Camera, Toronto

Camera combines several film-related spaces: a small editing suite; film distributor Mongrel Media; the Stephen Bulger Gallery of photography; and Camera, a lounge, café, bar and 51-seat screening room showing rare and first-run films. The co-owners, celebrated filmmaker Atom Egoyan and film distributor Hussain Amarshi, alienated by today’s mega-theatres, wanted to create a hub for film lovers looking for an intimate space to meet, and to see and discuss films.

Upon removing the building’s existing aluminum cladding, the designers discovered and restored the original polychrome brickwork façade, complete with round-arched windows and parapet. The original tin ceiling was restored, bestowing a sense of history to the main room. A new steel beam at the second-storey level, painted a bold red, supports the old façade.

Extensive glazing at street level creates an open and inviting space. The symmetrically arranged wooden borders of the façade evoke a photograph frame, paying homage to the building’s program.

Levitt: As renovators, they were very strategic in what they kept, what they remediated and what’s new; the play among the three is unusual. Then there’s the curtain: It adds a nice human touch. It’s a bridge between the sandblasted antique brick on the second storey and the clean, large, wonderfully detailed sliding doors on the ground.