The ongoing southerly expansion of Toronto's downtown core is transforming the physical appearance of our city in ways not seen since the large scale building boom of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Massive towers of concrete, steel and glass rise from where just a few short years ago there was nothing but cracked pavement, gravel and dirt. Several high-rise developments are under-construction in this burgeoning community; one that's generating a lot of interest these days is the Southcore Financial Centre and Delta Toronto.

Southcore Financial Centre & Delta Toronto rising from a sea of new condominiums, image by Jack Landau

Developed by Great West Life and bcIMC, the project consists of three buildings; the already complete 26-storey PricewaterhouseCoopers Tower at 18 York, the 30-storey Bremner Tower office building, and the 47-storey 4-star Delta Hotel.

Southcore Financial Centre & Delta Toronto under construction, image by Jack Landau

The Page + Steele / IBI Group Architects-designed hotel tower should top off in the next couple of months, with work currently underway on a last few typical floors before work begins on the large mechanical penthouse.

Southcore Financial Centre & Delta Toronto viewed from Front and York, image by Jack Landau

There are approximately 10 floors left to build on the KPMB Architects-designed 700,000 square-foot Bremner Tower, which will top out at 30 storeys in height.

The Bremner Tower has around 10 more floors to go, image by Jack Landau

On the ground floor of the office tower, the lobby and its defining angled support columns are still in a raw state. Though the space is still an active construction zone, it is easy to see that this will be quite a dramatic entrance to the tower.

Future lobby space at Bremner Tower, image by Jack Landau

The podium of the Delta Toronto tower is also moving along nicely, with much of the cladding installed. The large podium, where the hotel's main function rooms are, is built out to the corner of Simcoe and Bremner, while the tower portion sits back at the north end of the site.

Delta Toronto's podium, image by Jack Landau

The complex brings a lot to the table from a design perspective. Though the shapes of the office buildings are boring boxes, the hotel deftly plays with angles, and the high quality curtainwall glazing sets these towers apart from their green glass and mullion-heavy neighbours.

High quality curtainwall glazing on Delta Toronto, image by Jack Landau

Glazing on the Delta hotel tower has seen substantial praise from our Forum contributors, with near unanimous approval from a wide range of design geeks and armchair critics alike! The highly-reflective glass is punctuated by a randomized speckling of white highlights.

Detail of the different types of curtainwall glazing found on the Delta and Bremner Tower, image by Jack Landau

The contemporary urban presence created by this growing Bremner Boulevard corridor has certainly made walking to nearby destinations more desirable.  For those who have not walked down this rapidly changing street in the past, the transformation would be quite the pleasant surprise. Given the number of tourists who travel the distance between Union Station and the CN Tower on any given day, it is good to know that visitors to our city are no longer leaving town with memories of the vast windswept parking lots and fenced off brownfield sites that once predominated here.

A sightseeing bus shuttles tourists along Bremner Boulevard, image by Jack Landau

For additional information including building facts and renderings, please visit our dataBase page for this project, linked below. Want to get involved in the discussion? Check out one of the associated Forum threads, or voice your opinion in the comments section provided below.