When I was a lot younger and growing up in Toronto, the place to go out at night was in the Entertainment District, centered around Richmond St West and Adelaide St West. This is where all of the bars and clubs were. Thinking back, the concentration of nighttime activities in this area was pretty incredible.

Those of you who are familiar with Toronto will know that this area isn't the same nighttime epicenter that it once was and that it's been this way for many years. The scene shifted westward and down to King St. It also went from larger clubs and venues to smaller bars, restaurants, and lounges. Tastes change, I guess.

So if you had to choose one intersection to be the epicenter of nightlife in Toronto right now, I think you could easily argue that it's King St West and Portland St. (Disagree with this take? Leave a comment below.)

But why this intersection? Why did the nighttime economy land right here?

Part of it was surely development pressures in the Entertainment District, which forced a broader move. I also think that these areas tend to become victims of their own success. Clubs and bars generate a lot of noise and that makes some people grouchy.

But I think you could also argue that the intersection of King and Portland has some very specific urban qualities that lend itself to becoming a kind of heart for nightlife.

It helps that it is the only north-south street that intersects King between Bathurst and Spadina. However, I think the more important point is that both Bathurst and Spadina are fairly broad arterial avenues (certainly that is the case for Spadina). These intersections aren't as hospitable to pedestrians and so they create a natural break in "the strip."

The result is that Portland, which is a much smaller street, became the heart. The intersection feels much more like an urban room. Leave one bar and another one is right in front of you. That's one of the things about cities. Intimate spaces, rather than big ones, are often what attract people.

Today I stopped by the Exploring KING exhibit that is currently on at 134 Peter Street. It is an exhibition celebrating the design of KING Toronto.

It explains how the design came about. Note all the different unit layouts on the floor.

It includes (foam) study models that go as far back as 2015. That's four years of design iterations.

It has samples of the glass blocks that will be used on the building's facades.

Related article: Glass blocks, that staple of 1980s kitsch, are trendy again. Sorry, it's behind a paywall.

It has a VR setup that allows you to explore the building's inner courtyard. It's going to be a fun space.

And there's even a KING Toronto candle for sale. (Aromatic woods with spicy overtones.)

I thought the overall exhibition was very well done and I am thrilled to see architecture and design so front and center. It is an exciting time to be living in this city.

Things are busy right now as we get ready to unveil Junction House this fall and so I’m a bit behind on my news and reading. 

I just finished reading Alex Bozikovic’s Globe article on BIG’s new KING Toronto project (official name). It is an interesting piece about creating villages and a sense of community in new developments – something that Bjarke Ingels has been focused on for many years. 

Below are a few renderings of the project. I’m excited for this one. And as I said before on the blog, I am sure it will be precedent setting in a number of ways.

One remark from the article that stood out for me is this one here:

Still: The design breaks a lot of rules. Which is why it took two years of difficult negotiations with city planners to reach approvals. “We wanted it to be quieter,” says Lynda MacDonald, a senior Toronto planner who was involved in overseeing the project. “It’s a very large project, and we wanted to make sure it respected the character of King Street.”

I am often asked why we don’t see more innovation in architecture and real estate. There are a number of reasons for that. One of them is risk. Development is in many ways a game of risk mitigation. 

But another reason is that when you try and do something unconventional that disrupts the status quo, you also call into question the typical planning criteria used to evaluate projects. And that may slow you down.

Alex accurately points out in his article that we are used to doing things around here in one of two ways:

The King Street project is also an ambitious experiment with urban design. There are basically two species of tower in Toronto: a midrise slab of six to 10 storeys, which steps back at the top; and a “tower-and-podium,” a model borrowed from Vancouver that combines a fat, squared-off base (or “podium”) with a tall, skinny residential tower. Both can work, but can also create the big-box blandness that many people dislike about new urban housing.

None of this is to suggest that we should ignore the character of a particular area. It is critical and I believe that KING Toronto has been mindful of that. 

But I also firmly believe in ambitious city building and I think there’s no question that KING Toronto is doing exactly that.

Images: Hayes Davison via Dezeen and courtesy of Westbank