山ǿ's One Spadina Crescent: merging the past with the future
The Globe and Mail's Alex Bozikovic calls the new home of the University of Toronto’s Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design “one of the best Canadian buildings of the past decade.”
“Up front, the old Knox College is all Victorian adornment, an array of gables, turrets and lancet arches,” writes Bozikovic, of One Spadina, an 1875 building, designed by Smith & Gemmell as a Presbyterian seminary. “But around back it has a very different vibe. A long, flat glass façade pulls in northern light. Green roofs feed on rainwater. Zigzagging concrete forms say, in their own language: Welcome to 2017.”
He says the building is “spectacular....rich with arguments about how contemporary architecture, landscape and urbanism can work with history and build the city of the future.”
North facing side of One Spadina Crescent (photo by Nic Lehoux)