07/02/2024
HOW OUR 'WALLACE WALK' USES INTEGRATED DESIGN PRINCIPLES
Wallace Walk highlights KFA's commitment to designing and delivering Integrated urban projects, which operate at varying scales and complexities.
The 'Wallace Walk' neighbourhood is an example of an urban infill project, which successfully Integrates the adjacent Wallace-Emerson neighbourhood and the surrounding context. During the project's design, we applied an Integrated philosophy to formal, cross-scale, interdisciplinary, and iterative areas. As a result, the project required a greater emphasis towards engagement with stakeholders and community groups and coordination with a large interdisciplinary team, which included various public agencies.
The design conceived an appropriately scaled mixed-use neighbourhood knitting together the surrounding urban fabric using varying programmatic elements. The site's layout is organized using two bar-buildings, whose program includes the recently constructed ‘George Chuvalo Community Centre’, along with various micro-scaled retail uses at-grade, studio spaces above, and two integrated crash walls. The crash walls act as a protective element from the more sensitive residential uses internal to the site, successfully integrating a tricky urban rail corridor condition.
The low-rise back-to-back townhouse blocks fit within the neighbourhood's existing urban rhythm and scale, and are among the first of their kind to be constructed in Toronto. The crash wall's public art program provides for an active interface onto the ‘West Toronto Rail Path’ along with linkages to and from the surrounding community. A pedestrian bridge was also designed and constructed in partnership with Metrolinx providing a vital linkage from Wallace-Emerson to the Junction further west.
Now having been complete for 6 years, we are excited to see the neighbourhood teeming with life and providing a positive built influence to its residents, passers through and to the surrounding areas. We love seeing how the neighbourhood has developed its own personality over this time, experienced through its architecture, public art, local businesses, and community life.