300 TREMBLAY
// The adjacent ‘Dustbane’ site has a past routed in manufacturing with a number of warehouse and industrial buildings having been built and demolished over the years. We used this history of manufacturing to create a context for the design of the project, given that the surrounding properties are currently undeveloped. The building is a modern interpretation of a typical ‘warehouse’ building, with large expanses of glazed openings and clad in reddish toned brick. The lower levels feature horizontal and vertical bands that extend from the building face in order to create the effect of a podium allowing the building to better relate to the public realm. Windows at this level play off of the muntin bar expression of warehouse buildings with mullions tight vertical spacing.
On the upper levels the warehouse expression becomes more abstracted and the building is given greater sense of verticality. Windows stagger in width and are stacked on top of each other with fiber cement bands in between, drawing the eye up towards the top of the building. A dark fiber cement band extends vertically up from the top of the ‘podium’ all the way to the roof level before turning back down to the top of the line of brick. This expression highlights the modular expression of the building along the Tremblay elevation, which gets broken down and becomes more randomized as it turns the corners to face the streets on the east and west sides.
This project has been designed in a way that is mindful of the history of the site in order to become a catalyst for future development. It is to become an important gateway building at an important transition where Tremblay Road switches from a residential thoroughfare to an active pedestrian environment.