Primrose Hill

Primrose Hill is a playful approach to humanizing purpose-built rental development, with a focus on civic regeneration, affordability, and community-building. Located in Moss Park, a historically underserved neighbourhood in downtown Toronto, the project prompted a series of guiding questions: How do we reinvigorate our existing urban fabric, creatively and responsibly, on sites that are in relative disrepair and can accommodate more intensification? How can we build social equity and density, with an emphasis on bringing more joy, colour, and visual intrigue to the staid and sterile development landscape that characterizes Toronto’s downtown core? Simply put, can rental be both beautiful and affordable? Our proposal resuscitates an outdated tower-in-the-park development that currently houses two 1970s Brutalist apartment blocks. The scheme introduces two new vibrant towers (39 and 40 storeys, respectively) for a total of 692 new rental units and a whimsical skybridge that creates coherence and connection. The towers’ shifting volumes — stacked in a collage-like fashion, like oversized building blocks — invert traditional high-rise massing by growing larger as they rise, leaving more open space at grade for community use. We’re exploring the facade’s colour palette alongside British artist Adam Nathaniel Furman. A current iteration deploys bold transitions and rich gradients to soften the visual weight of the existing buildings — an optimistic and spirited contribution to the city’s skyline. The base and mid-level volumes feature precast arches that reference the Brutalist context. The skybridge is the project’s defining architectural gesture: perched above the roof of an existing apartment block, the bridge frames the latter and provides a physical connection between the two new towers at the 17th floor. Featuring an elevated terrace, infinity pool, and panoramic views, the bridge doubles as a communal space in the sky, granting tenants access to an exhilarating amenity experience. At its core, Primrose Hill reimagines amenity design as a vehicle for inclusion. With over 1,500m2 dedicated to outdoor space, the development also offers an array of ground-floor amenities, including a daycare, café, pet spa, demonstration kitchens, arcades, party rooms, and wellness spaces. To realize this ambitious project, our team was challenged to troubleshoot a series of complex site constraints alongside material and structural considerations. An overhead flight path prohibits the use of cranes, requiring us to rethink how high-rise construction unfolds and specify lightweight components for the fabrication of the upper volumes, which will be assembled without traditional lifting equipment. We worked with a multidisciplinary team to resolve engineering challenges related to the cantilevered forms and the underground parking garage. The latter will require the introduction of new foundations within the existing shell to support the towers above and provide shared servicing infrastructure below. These technical maneuvers are extensions of the project’s LEED Gold sustainability mission, which is to achieve lightweight systems that reduce embodied carbon; a 60/40 solid-to-glass façade ratio; precast rain-screen cladding; high-performance glazing to enhance thermal efficiency; and advanced mechanical systems, including air source heat pumps, in-suite energy recovery ventilators, and stormwater reuse tanks, linking environmental performance with urban regeneration.