Ontario Construction News staff writer
Auto BLDG – a 102-year-old, industrial-deco landmark that has over the decades been an aluminum extruder, auto parts plant, music video and film set and incubator for graffiti artists won the Rebuild Brownie Award at the Canadian Brownfield Awards.
The award recognizes projects demonstrating excellence in site-specific responses that accelerate regeneration, enhance public realm and exhibit an imaginative approach to adaptive re-use of heritage structures.
Redeveloping Auto BLDG took five years with a development team that included primary consultant architectsAlliance, heritage architect ERA Architects and environmental engineering firm WSP Global.
architectsAlliance reimagined atria on the Auto BLDG’s west facade recalls the sawtooth roofline of the former Alcan Aluminum factory.
A new public plaza adjacent is presently being excavated by Hines Interests Ltd. Hines is completing two new office buildings to the south with their innovative T3 timber technology. Marlin Spring and Castlepoint Numa will each break ground with residential buildings next year.
“This site required a unique series of collaborations to invigorate Toronto’s Junction Triangle,” said Alfredo Romano, president of values-based developer Castlepoint Numa Inc. “These collaborations have brought a renewed and palpable energy to the Auto BLDG and the surrounding community for which it serves as an anchor.”
Toronto’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), the lead tenant occupying three of ten floors, shares the building with a select group of eclectic companies that includes ad agency Junction59, Zeidler Partnership Architects, Pride Toronto and arts group The Toronto Biennial.
The Akin Collective maintains studio space for 20 working artists. FuseFX, an award-winning visual effects company based in Los Angeles, is relocating its Toronto studio to Auto BLDG.
“It was a privilege working with Castlepoint Numa to revitalize this local landmark, and add new cultural and employment uses to a site that had been dormant for a decade,” said Adam Feldmann, founding member of Toronto’s architectsAlliance, when receiving the Brownie, Nov. 23, 2021, at a gala dinner in downtown Toronto. “The rebirth of Auto BLDG has laid the groundwork for a transformation of the Lower Junction, with more housing, employment and public spaces in its future.”
The Rebuild category is one of the most competitive and challenging because of the high number of nominations it typically receives, which was the case this year as well,” said Chris De Sousa, chair of the CBN Brownie Committee and a professor at Ryerson University’s School of Urban and Regional Planning.