Project Winner

St. Joseph Media, formed from the merger of Multi-Vision Publishing and Key Media, boasts titles such as Toronto Life, Saturday Night and Fashion. It wished to consolidate its 300 staff, scattered among downtown offices, and unify its corporate culture.

Canada’s third-largest magazine publisher now occupies 32,000 square feet on two upper floors of Toronto’s King Richmond Centre, originally a cluster of buildings sharing brick party walls. Suites were connected through scattered openings in the walls, which created a visual sense of compartmentalization.

There were misalignments in floor and ceiling heights. Fenestration, limited mostly to two sides of the perimeter, and the low ceilings, attenuated daylight in the inner area.
The design, by Teeple Architects with Superkül Inc. Architect, links the floors by making a long, double-height cut in the floor plate, creating an internal main street. The reception area anchors the street; a grand stairway connects the floors. Above the cut, a new, full-length skylight floods the offices with natural light.
The existing interior brick was sandblasted, wood floors were sanded and sealed and the heavy timber structure was left exposed to retain the space’s charming loft character. Custom millwork combines high-gloss plastic laminates and zebrawood veneer. Felt appears as a sound-absorbing surface on walls and ceiling canopies and, in laser-cut form, as magazine logos and in signage.

Drobot: This is an inventive example of adaptive reuse. I like the use of materials: not just frosted glass, but a mix of transparent and translucent.
Niven: Look how they balanced different textures instead of covering up all the brick.
Robbie: I know this building. Before the renovation, it was a dog.