Size: 18 York Street: 671,000 s.f. (2011); Bremner Tower: 700,000 s.f. (2015)
Completion: 2015
The Southcore Financial Centre (SFC) is a major mixed-use sustainable development in Toronto’s emerging Southcore Financial District comprising three glass towers: the Price Waterhouse Cooper (PwC) Office Tower (18 York), the Bremner Office Tower (7B) and the Delta York Hotel. KPMB designed both office towers. PwC is a LEED Gold (Core and Shell) 671,000 s.f., 26-storey tower and Bremner Tower is a LEED Gold (Core and Shell) candidate, 700,000 s.f., 30-storey tower. The design responds to the City of Toronto’s district panning strategy to create a new gateway to the downtown financial district and to increase density with a mix of commercial and corporate uses.
All three towers are unified at the street level with an interconnected three-storey podium. The roof of the podium features a publicly accessible urban forest planted as a boreal environment with indigenous species. Both towers include 3 levels of below grade parking and bicycle storage with adjacent change rooms and showers. The ground and second levels of the podium include retail services.
The oblong rectangularity of each tower is characterized by a rigorous simplicity of geometry and elegant proportion. The building envelopes are a high performance glazing system with maximum-scaled glass panels which reduce the number of mullions and exterior metal elements. This strategy achieves three things: minimizes thermal bridging conditions, optimizes daylight transmission and expresses a purity of form that appears prismatic. The lobby of each tower is a 16m high light-filled space, anchored and the core by elevator banks clad in Ontario limestone. The lobbies of both towers have escalators leading to the second floor to provide direct access to a sheltered pedestrian route to downtown Toronto’s grand central station. A monumental cylindrical glass and stone exterior stair located and the center of the south elevation of the Bremner Tower provides access to the public garden terrace located on the second and third floor terraces of the podium.
This was taken from kpmb.com
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