HighPark Condominiums by The Daniels Corporation is growing noticeably now on Bloor Street across from the famous park, and can be seen from a distance beginning to poke above its surroundings. The view of the building looking across the valley at Keele Street from Indian Road is going to be an impressive one of the Diamond Schmitt Architects-designed building.
From across Bloor Street in High Park itself, there's always something going on for passersby to watch.
The ground floor retail spaces are starting to be fitted out with the mechanical systems, such as the sprinkler pipes which will largely go unnoticed in the background once the building is finished, but which are always there if ever needed.
To build columns, concrete is poured into a sonotube, a form essentially made out of paper. A steel rebar cage in the centre of the tube will reinforce the concrete, giving it immense strength.
Once the concrete in the columns have cured sufficiently, the sonotube's paper wrap is peeled off and tossed out.
A little higher up, another part of the job is underway. On the third floor a construction worker watches from a temporary platform as the operator of crane #1 lowers the main hook, fitted with chains, for a hoisting job.
The materials that need to be moved here are shoring jacks. You can see a number of them in use in the photo; the shoring jacks are installed between floor and ceiling during the concrete curing process to make sure that the slabs do not sag at all during this time. Once the slabs are sufficiently hard, the jacks can be removed and taken to where they are needed next.
In the image above, the worker has attached straps tied around the bundle of jacks to the end of the chains hanging from the crane's hook, and he has signaled that they are ready for the hoist. Below, we have lift off.
A minute later the crane has hoisted the jacks three storeys higher, and is swinging them around to land on the sixth floor. They will be installed as soon as the flyforms used for the pouring of a slab have been transferred to where they are needed next.
Back down at ground level, and looking east along the front of the building reveals custom work to build forms that will be used to create the concrete ledge that the building's front windows will rest upon. These forms are built in place as the end result here is not something which will be repeated in another spot in the building.
You get a feel in the image above for how tall the ceilings will be for the ground level retail spaces.
So that's what was seen along the Bloor Street side of Daniels' HighPark Condominiums when we last stopped by for a visit. There were other things to check out on the north side of the building too, and we will return with a look at that in our next story on the project.
Want to know more about Daniels HighPark? Our dataBase file for the project, linked below, contains lots of information and several renderings. Want to get in on the discussion? Choose one of the associated Forum thread links, or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
Related Companies: | Diamond Schmitt Architects, Isotherm Engineering Ltd., Land Art Design Landscape Architects Inc, The Daniels Corporation |