Archives: Projects
CMHC National Housing Competition, 1979: “Most jurors found the architectural expression of the submission disturbing.”
Forty-four years ago, in 1979, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) sponsored a national architecture competition seeking innovative designs for medium density housing in regions across the country. The sponsors wished to see Canadian architects respond to new challenges …
Urban Rail Corridors: Reconstructing Dupont
Linear Networks – The Railway
In a city that seems to still be divided into its pre-amalgamated entities, linear networks like Toronto’s rail corridors present an opportunity to forge new connections that cross geographical and political perceived boundaries. The rail …
Cool Canyons: the Financial District’s New Relational Metamorphosis of Urban Blocks
The many laneways and courtyard spaces in the Financial District have the potential to be transformed into a new, car-free public realm, welcoming to new businesses and public life. The interior laneway and courtyard spaces within the block bounded by …
Nawash First Nation Band Administration/Community Facility Concepts
A range of concepts have been initiated for the Administrative / Community Facility for the Nawash First Nation that explore different ways of composing the programme elements into unique animal-like figures that give special connections between inside and outside spaces. …
‘Boundaries in the Making:’ Concepts for a New Housing Community in Belfast
In 2022, Brown and Storey Architects participated in the City of the Future Competition in Belfast, Northern Ireland, a call for architecture and urban design ideas to build an inclusive and sustainable community on the 25-acre former Mackie’s site. Brown …
‘Entangled Archipelagos’: A New Sustainable Neighbourhood in Reykjavik
In April 2023, Brown and Storey Architects responded to an open call from the City of Reykjavik, Iceland, to submit ideas for a sustainable new neighbourhood in the Keldur Development Area. Brown and Storey’s proposal focuses on walkability, green buildings …
Portage and Main: City Crossing Competition
Site Context and Analysis
The roads at Portage and Main are re-visualized in this project to grow beyond a purely topographic and monofunctional traffic corridor into a constructed artefact Winnipeg expressed as a natural element of the total environment of …
Paradise Patchwork – Neighbourhoods for Generations
Building on their original housing and urban design work for Victoria Park Avenue and the Victoria Park Subway Station, Brown + Storey Architects further developed their proposal for the Taylor Massey community in the Neighbourhoods for Generations Competition in …
Hurontario LRT Public Realm
Brown + Storey Architects were part of the Public Realm Technical Advisory Team working with SvN and AECOM to provide the bid documents for the Hurontario Light Rail Transit current bidding phase for three shortlisted consultant teams. Over this phase …
The New Golden Mile
The gradual dissolution of the Golden Mile as the fabled automotive golden moment along a stretch of Eglinton Avenue in Scarborough, Ontario is the latest in a number of its evolutionary stages. The compressed rapid succession of these stages – …
North Port Garden City, Copenhagen
The dramatic potential of the Nordhavnen site for a new vibrant and ecologically sound extension of Copenhagen has shaped our proposal. We planned the city as a thick and dense longitudinal cluster along a new subway line with a direct …
“Brittlestar” Electric Vehicle Charging Station
Our new charging station prototype is an attempt to rethink what a charging station could be for the modern traveler— a place not only to stop by, but also a place for significant rest, enjoyment, and hotel accommodation. The spatial …
Toronto Community Housing Tenant Service Hubs
Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) has introduced Tenant Service Hubs in residential buildings across the city. These Service Hubs decentralize tenant services, allowing residents to easily access support and meet face-to-face with TCHC staff in a location close to home. …
Spur-Line Frieze: Ontario Line Joint Corridor Competition
Brown and Storey Architects were selected to submit a design concept for Metrolinx’s Ontario Line Joint Corridor Design Competition, which called on teams to submit innovative urban design and landscape architecture solutions for the Ontario Line infrastructure that will be …
Parkside Drive: Problems and Potentials
Existing Conditions on Parkside Drive
Parkside Drive is rightfully the subject of serious neighbourhood concern. With its asymmetrical relationship to its two sides, Parkside Drive is highly divisive, and with its high-speed traffic, there is no safe public realm. Parkside …
Oracle Square
Oracle Square is a receptor and transmitter, an attraction and garden, a passage and a pause, populated by a loose savannah of vertical and horizontal figures that define space and intensity, and introduce interactivity for the Entertainment District A wide …
Laneway House
A client in Toronto’s west end commissioned Brown and Storey Architects to create a laneway house proposal.
Rendered Views
Section, Plan and Elevations
…
Dublin Landmark Tower
The Landmark on the Liffey must show a robust constructability. The new podium and tower must create a landscape for making a living – to be an organism that draws in and enables its constituent parts and inhabitants to be …
Burnhamthorpe Community Room
BSA is working with the L.A.M.P. Community Health Centre in Etobicoke and the Rathburn Youth Group to transform a former technology workshop at Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute into a new youth community room. By using modest finishes and an open plan …
Restless Ecologies – University of Manitoba
The name for this project, Restless Ecologies, refers to a primary focus: anticipating a constant movement and exchange – a restlessness – of actions and reactions in an ever evolving interconnected set of ecologies: ecologies that encompass water, energy, biodiversity, …
Urban Frieze Concepts
The Frieze
The frieze is legitimate architectural and historical narrative device for telling a story visually in an abbreviated utilization of symbols. It is usually linear in nature and relies on relief and profile. In particular, it is interpreted as …
Dufferin Grove Community Project
In our Dufferin Grove Community Project completed over twenty years ago, we identified Dufferin Grove as a city park in need of re-thinking. Given the last two years of the pandemic, parks and park users have become more entwined in …
Homegrown Design Competition: Local Monsters
In leafy Bellwoods, and in all the neighbourhoods of the Garrison watershed and Greater Toronto, we are haunted by unseen monsters. These are the shadows: of the waters our predecessors buried beneath the ravines and all our other urban dreams …
Woodward Low Lift Pumping Station
Brown and Storey Architects Inc. were the lead architects and urban designers to revitalize and restore this iconic 1960’s hyperbolic paraboloid public works building into a gateway to the City of Hamilton which is highly visible from both the QEW …
Custom Carport
Open to the outdoors but closed enough for some shelter, shade and privacy, our carport makes the most out of a driveway space. The trellis walls are able to hold sports or gardening equipment and support growing vines from the …
Ashbridges Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant – Administration Building
BSA is the lead project architect working with Black & Veatch Engineering on the renovation and re-purposing of an original building on the Ashbridges Bay site into a new administration office space. This project provides complete restoration of the existing …
Rosehill Reservoir Upgrades – Heritage Impact Assessment, Pavilion and Landscape
As a sub-consultant to Associated Engineering, BSA provided a Heritage Impact Assessment for the Rosehill Reservoir site, one of Toronto’s first parks and later reservoir. This work informed subsequent landscape and architectural consultant services, including a sensitive landscape design and …
Warden Station Urban Design and Intensification
The various building options are meant to illustrate the flexibility of built and open space configurations for the Warden development site. In particular the template organization promotes the open void and public spaces, while, at the same time, establishing vertical …
Yonge-Dundas Square Kiosk Design Concept
The idea of the new kiosk prototype is to introduce a new and unique structure to Yonge-Dundas Square that is part of the language of the public space and in particular relates to the design aesthetic of its furniture and …
Toronto’s Discovery District: Capital Design Strategy
The chief ambition of the Capital Design Strategy for The Discovery District Area is to find the most effective means for the City of Toronto to create a strong identity (or “brand) for the burgeoning biomedical research industry accommodated in …
East Darling Harbour, Sydney, Australia
The characteristics of this design are those that create and explore relationships between formerly separated elements. At its primary level, the city to waterfront break is repaired and reformatted by mixing the elements of built form and open space clearly …
The Braided Strands: Pedestrian Bridge at Front Street
Our office won the Urban Toronto competition to design a pedestrian bridge over the rail corridor on Front Street.
Awards
This project received the 2011 Toronto Urban Design Award.…
Capital Design Strategy for St. Clair Avenue West
Brown and Storey Architects and Richard Gilbert were engaged by the City of Toronto Department of Economic Development, Culture and Tourism to provide a Capital Works and Development Strategy for St. Clair Avenue West. This part of St. Clair extends …
Streetscape Enhancements on Wilson Avenue
Existing Conditions: Wilson Avenue from Keele Street to Dufferin Street
Wilson Avenue from Keele to Dufferin possesses a diverse pattern of different building types. There are large strips of commercial retail space, lengths of compact walk-up apartments, drive in restaurants, …
Corner Sculpture and Site Design on Bloor Street West
Background
Following from our initial sculpture plinth proposal for Bloor Street, the Bloor West BIA requested that we apply the prototype to three more street locations; two sites located on the Northeast and Northwest corners of Windermere Avenue and Bloor, …
The Dupont Triangle
The Dupont Triangle and the Surrounding Precinct
The Dupont Triangle is a proposed developed precinct centered on a new vehicular and pedestrian roundabout. The roundabout is the coming-together of six different streets: Dupont Street, that passes down the rail corridor, …
Victoria Park Subway Station Urban Design
The TTC have commissioned urban design studies examining the development potential of the Victoria Park and Warden Subway Stations that build upon the important relationship of new high density mixed use developments, the east-west subway line that travels through Scarborough, …
CN Tower Urban Plaza
The CN Tower is the premier tourist destination for Toronto, and certainly one of the most well-known sites in Canada. In turn, the site of the CN Tower addresses many of Toronto’s key urban conditions, presenting substantial opportunities to form …
Toronto Community Housing Service Hubs
Toronto Community Housing commissioned Brown + Storey Architects to find space on existing residential buildings to retrofit new Tenant Service Hubs, office spaces where tenants can access services and support. We created floor plans for several TCH locations, including the …
Roseneath Park Expansion and Improvements
Brown and Storey Architects perform many different types of architectural and urban design initiatives in which there are no client or commission; we work with a range of community groups and organizations that enable us to create solutions aimed at …
Pedestrian Safety Solutions for the Charles H. Hiscott Bridge
The current state of Charles H. Hiscott Bridge, with four lanes of traffic and two very narrow sidewalks less than the city standard width of 2.1m, is dangerous and leaves no room for social distancing. Reports notwithstanding from transportation …
Pangaea Station: An electric vehicle charging design
Introduction
Our approach to the challenge of public electric car charging infrastructure along major highways treats the travelers as agential activators, engaging with technology, media, culture, and landscape. As much as the structures are architectural, they are apparatuses and instruments …
Un-Fixed Mixity: Garden Courtyard Apartments
This Project introduces new spatial models for living together that offers direct involvement by the residents in the production and control of their space. The urban narratives of cultural and physical landforms come together in a shared landscape of garden …
Holodomor Memorial Park
Between 1932 and 1933, Ukraine suffered a famine affecting the major grain-producing areas in the region. The famine, known as the Holodomor, was a result of forced collectivization, a policy that was deliberately planned and executed by the Soviet regime …
Avenue Road – Re-inventing the Avenue
This study proposes a re-imagining of Avenue Road to return to its prominent role in the city’s public realm by reducing six lanes of speeding traffic to four and creating new public space. This new space would increase the area …
Fiesta Farms Canopy
Christie Street Building Frontage
The new ‘pandemic reality’ has produced a condition that has a substantial impact to the function and expanded role of the grocery store – both inside and outside. On the exterior, the careful control of access …
Toronto Island Water Treatment Plant – Marine Yard Retrofit
Brown and Storey Architects Inc. were hired to work with Associated Engineering on a renovation project for the Marine Yard building at the Island Water Treatment Plant on the Toronto Islands. The project includes renovating the south bay of the …
Innisfil Mobility Orbit and Neighbourhood Design
In 2019, Brown + Storey Architects Inc. worked with EXP to produce a proposal for the development of a community hub centered around a new transit hub in Innisfil, Ontario. Our team produced a sequence of diagrams that show a …
Heritage Report: South Humber Park Pavilion
Brown + Storey Architects prepared the South Humber Park Pavilion Heritage Evaluation Report for the City of Toronto Planning Department in 2019.
The South Humber Park Pavilion is a unique shelter and washroom building built in 1959 in ravine parkland …
The Un-Avenues: Integrating New Intensity for Housing, Open Spaces and Streets
Brown + Storey Architects Inc. have been involved in the research of housing types that intensify the “Yellowbelt” neighbourhoods along Toronto’s north-south transit connected Avenues. This research is intended to explore opportunities to redevelop underutilized neighbourhoods and challenge the viability …
Exhibition Place Mapping
The Exhibition Place Mapping series contains 24 different maps illustrating the Exhibition Place grounds. These maps illustrate a range of site conditions, including spatial and compositional organization, building and landscape types, and historical transformation. These maps were developed as a …
Leslie Street Design Guidelines
Brown + Storey Architects Inc. worked with CreateTO to create a comprehensive plan for the redevelopment of Leslie Street. The redevelopment includes a proposal for the ‘Look-out Park’, a park at the end of the Lehigh Shipping Channel on the …
Buffalo DL&W Corridor Competition Entry – Elevating Landscapes in Movement
This project views its physical transformation of the DL&W corridor as a bioreactor – where the insertion of a new landscape ignites and integrates new ideas, cultural programs and refreshed ecologies throughout the former railway precinct. The new linear park …
Garrison Creek Demonstration Project
The connection, or disconnection between urbanism and environmentalism – city and nature – is made by the human intervention of “infrastructure”. How we choose to lay this groundwork for the physical support our daily lives can create a disjointed gap …
Bike Shelter Prototype
This prototype for a bicycle storage room proposes a new innovation for cycling infrastructure facilities. The idea of the structure is to retain openness without overly defining inside and outside space as in a container. This anti-container approach utilizes framed …
Belleville Downtown Revitalization Project
The City of Belleville has embarked on a forward-looking project to update the infrastructure of their historic downtown core. The project, which is upgrading and replacing both sub-surface utilities and the public infrastructure of the city’s downtown streets and open …
Main Square Possibilities
The possibilities of Main Square is a beginning point for the Danforth community to look at a broader set of linkages and a constellation of elements – local retail, employment, housing, transit / mobility connections, parks access, reactivation of public …
Infinite Ecologies – Creating a Biodiversity Corridor in Saint-Laurent
In 2017, the Borough of Saint-Laurent undertook an integrative, innovative competition to create biodiversity corridors. Creating these corridors will connect the natural areas and other green spaces currently fragmented by development, and eventually give citizens access to historic, educational and …
Ashbridges Bay Perimeter Landscape
Brown + Storey Architects Inc. was the winner of a 2010 competition to design a perimeter landscape and linear park to surround the new TTC Streetcar Maintenance and Storage Facility near Leslie Street and Lake Shore Boulevard, opening in 2015. …
Ashbridges Bay Treatment Plant Retrofits
The City of Toronto’s Ashbridges Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant, Canada’s largest municipal wastewater facility, is undergoing a continuing series of upgrades, retrofits and expansions. Brown + Storey Architects are involved in a number of projects at Ashbridges, including refurbishment of …
Humber Wastewater Treatment Plant Retrofits
The Humber Wastewater Treatment Plant, is the City of Toronto’s second-largest wastewater facility, serving much of Etobicoke, York and North York from its site near the mouth of the Humber River. The Humber plant opened in 1960, and like the …
Leslie-Queen Streetscape Enhancements
The Toronto Transit Commission is undertaking key improvements to the streetscapes of Queen Street East and Leslie Street as part of construction of its Leslie Barns streetcar storage facility, which will rely upon connecting track on those streets to bring …
89-95 Dundas Street West, Mississauga
Mississauga’s Cooksville neighbourhood stands on the cusp of an important period of redevelopment, as planned rapid transit improvements spur reinvestment in areas beyond the Mississauga City Centre precinct. Cooksville is an excellent candidate for new developments that combine density with …
Jack Darling Park / Lorne Park Water Treatment Plant Retrofit
Georgetown South Corridor Expansion – Noise Barrier Alternatives Community Study
Metrolinx is expanding its commuter rail corridor through West Toronto in order to provide capacity for the Union-Pearson Express air-rail link and expanded GO Transit service to Georgetown, Guelph and Kitchener. The corridor passes through mature neighbourhoods and present-day brownfield …
Toronto Green Line Underpass Solution
Toronto Green Line: Rhumba ‘Round My Garden
Essroc Cement Silos and Public Space Enhancement
R.A. Morrow Memorial Park Master Plan
Morrow Park is Peterborough’s large agricultural fairground, hosting an annual summer horticultural fair. This large 27 acre park is located on the main approach to the city and forms a prominent entrance to the downtown core. It is home to …
Victoria Park Transit Plaza and Bus Terminal
Brown + Storey Architects Inc., working on a team led by Stevens Group Architect, produced an innovative and award-winning urban design for the public spaces and bus terminal that surround a revitalized Victoria Park subway station in Toronto. The project, …
Barrie Surface Water Treatment Plant
The site for the new City of Barrie Surface Water Treatment Plant and the Low Lift Pumping Station and Rain Water Intake is divided between two areas that are north of Big Bay Point Road, accessible from Royal Parkside Drive. …
YUL-MTL Competition: Undercover Montreal
The CCA publication, ‘The Singularities of a Metropolitan Archetype’, shows a series of figures prepared in 1966 by the City of Montreal Planning Department modeling hypothetical plans for 10 million inhabitants: the star-shaped metropolis, the galactic metropolis, and the concentrated …
Kingston Park Revitalization
West Brampton Pumping Station
The West Brampton Pumping Station provides municipal water service to Northwest Brampton, an area of rapid expansion in the Region of Peel. When fully built-out, the pumping station will supply as many as 250,000 new residents, as was built as …
Greenwich Mohawk Brownfield Site
Brown + Storey Architects Inc. worked as part of a team hired by Terrasan Environmental Solutions to prepare a master plan-level development proposal for Brantford’s Greenwich Mohawk brownfield site, a 50-acre former industrial district that once hosted factories operated by …
West Toronto Railpath
The West Toronto Railpath has transformed two kilometres of railway spur line that served Toronto’s west end industries during the 19th and 20th centuries, with a new linear open space supporting a cycling and pedestrian multi-trail. The path is punctuated …
Richmond Street West Conceptual Design
In 2008, our office was commissioned to produce a conceptual design for the improvement of the streetscape on Richmond Street West, just east of Spadina Avenue. This section of one-way street had evolved from an industrial access road -turned- commuter …
Maple Pumping Station
The Maple Pumping Station expansion took place in the context of York Region’s continuing growth and need to expand its water system. The situation of the Maple Pumping Station within an existing residential community required a design that responded to …
Lower Don Lands International Competition
Client:
Waterfront Toronto
Team:
Brown + Storey Architects
ZAS Architects
Nina-Marie Lister
Brookner Studio
Kidd Consulting
Applied Ecological Services
Moffatt + Nichol
Arup
Pine + Swallow Associates
Nitsch Engineering
ConsultEcon
The mouth of the Don River is both a spectacular …
King’s Navy Yard Park Master Plan
The town of Amherstburg and its historic fort Malden are located on the Detroit River at the extreme western edge of Ontario in the county of Essex. They long history of Amherstburg, with its involvement in the war of 1812, …
Massey Harris Park
Tecumseh Park Master Plan
The Tecumseh Park Facility Master Plan has been prepared to develop strategies and ideas for the revitalization of one of Chatham-Kent’s most significant public spaces. Tecumseh Park remains the heart of Chatham by virtue of its central physical position, its …
Stratford Market Square Competition (2006)
In 2006, the City of Stratford held an initial international design competition for the redesign of Market Square, a historically-significant public open space behind Stratford City Hall that over the course of the twentieth century had become an asphalt parking …
Jean Sibelius Square Park
Jean Sibelius Park is a modest and compact park located in an older neighbourhood of Toronto. Over time, the recreational uses of the park and its current spatial allocations became a source of conflict among a greater diversity of users. …
Bloor Street Transformation
Concepts and Visions for Toronto’s Waterfront
Brown + Storey Architects have played a major role in conceptual, visioning and feasibility studies and competitions that have contributed to the ongoing redefinition of Toronto’s waterfront since the 1990s. First commissioned by the Waterfront Regeneration Trust (for the Garrison …
Carlaw-Dundas Quarter Revitalization Study
Brown + Storey Architects were commissioned with Rodger Todhunter Associates to produce a Capital Design Strategy for the area around the intersection of Carlaw Avenue and Dundas Street in Toronto. Wedged between more conventional residential neighbourhoods and a historic railway …
Mimico-by-the-Lake Concept Study
Brown + Storey Architects Inc. were engaged by the local city councilor to work with the Mimico-by-the-Lake BIA to provide a concept plan for the renewal of Lakeshore Boulevard and an improved series of connections and public spaces linking the …
Yonge-Dundas Square
Yonge + Dundas Square was conceived as a new civic space in the centre of downtown Toronto. It is located at the crossroads of Yonge Street and Dundas Street, one of the most prominent intersections in the city. The project …
College Street Narrowing
Titled “A Creative Landscape for Making a Living,” Brown + Storey Architects’ Master Plan for upgrading the pedestrian realm along a key stretch of Toronto’s College Street transformed a city plan for status quo replacement into a successful enhancement program. …
Downsview Park Competition
St. Hilda’s Walk
Trinity-Bellwoods Park is one of Toronto’s most beloved and heavily used open spaces, accommodating thousands of daily visitors in all seasons. With St. Hilda’s Walk, Brown + Storey Architects Inc. with City of Toronto Parks and community stakeholders to convert …
St. George Street Revitalization
The revitalization of St. George Street, a main thoroughfare of the University of Toronto and a major traffic artery in the City of Toronto, was commissioned by the University and the City to bring improvements to what had once been …
Coronation Park Pavilion
Coronation Park Pavilion was developed as a node to an extensive but unelaborated waterfront trail along Toronto’s shoreline. The pavilion provides public facilities of washrooms, shelter and rest, with lockers and showers for the baseball diamonds in the park. The …
The Open Spaces of Toronto: A Classification
Brown + Storey Architects Inc. were commissioned by the City of Toronto in 1991 to produce a typological classification of public open spaces in the downtown core. ‘The Open Spaces of Toronto – A Classification’ encompasses:
- developing definitions and criteria
Palmerston Boulevard: An Evaluation of a Unique Residential Street
This study documented and analyzed the unique nature of the individual houses and their relationship to the urban form and landscape of the collective elements of Palmerston Boulevard in Toronto. Comparisons to other streets, like St. George Street and High …