What do you think of this beautiful low-rise apartment building? It is called Spadina Gardens and it was built (allegedly illegally) on Toronto's Spadina Avenue in 1906, shortly before the City enacted an outright ban on "disease-breeding tenements" (i.e. apartment buildings) in all residential neighborhoods.

This, of course, is a form of exclusionary zoning. Our predecessors had decided that apartments were bad, they promoted disease and immorality, and that they were likely to destroy or at least corrupt Toronto by making it, you know, less waspy.

Important studies are underway here in Toronto, and across North America, to determine whether we should do something about this longstanding city building tradition. Should we allow a mixture of different housing types in our residential neighborhoods, or should we keep things just the way that they are? That being low-rise and single-family.

In the meantime, we are implementing things like inclusionary zoning, which I guess makes some people feel better about themselves and the current state of affairs. But in the end, it sits very much on top of our exclusionary past.

Low-rise single-family home neighborhoods remain off limits. Apartments should only go in select locations (provided they don't bother the single-family homes). And any efforts to create greater affordability and diversity should only impact the new apartments and not the low-rise single-family homes that already exist.

I would encourage all of you to have a listen to 99% Percent Invisible's recent episode about Toronto's "missing middle." It does a great job explaining why Toronto looks and performs the way that it does today, and why it's time that we do something about it. It's also highly relevant to not just Toronto, but many cities across North America.

Earlier this week I got a sneak peek of One Spadina Crescent – the new building for the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. 

The renovation and addition was designed by the Boston-based firm NADAAA. And let me tell you, it’s absolutely spectacular.

I was in a rush at the time and I didn’t have my real camera on me, but I managed to quickly grab this snap:

It’s of the third floor. 

What you see in the middle are steps leading down to an “open bleacher space” that functions as a crit space and as an oculus that brings light into the core of the building. In the middle of the building is a large flex space.

Because the building effectively sits in the middle of Spadina Avenue, the windows on the right side (above) look directly up the street, as if you were standing in the middle of it. I wish I had betters photos to share with you all.

When you’re an architecture student, you spend almost all of your waking time in studio. I can certainly think of worse buildings to be cooped up in. I’m excited to see it in full swing come September.

Click here if you’d like to see renderings of the building.

One of the projects that I’m most excited about here in Toronto is the renovation and addition to One Spadina Crescent. The building sits in the middle of a roundabout along Spadina Avenue and occupies what is easily one of the most ceremonial positions in the city.

But for as long as I can remember, the building hasn’t been living up to its full potential. So much so that in the 1960s it was going to be demolished in order to make way for the proposed Spadina Expressway. That would have been an absolute tragedy. Thankfully, our friend Jane Jacobs stopped that one.

Today, exciting things are happening at One Spadina Crescent. The Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto is in the midst of renovating and expanding the building, and will eventually relocate there from its current location on College Street.

When it’s all said and done, One Spadina Crescent will look something like this (via Daniels).

From the south:

From the west:

From the north:

What’s most exciting to me about this project are the following 3 things:

First, it’s an opportunity to connect One Spadina Crescent to the surrounding urban fabric. Today, it feels very much like an island in the middle of the street. 

Second, it’s a wonderful example of the new layering on top of the old, which is something that I believe we should aspire to do in our cities. The University of Toronto has become quite good at doing that on campus.

And finally, the intent is for this building and site to include a number of research centers and public facing functions devoted to architecture, design, and city building. And so One Spadina could become quite the hub in the city. That’s exciting.

If you’d like to take a look inside the building (pre-renovation), check out these great photos by Peter MacCallum. The picture at the top of this post is his.