Toronto, Ontario, Canada

In the heart of Toronto’s financial district, directly adjacent to King Station on the TTC’s Yonge subway line, 55 Yonge is a landmark 66-story purpose-built apartment and office tower designed by collaborating architects Partisans and BDP Quadrangle along with landscape architects Janet Rosenberg & Studio for H&R Real Estate Investment Trust.

55 Yonge Street project has been awarded a 2022 International Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.

The building includes nearly 500 new residential rental units, and state-of-the-art offices that respond to Toronto’s rapid growth while achieving a cohesive and contemporary high-rise design that makes a striking addition to Toronto’s skyline.

55 Yonge features purpose-built rental apartments, ranging from 450 square-foot one-bedrooms to multi-story 2,000 square-foot residences.

The ten floors of office space are designed for the contemporary worker in a post-Covid world, supported by efficient layouts and a hospitality-driven environment at the street level.

Both office and residential tenants are able to access wellness amenities between the residential and office levels, including a spacious open-air terrace, a pool, a fully equipped gym, and health-oriented programming, as well as boardrooms, informal meeting areas, and services to support the offices below.

The façade of 55 Yonge marries the podium and tower into a single sinuous gesture, by treating the facade as a fabric—a delicate lace that drapes over the structure.

The pattern of the exterior panels is designed to adapt and modulate solar gain, by shifting the pattern depending on its location in the building.

At its crown, the tower culminates in a series of stepped terraces offering spectacular views, which have been sculpted to minimize shadow impacts on the grounds of a nearby landmark place of worship—The Cathedral Church of St. James.

The building’s facade gracefully touches the ground level on 26- foot-tall, tapered columns that frame large expanses of glass allowing the street to extend into the grand lobby for the retail, residential, and office tenants as well as visitors and passers-by.

Project: 55 Yonge Street
Architects: Partisans
Architects of Record: BDP Quadrangle
Heritage Architects: ERA Architects
Landscape Architects: Janet Rosenberg & Studio
Original Architect: Peter Dickinson (1958)
Client: H&R Real Estate Investment Trust (H&R REIT)
Photographers: Partisans