9th Annual Best of Canada Design Competition

BEST OF SHOW WINNER: Herman Miller, Toronto

Herman Miller Canada’s National Design Centre occupies the fourth floor of the company’s headquarters in a First World War-vintage warehouse building in Toronto’s Garment District. Canada’s first LEED-certified interior includes meeting rooms, lounge spaces and a conference area.

An elaborate plywood sheathe organizes the 10,000-square-foot space. This tube-like element is defined by a series of butt-jointed fir plywood panels, routed in striped patterns to varying depths. This action exposes multiple grains of ply to be read, contrasting starkly to the smooth, pristine bent plywood of Herman Miller’s classic Eames furniture, which is also on display.

A dot-screen graphic image of Herman Miller factory work, printed onto vinyl wallcovering, coats small meeting rooms and support spaces.

Two custom sculptural lighting elements break down the scale of the loft space. Constructed of seats and backs from Eames lounge chairs, the lighting sculptures evoke mobiles by Alexander Calder (like Eames, another mid-century Modernist iconic designer) and the canopy of beech trees at Marigold Lodge, the 1913 Prairie School summer mansion near company headquarters in Grand Rapids, Mich., that serves as Herman Miller’s corporate guest house.

Chalmers: This is lovely. It breaks all the showroom rules. It brings humanity into a showroom space.

Kruse: The rule they’re breaking is that Herman Miller sells office furniture to offices that all look the same, while their own showroom looks so different.

Levitt: There’s a narrative in the layering here. The mandate of what the client does pushed them. The Douglas fir plywood has such an active pattern it isn’t used much anymore as a finishing material. Here, it grounds the showroom. And it’s a Canadian material.

Rock: Look at the juxtaposition of the exposed ducts and the finished work. That’s hard to pull off and they did it perfectly.

Chalmers: How ironic. We think of the West Coast as responding to wood, yet Herman Miller treats wood in a way that we didn’t see in any Vancouver or Calgary projects. It goes beyond a purely Toronto aesthetic.

PEOPLE'S CHOICE WINNER: University of Toronto at Scarborough Student Centre, Scarborough, Ont.

As one of only two university campuses in Canada without a dedicated student activity space, the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus had sought such an amenity since the 1970s. The dream became reality in 2001, when the student body passed a referendum to assess each student $60 for the next 30 years. This commitment was the largest student donation in the 177-year history of the U of T, which responded in kind by matching each dollar at 50 cents and by offering a prime site near the campus entry.

The design mandate was to create a strong image for the centre, be environmentally responsible, minimize operating costs, and improve student life. The Student Centre provides 50,700 square feet of multi-purpose space. Conceived as two intersecting volumes situated over a landscape plane, the “bar” volume houses student services, health services, prayer rooms, clubs, meeting rooms and a bookstore. The “projecting” volume, clad in shimmering titanium and glass, cantilevers dramatically over the main entrance and houses the restaurant-pub, student lounges and central gathering spaces.

Designed to meet the LEED Silver standard, the Student Centre boasts such environmental features as a 20-per cent reduction in water usage, a 40-per cent reduction in energy consumption; low-VOC (volatile organic compounds) materials to enhance indoor air quality; rapidly renewable materials such as bamboo flooring and wheatgrass cabinetry; operable windows; daylight and occupant sensors to reduce artificial-lighting demands; a green roof; and integration with public transit. The construction reused 16 tonnes of structural steel from the Royal Ontario Museum expansion demolition, thereby saving carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to driving a car around the world 16 times.


Levitt: Too bad those pendant lights are so domestic in scale. The furniture is pretty blocky.

Kruse: I’m sure it was dictated by the budget. It’s interesting how, in the lounge, they took a stock diffuser and by incorporating it into the fenestration pattern they made it part of the design instead of being just an ugly vent in the wall. And look how that notch in the sliding cafeteria wall hooks on to the base of the bulkhead.

Taylor: The landscaping is beautiful. Look at the swooping edge where the gravel meets the wall and casts a shadow over the grass; that’s a killer shot.

Bedo, Square One Shopping Centre, Mississauga, Ont.

Specialty retailer Bedo, already established at Mississauga’s Square One Shopping Centre, took the opportunity of moving into new space there to create a more urban and contemporary décor that better approximates the spirit of Bedo’s European-influenced merchandise. Since the relocated store opened, year-over-year sales doubled.

The store was de-cluttered by reducing the number of products on offer. The linear quality of the space was emphasized by the rows of track lighting running from the front to back of the store. This feature not only brings focus to the merchandise, but also draws the eye to the oversized Bedo graphics applied to the rear wall and behind the cash wrap. The predominant neutral colour palette – black and white – also focuses attention on the colourful merchandise.

Instead of fighting the base-building wall pilasters, the designers used state-of-the-art millwork technology to create rounded MDF panels
to cover them. A few years ago, such a treatment would have been cost-prohibitive.


Taylor: How did they get the floor to be so white and monolithic? The floor and ceiling just float in space and glow.

Levitt: This is an example of a mid-market client investing in good design.

Chalmers: I’m impressed by the restraint of the branding, even with all that merchandise.

Rock: The ceiling looks so disciplined.

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.

Canada’s National Ballet School

The National Ballet School is in the midst of a $100-million campaign to develop a state-of-the-art dance training, academic and residence centre for its world-class training programs. The first stage completes the Jarvis Street campus comprising the Margaret McCain Academic Building (originally the Havergal Ladies’ College, subsequently CBC headquarters), the new Celia Franca Centre and historic Northfield House (1856).
The space between Northfield House and Celia Franca is enclosed to create the Town Square, the heart of the school. This three-storey, light-filled space is anchored by the heritage masonry walls of Northfield and is animated by an L-shaped Corten steel fireplace. As the space from which all the major support programs radiate and converge, the square embodies the school’s philosophy of nurturing the whole person, body, mind and soul.

The Margaret McCain Academic Building is directly connected to the Celia Franca Centre by a glazed bridge. Northfield House was adapted as administrative offices and restored to a 19th-century appearance. On its west facade, a former servants’ wing was removed and replaced with a donor wall facing the Town Square.

The apparent mass of the project is reduced by being organized into a vertical campus of three transparent, elevated structures arrayed asymmetrically around Northfield House and acting as a backdrop to the historic masonry structure. Stacked platforms, courtyards and terraces create a series of stages looking out to the city.
Floor-to-ceiling glazing provides dramatic views deep into the studios and, for the dancers, frames the city as a backdrop to their training. Detailing within the studios includes custom-designed ballet barres.

Sorensen: This is a breath of fresh air. Driving past the ballet school elevates my energy. The whole site is really choreographed.

Kruse: The brick and stone, the musical notes on the glass façade – they all do a dance. And there’s nothing gimmicky about it. It’s all on display. The old ballet school was hidden behind doors. If there’s a flaw it’s that you ignore that old house they were forced to keep when you drive by because you’re so fixated on the new pieces.

Taylor: You appreciate the old house when you go inside. It becomes this solid façade that alludes to how long the school has been around.

Chalmers: It’s totally voyeuristic. The people in this building must feel very exposed.

Taylor: I imagine that the students, when they rehearse, get a great sense of pride by being in this building.

Centennial HP Science and Technology Centre, Scarborough, Ont.

Centennial College is Canada’s first community college, established in 1967. The Science and Technology Centre signifies the college’s response to meet industry demands for science and technology graduates. Thanks to the building’s flexible infrastructure, programs can be constantly revised in response to the changing labour market.

The 160,293-square-foot, $40-million project is organized within a four-storey, loft-like concrete-framed structure, organized on a 20-by-40-foot structural grid, with clear-span raised floors, operable windows, high ceilings and flexible internal partitions that shift on a five-foot grid. The design integrates low-tech, sustainable design strategies, such as exposed concrete for a high thermal mass, that exceed the ASHRAE 90.1 standard for energy efficiency by 40 per cent.

Light-filled interior streets run along central atria and culminate in lounges. Two elevated horizontal wings form a broad V-shape configured
to the contours and slope of the triangular lot. The main entrance marks the meeting of the two wings and is articulated as a transparent gateway that leads into the heart of the building. This focal point for gatherings features a large wood volume suspended above a broad flight of steps. The steps are wired for laptops and adaptable for formal events and assemblies.

Levitt: Give them credit for persuading an institutional client to do something this cool.

Sorensen: That monumental wood volume above the big stairs guides you up and guides you down.

Chalmers: I like the way the stair doubles as an auditorium space. I get the sense that the acoustics are quite good.

Coal Harbour Residences, Vancouver

This 6,000-square-foot marketing centre for Vancouver’s Coal Harbour Residences showcases the dramatic, unobstructed low-level views of Coal Harbour and Stanley Park. A large, one-bedroom unit demonstrates a master ensuite, kitchen and living area. The sales area has a reception and waiting area, a building model, finishes samples, closing rooms and wine-storage lockers.

The poor condition of the existing concrete floor slab prompted the use of a seamless poured-epoxy floor rather than large-scale tiles.

The open, light-filled space and the neutral setting of white, transparent and backlit building materials becomes a backdrop to conveying the owner’s personal taste.

Chalmers: It’s so minimalist. And all those pristine white objects: It’s not a very "Vancouver" aesthetic.

Sorensen: There is a movement in Vancouver away from that familiar woody look.

East! Asian Street Flair Restaurant, Toronto

East! Asian Street Flair, a 5,200-square-foot eatery, offers traditional Asian street cooking in a stylish setting. The existing building, a former tavern, required a new façade and structural stabilization. The new design clads the existing building with a box superstructure of lightweight, custom-stained marine-grade mahogany plywood strips. Natural limestone tiles and large windows give the building sufficient presence to transform the adjacent, formerly dark alleyway into a pleasant pathway.

Like the menu’s fusion cuisine, the design interprets an oriental-garden inspiration with a modern twist. Columns evoking bamboo trunks frame walls, ceilings, stairway portals and form lattice-like screens, creating an interplay of shadows. Along one wall, the tree metaphor blossoms into delicate, custom, hand-sewn branches with jewel-encrusted buds.

Levitt: It’s lovely. The seating looks comfortable.

Kruse: Good branding, it functions well.

Sorensen: You’d expect a lot of reverberation but the breaking-up of the space should trap the noise.

Grip Limited, Toronto

Johnson Chou’s original offices for advertising agency Grip Limited was a 2004 Best of Canada winner. The new, 21,500-square-foot headquarters includes formal and informal meeting spaces, an atrium, creative offices, open workstations, studio spaces, kitchens, lunch area, lounges, screening, editing and photography rooms and showers.

The atrium links the two floors of Grip’s double-height space with a bleacher-like stair, a slide and a fire pole. Bleacher seating provides a gathering space for full office meetings or film presentations. It functions as an impromptu, alternative workplace for laptop users.

Made of folded, hot-rolled steel and stained walnut veneer, the circular meeting and lounge area resembles a 10-person hot tub. With its democratic seating format, this area has proven useful in disarming difficult clients.

The agency adopted the slide as their symbol, a metaphor for the notion that the voyage is as important as the destination (or, as the Cunard Lines ads said, getting there is half the fun).

In deference to Grip’s brewery clients, the formal boardroom is clad in stainless steel after the fashion of a bar fridge. The interior walls are lined with sound-absorbing white synthetic grass that evokes refrigerator frost.

Sorensen: The designer was really “on” with this.

Levitt: It’s so rare to see such inventiveness and risk-taking, like putting shag carpet on the walls and not worrying about how dirty it will get. There are some rough parts, but the whole thing has been well considered.

Kruse: This one’s a standout. It has a totally different aesthetic. I’m glad they didn’t add any more colour to the space. This looks like a great place to party. That ship’s door in the stainless-steel boardroom is so crazy.

Chalmers: Putting that chandelier in the atrium is so irreverent.

Taylor: This project looks low-budget, what with the conduits running everywhere.

Rock: The fire-pole and slide don’t look very safe.

Chalmers: I’m not sure how they got that slide past the building inspector. Maybe they put it in after. I like the staircase with the double treads that functions as theatre seating, and the curved junction with wall and floor.

Il Fornello Restaurant, Toronto

II Fornello, the restaurant chain that popularized thin-crust, gourmet pizza in Toronto, opted for a more design-forward, upmarket look for its newest branch, on Toronto’s Church Street.

The 100-seat eatery at the hub of the lively gay district makes a series of suitably bold gestures. The front lounge acts as swing space. A rolling storefront of mullionless, butt-joined glass can be moved back by 20 feet to transform the front lounge into a patio in warm weather. In winter, the storefront pushes up against the building line, recouping usable lounge space.

Beyond the lounge is the bathroom, where, to save space, washroom cubicles are non-gender specific and are serviced by a communal sink. This bathroom area in turn pinches the elongated bar space, which is wrapped by acoustically reflective travertine and a gilded aluminum screen. The main dining room occupies the full width of the space. A notched and skewed sapele wood screen wraps its ceiling and walls

In a witty gesture, ceramic dinner plates march along the rear plaster wall, delineating the dining room and the concealed kitchen.

Levitt: This interior is very pretty. It shows how you can have fun with form and colour.

Inco Special Projects, Mississauga, Ont.

Inco Special Products, a subsidiary of the Western World’s largest nickel miner and refiner, wanted to transform its 1960s facility in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga into a corporate research and executive presentation centre.

In this adaptive reuse project, the 8,000-square-foot, 1 1/2-storey space was taken back to the base building, exposing the structural truss and the metal ceiling deck while admitting natural daylight and adding a vertical element to the cramped lobby space. The renovation by Bartlett & Associates added executive offices to the formerly lab-only premises, giving a sophisticated, upscale impression befitting a multinational corporation.

In the reception area, the materials palette reflects Inco and Canadian themes. Maple clads the cantilevered ceiling sector. The slatted canopy and metal detailing throughout features stainless steel, a nickel alloy.

Branding displays were added along the wall of the 180-foot-long, five-foot-wide main corridor to break up its monotony. A backlit, glass and stainless-steel vitrine displays raw forms of nickel (powders, fibres, flakes, foam, oxides, rope, ore). Oversize posters show innovative applications of nickel, such as the Canadarm.

Taylor: The liveliness and the perspective effects in that long corridor are worth paying attention to.

Rock: I admire the detailing on the custom pieces.

Midtown Residence, Toronto

This residence on a cul-de-sac in Toronto’s Yorkville district was originally a 3,500-square-foot, two-storey ironmonger’s shop. The conversion added a two-car garage, organized around an outdoor courtyard. The existing interior steel structure was exposed and painted black. New linear skylights and slot windows flood the interior with natural light. A glass floor running along the centre of the second-storey hall adds additional natural light to the ground floor. The façade was re-clad in black zinc, grey concrete block, stucco and clear anodized aluminum.

The courtyard combines a paving of local Ontario stone and Ipe (a Brazilian hardwood) decking. A low window runs the full length of the new garage, offering enticing views of the client’s automobile collection.

A large glass garage door opens the two-storey, open-plan living room, dining room and kitchen onto the courtyard, on axis with the pool. When opened in warm weather, the garage door links interior and exterior, culminating in a view of a stone-and-steel water sculpture by Reinhard Reitzenstein at the far end of the pool.

Chalmers: This house is magnificent.

Kruse: You can’t believe this house exists in Yorkville. You walk in and think, how did this get here?

Sorensen: I would die for that beautiful marble bathroom

Penthouse Terrace, Toronto

This penthouse terrace provides a seamless flow from interior to exterior and accommodates large gatherings while ensuring a sense of intimacy for smaller groupings. White granite covers most of the terrace surface. However, a wood deck continues the parquet flooring and stain colour of the master bedroom and kitchen, visually extending the interior to the outside. A more private deck off a bedroom is screened from the terrace by an evergreen hedge and stone garden. A cedar screen hides an exit door and conceals storage.

Brushed stainless-steel planters at parapet height line the perimeter of the terrace, allowing the skyline to dominate the space. The exterior kitchen boasts a stainless-steel barbeque, countertop and wine/beer cooler container. Water from one edge of the container falls to the ground plane, where it becomes a trough that divides the terrace into separate zones.

Chalmers: This project gives the sense of being in a private garden.

Rock: You’re exposed yet intimate. This is one lucky client.

Petrous showroom, Toronto

At the showroom for Petrous, purveyor of stone products to the building and design trades, the goal was to allow the client to display as much product as possible without making the space seem cluttered. The 1,500-square-foot display area showcases porcelain, glass and stone tiles – and their vivid colours and patterns – as if they were paintings in an art gallery.

Bisazza glass mosaics make up the front reception wall and a rear-wall mural. Polished marble slabs cover full-height wall surfaces. Honed marble-tile flooring showcases a Petrous product in a real-life application. Centre panels exhibit granite, onyx, marble and travertine. Pivoting side panels allow visitors to move, touch and compare products.

A marble-slab worktable at the back of the showroom, supported by structural H-beams, demonstrates the elegance and apparent weightlessness achievable with marble products.


Sorensen: It can be really difficult to show product. This showroom makes it seem easy.

Kruse: When you look at a tile and open the pivoting panel, there’s a sense of discovery.

Taylor: As a tile showroom, this is great. Still, there’s this incredibly sensuous entry area with the tiles that you can sit on, and it’s never repeated. Maybe if they had done something more organic-looking in the central display piece, the project would seem more unified.

Rock: Maybe they only had the budget to be sensuous in the front of the store.

Young Centre for the Performing Arts, Toronto

Tank Houses 9 and 10 of the historic Gooderham & Worts Distillery make a dramatic backdrop to the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, a partnership of George Brown College and Soulpepper Theatre Company. The 44,000-square-foot, $10-million adaptive reuse project combines teaching and performance in one facility.

On the exterior, an extended, horizontal wood canopy marks the entrance to a two-storey atrium lobby, created by enclosing the space between the tank houses with massive, primitive-looking Douglas fir trusses that span the historic bearing walls. Here, actors, students, visitors and patrons converge. A café, box office, theatre bookstore and tall bar tables and benches encourage the use of the atrium for formal and informal gatherings. A fireplace adds a clubroom touch.

Brick facades were left exposed, original windows retained and the existing cobblestone pavements conserved. Interior finishes are utilitarian and limited to concrete floors and painted walls. Ceilings were left exposed to meet cost and functional requirements, yet create a complex visual canopy that weaves throughout the scheme. The raw and untreated surfaces and textures are animated by natural daylight and, at night, by selectively placed light sources.

The raw, yet warm, industrial aesthetic respects the historic fabric of the site, ekes out the budget and expresses the clients’ stature as leading-edge institutions.


Chalmers: There’s a design integrity that carries from the exterior to the interior. The client got quite a bang for the budget buck.

Rock: Here is a re-use project that really celebrates the original building fabric.