Yonge Office

The owner of this project wears many hats, including a businessman, philanthropist and live-performance impresario. The building, which will serve as his head office, has been imagined as his theatre. The rejuvenated century house acts as the ‘front of house,’ receiving the public within a variety of assembly spaces, while the new addition, or ‘stage and fly tower,’ rises behind housing the staff of ‘actors’ performing the daily ‘plays’ within. Durability and longevity are the cornerstones of this project’s sustainability, which has been manifested in part by the reuse of the bricks and mortar of the original house, thus pushing its embodied carbon forward another 100-plus years. Future resilience is built into the design by constructing the foundations and structure to accommodate an additional four storeys, in anticipation of future revisions to by-laws that allow greater height. This will minimize future deconstruction, thus pushing the addition’s embodied carbon forward as far as possible.