Studio VAARO

191 N

toronto, CANADA

Office Building

Studio VAARO has been commissioned for a commercial renovation & addition project in downtown Toronto, which is to become a new office headquarters.

An existing two storey light-industrial building is being refreshed and retained as much as possible, and its unusual plan geometry—a parallelogram with sharp corners—has informed that of the addition above. The addition steps back towards single-family residences at the rear and holds the street edge at the front.

Two new vertical pill-shaped protrusions serve to house the vertical circulation and also to soften the angular geometry of the building mass. The new addition is to be clad in a pleated, perforated metal screen that provides privacy while still allowing light and air to pass through.

Project Team: Aleris Rodgers, Francesco Valente-Gorjup, Shengjie Qiu, Liam Hall, Mo Bayati, Muskan Goel, Chris Qiu, Caleigh MacDonald

consultant team: honeycomb engineers, west engineering, planning partnership, purpose building, ibi group, ba group, hunter & associates