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Toronto's transformational high-rise boom has reached its next stage, with the first "supertall" towers—buildings taller than 300 metres—now under construction in the city. Among the pair of record-breaking towers gunning for the title of Canada's tallest building, Mizrahi Developments' The One has been under construction at Yonge and Bloor since 2017, and work is now heating up for the new landmark, designed by UK-based architects Foster + Partners with Toronto's Core Architects.
We have been closely following the construction, most recently checking in at the start of July when the building was celebrating a milestone with the installation of its first exterior finishes, massive glass panels which had begun to enclose the soaring flagship retail space fronting Yonge and Bloor's southwest corner. In the month since, several more of the panels—their properties and installation method were described in detail in our previous article—have appeared around the tower base.
Another exterior material—grilles of cylindrical aluminum bars filled with a dampening foam and backed by glazing, has now been installed on the west side of the building. First seen in an exclusive preview of the exterior materials posted on UrbanToronto in 2019, these grilles have now been installed on the second floor of the building's rear laneway frontage. The same materials will appear on the two-storey mid-tower mechanical sections seen in renderings.
Most recently, crews poured the tower's fifth floor transfer slab which will support the elevator core that serves the tower from the sixth storey up, "floating" it over the marquee column-free, ground floor retail space below. With 725 m³ of concrete poured, the transfer slab is 1.8 metres thick.
Other recent progress includes structural steel anchored in the the transfer slab that will become fifth floor walls, while beams mark the future level of the sixth floor interior and some steel posts extend upwards into sixth and seventh floor space now.
Approved at 85 storeys and a height of 308.6 metres, The One is among the pair of projects currently contending for the title of Canada's tallest building, along with the 312.5-metre SkyTower at Pinnacle One Yonge, now in the early stages of construction a couple of kilometres to the south. Seeking a height increase from the City, The One's proposed 94-storey, 338.3-metre high would crown the building as the country's tallest, in a scenario playing out not unlike the skyline defining height race in Manhattan of 1920s and 30s.
You can learn more from our Database file for the project, linked below. If you'd like to, you can join in on the conversation in the associated Project Forum thread, or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
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