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Great Gulf continues to release images of their new Yonge + Rich condo complex on Richmond Street in Downtown Toronto one step at a time. Initially teasing the 50-storey tower in a video that provided a contextual but distant view, this time we get a close-up look from the southwest in the first full-building rendering.
The tower is L-shaped, with its tallest portion running 50 storeys north-south through the middle of the block from Lombard Street to Richmond Street, while a 22-storey wing extends west along Richmond Street to Victoria. The building's skin is articulated in three expressions as a way to break up the tower's bulk. Each section can be seen as a quadrant of the site, understanding that the southwest quadrant is an unrelated separate property.
The buildings in the unrelated southwest quadrant are not pictured in the renderings. They shelter in the pocket of the L on the northeast corner of Victoria and Lombard Streets, and are a three-storey pair of heritage buildings currently best known for an upscale bar called The Beer Academy. More on them later.
The tower's garden-topped 22-storey northwest and 49-storey northeast quadrants are marked by staggered wraparound balconies, with each quadrant treated slightly differently.
The southeast quadrant is the building's eye-catcher, with an irregular grille gradually loosening as the building rises. If the early rendering below still holds, (cladding choices are amongst those that are often finalized quite late in the design process), then the grille looks to be made of a patterned and mottled precast.
At ground level the building is clad in a slotted brick façade, stressing Yonge + Rich's modernity while linking to the brick clad heritage buildings on surrounding properties.
In the meantime, 75 Victoria and 2 Lombard have gone up for sale. The pair of buildings are being pitched as a site to expand nominally while preserving the heritage façades at street level.
For more detailed views and information on the project, visit the UrbanToronto dataBase page for the project, linked below, or choose an associated Forum thread link if you would like to get in on the conversation. Otherwise, please leave a comment here!
