction worker works on finishing a ceiling. We can also see the inside of the graduated striped ceramic fritting on the windows here. The frit cuts down on heat gain during summer months, blocking some light transmission while still providing views.
A hallway along the south side of the sixth floor leads to more office and lab space.
Up a floor to the seventh, and we find ourselves admist myriad vents, pipes, and mechanical units. A building full of labs where chemical and biological research will be taking place means that a huge amount of space is required primarily for airhandling: to keep everything safe here, vast amounts of air have to be moved in a hurry if need be, while adequate ventilation is always a high priority here.
Sparks fly as pipes are ground down to fit together.
So, time to venture out to the building's signature atriums rising up with east side? Well, we only have one quick look now out over Bay, but we will be back tomorrow to look at the atriums in a variety of states of completion. There is a lot to see in these spaces, both view-wise, and in terms of construction details. Enjoy the peek!
What do you think about what you've seen so far? You can comment here, or get in on the conversation in the project thread, linked below. More renderings of the finished project can be seen in the dataBase listing too.
| Related Companies: | Diamond Schmitt Architects, EllisDon |
