Tableau Upping the Entertainment District’s Design Ante

September 17

During the frenzy of interviews and red carpet appearances at the recent 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, many international celebrities commented on the dramatic changes they noticed in the area compared to previous visits. The festival takes place in the heart of the Entertainment District, an area with one of the country’s densest concentrations of construction activity, and like the previous couple of years at TIFF, the world was taking notice of our ongoing growth spurt.

One of the high-rise developments currently reshaping the local cityscape is Tableau Condominiums, a 36-storey condominium development by UrbanCapital Property Group, Malibu Investments and ALIT Developments, currently rising at the southeast corner of Richmond and Peter Streets.

Tableau Condominiums, UrbanCapital, Malibu Investments, Alit, Wallman

Tableau viewed from the northwest corner of Richmond and Peter, image by Craig White

Designed by Wallman Architects, Tableau is especially notable for its namesake ‘table top’ four-storey podium, marked by a massive colonnade now taking shape on the building’s Richmond Street frontage. The scaffold which has obscured the colonnade’s concrete columns for several months is now being removed, and as of this week, seven of the nine columns have been revealed, along with much of the sheltered Privately Owned Public Space (POPS).

 

A pre-construction rendering of the building from the same angle as the image above illustrates this condominium development’s coming dramatic contribution to the Entertainment District’s public realm.

Tableau Condominiums, UrbanCapital, Malibu Investments, Alit, Wallman

Rendering of the colonnade and public art at Tableau, image courtesy of Urban Capital

 

Notable in the image above, the colonnade will be the home to an artwork by Shayne Dark, called Nova, which will pierce through the openings in the table top podium, visible in the image below.

Openings in the podium roof where Shayne Dark’s ‘Nova’ will be installed, image by Craig White

It is difficult to adequately portray the sheer scale of Tableau’s colonnade in photos, but it is becoming clear when looking through its columns that the space delineated within is destined to become a very well known local landmark, one of those places you’ll take friends visiting Toronto to show the town off. The columns frame views of the surrounding cityscape both close-up and on the increasingly crowded horizon, and the coming finishing details and the eventual removal of the hoarding on this site (likely still a year away) will only then show just how many dramatically framed new views of the Entertainment District and Financial Core towers we will have here.

 

Tableau Condominiums, UrbanCapital, Malibu Investments, Alit, Wallman

Tableau viewed from the north side of Richmond Street, image by Craig White

Nearby are two more construction sites featuring dramatic news buildings; Queen Richmond Centre West kitty corner from Tableau, and Picasso across the street from Tableau. This will be a very interesting block when the three are finished—or close to finished—by next year’s film festival.

Source: http://www.urbantoronto.ca/

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