Toronto TMU: Science Building | 92m | 14s | Toronto Metropolitan University | Henning Larsen

[AlvinofDiaspar]

From Architectural Plans:

AoD

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

Omg. Colour! It has colour!

The University Square? Hmm, as if anyone would actually want to sit and relax on Mutual Street.

 

[ShonTron]

Omg. Colour! It has colour!

The University Square? Hmm, as if anyone would actually want to sit and relax on Mutual Street.

Page One is a nice local coffee/beer bar. And during the day, you can peek into the vet's office to see the boarding cats and kittens up for adoption. There are worse streets downtown.

But Dundas and Jarvis is going to be one hell of a wind tunnel once this goes up.

 

[.dwg]

This is great! Very current in terms of its expression and materiality. Nice to see that one of the four corners of this intersection will showcase good architecture.

 

[Northern Light]

From Architectural Plans:

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AoD

First, TY to AoD for not sitting on his laurels during the holidays and posting this!

Second.............overall I like it. A lot.

The detailed plans on landscape, including paving material are quality.

I like the use of brick and contrasting material on the building itself.

I do have reservations about the street wall, particularly on the Jarvis side, where there appear to be windows missing on levels 2-4 that I think don't reflect well on the aesthetic; in addition of the obvious issues around wind and shadow.

'University Square' looks like a charming little spot, even if the name seems a tad overly grand for it.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

I've spent some time digging through the planning rationale for more interesting snippets.

But first, I think this deserves a high-resolution photo.

The other two renderings in higher resolution:



A massing model of the built context:

Ground Level details:

Look at that cluster forming around Jarvis!! :

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

And by far the most impressive thing about this building:

11 elevators for students, another 4 elevators for the residential tower.

It looks like Ryerson has learned its lesson from the dire dire state of affairs with the Snohetta design at the Student Learning Centre.

 

[Transportfan]

Funny how one skyscraper goes up at an obscure corner like this and then there's four before you know it.

 

[innsertnamehere]

This is a Significantly larger building than the SLC.

and just generally: holy crap this building is huge. I wouldn't be surprised if it will be one of the tallest academic buildings in the world.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Also, that 3d context map has a lot of errors in colour coding. Stuff that has been under construction for over a year is listed as "proposed".

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

and just generally: holy crap this building is huge. I wouldn't be surprised if it will be one of the tallest academic buildings in the world.

Though I am not sure how legit it would be to include the residence portion.

AoD

 

[maestro]

I don't know. I find the podium and how it connects to the tower very clunky. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if there was separation between the two. The tower has a great scale.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Though I am not sure how legit it would be to include the residence portion.

AoD

Why not? It's an academically associated use. Ryerson will presumably own and operate it.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

This is a Significantly larger building than the SLC.

It is a little crazy. The Daphne Coxwell building is already near completion and is going to be a huge addition to the campus. I'm not sure if Ryerson has made a deal with YSL to rent some of the podium floors there or not, but that is another potentially significant expansion in square foot.

I did a rough count of the student space here based on the arch drawings.

3x - 65 Seat Classroom
1x - 130 Seat Classroom
3x - 150 Seat Classroom
6x - 300 Seat Classroom

54x - Small "Lab Areas"
22x - Large "Lab Areas"
7x - "Project Room"
11x - Seminar Rooms/Meeting Spaces
1x - Teaching Lab

Especially those 300 seat classrooms will relieve pressure in other parts of the campus. In addition, there are 4x Student Study Areas + 3x Masters Student Study Areas. The Master student space will be especially desired.

There are also 50x offices for faculty members, and 66x of what appears to be student offices according to the drawings. Perhaps those are for masters students (in other universities private offices for master students is normal), or perhaps those are bookable rooms like in the SLC/Library and the architect who drew them didn't get the concept.

Whichever way it ends up being, there is no doubt that this is a huge addition to the campus space.

and just generally: holy crap this building is huge. I wouldn't be surprised if it will be one of the tallest academic buildings in the world.

Last page I commented on how an 11 storey podium is not encouraged in the tall buildings guidelines.

That was before seeing the ceiling heights and mechanical penthouse. In reality, this building's podium is 13 storeys (as in, the roof is at level with the 13th floor of the residential tower) when you count the mechanical penthouse, and at 153.6 feet (46.8 metres) it is substantially taller than the adjacent buildings on Mutual Street.

The planning rationale addresses this by stating that the demands of institutional use are different than condos, and that the adjacent pre-existing buildings are already tall and sitting on a large base. I'm sure since this is Ryerson, it will be okay.

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Odd tid-bit, but this building has 2.5 levels of bicycle parking. There appears to be a mezzanine (?) bike storage floor in between P1 and Ground Level. I found that kind of funny that we are now entering the realm of multi-level underground bicycle parking.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Ryerson right now only has a single small bike room accessed off of Victoria lane. They are probably aiming to build a nice big secure facility for most of campus.

And yes I believe ryerson has signed on for the office space in YSL, though I believe it's mostly administrative and academic research space, not really student facing facilities.