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Toronto’s tallest timber-framed building so far has enjoyed a speedy pace of construction with a minimum of concrete as the first-phase office building of the T3 Bayside development sees glazing installed up to its 10th and final floor. The Hines project is located on Toronto’s East Bayfront, and is an addition to the master-planned Bayside community, to deliver over 200,000ft² of new office space to the area. Designed by Danish architecture firm 3XN, with Toronto’s WZMH Architects as Architect of Record, the project broke ground in 2020 and has made quick work of construction thus far, with interior work well underway.
The project’s frame was constructed around a concrete elevator core that rises through the centre of the building, but since that core was completed it has been all about timber. As the frame continued to rise throughout the summer, the cladding crew followed closely with the glazing to seal the building as quickly as possible.
By the early fall, the framing work was down to the final task of completing the top-floor mechanical level, and the glazing quickly catching up with the completed floors. The image below shows the building at the start of September, glazed up to the seventh story with three floors remaining. The stepping design that wraps around the building’s elevations was beginning to emerge and the vertical fins were mostly in place.
Fast forward to the end of September and the building was pictured with glazing up to the 10th storey, appearing virtually complete from the exterior, save a narrow vertical strip of glass still to be added on following the removal of the construction hoist. In the image below, the stepping pattern can be clearly understood in its entirety on the building’s north elevation, stepping down from east to west and wrapping around to the west elevation to meet the ground. The motif continues to travel around the building, ultimately reconnecting at the high point on the north elevation after stepping up gradually around the south and east elevations.
Pictured in early November, we can see the extent of the work remaining in a wider view of the site via an aerial image facing east. The mechanical penthouse on the roof is in the process of being weather-sealed so that the finishings can be installed while the base layer of flooring for what will eventually be a rooftop terrace amenity space is in place. Looking in the foreground of the image below, to the west of the building, we can see the vacant site where the second phase of development, another timber-framed building, is slated to be built. While few details are available on the start date for the construction of the second phase, a completion target of 2027 has been put forward.
Finally, in the last week of November the project enjoyed a moment worthy of celebration in the story of any construction project, the removal of the tower crane. With the crane taken down, the project is entering its final stage of construction, with focus shifting to interior finishing. With several months of work still ahead, the project is comfortably within range of its second quarter 2023 completion target.
UrbanToronto will continue to follow progress on this development, but in the meantime, you can learn more about it from our Database file, linked below. If you'd like, 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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