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Ask anyone what the real stand-outs have been from the ongoing GTA condo boom, and Absolute World just east of Square One in Mississauga will be on nearly everyone's list. The Square One one area has some other condos worth talking about though, which may not make the World Architecture News, but which are handsome additions to this city west of Toronto nevertheless.
Parkside Village will eventually cover 30 acres of land on the western fringe of Mississauga's growing City Centre, split across several blocks. The first block to be created by developer Amacon includes three towers; the Residences of Parkside Village, 36 storeys tall, the Grand Residences, 45 storeys tall, and the Park Residences, also 36 storeys tall. It's the third phase, the Park Residences, that you can see above, the right-most tower, still with its crane up top. Other recent residential developments just to the west of Mississauga's City Hall feature in the photo above, creating the area's context, a mix of high-rise and low-rise, with a number of surface parking lots awaiting redevelopment in coming years.
Amacon hired Richmond Architects to create Parkside Village's sleek look. Ask EI Richmond's Principal Sal Vitiello, and he'll tell you that some of the credit for the look should be shared with colleagues at Zeidler Partnership Architects. The podiums, 7-storey north and south wings extending along Confederation Parkway, are each a bit different, recall Germany's early Modernist Bauhaus movement in their highly machined design, and bring the development squarely out to the wide sidewalks.
Hints of copper accent the black, white, and gray look, drawing attention to the entrance and more highly detailed and gridded glazing sections.
The north podium may be the complex's most popular touch: the top three floors curve round the otherwise hard-angled corner. The caprice draws the eye, a soft touch that while still highly geometric and machined, is a virtual wink towards the viewer, a restrained flourish, an understated tip-of-the-hat to 1960s Space Age futurism. All we know is it looks great!
While residents have started to move into the first phases at Parkside Village and await completion of the third tower, sales are now concentrating on the next phases, two 40-storey-plus towers called PSV 1 and 2, and The Towns, a series of low-rise homes backing on to a linear park.
Want to know more about Parkside Village? Our 'Residences' dataBase entry, linked below, has lots of renderings and information covering the buildings in this story, while the PSV entry covers the next phases. Want to get in on the discussion? Choose one of the associated Forum threads, or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
