Buildings - Honourable Mention

Upper Beach Village
Address: Norwood Terrace / Enderby Road
Architect/Urban Designer: Guthrie Muscovitch Architects
Owner/Developer: Namara Developments / Upper Beach Village Ltd.

Pat Bollenberghe
The vocabulary and predominance of the veranda as a design element recalls the importance of the street as a place for social exchange and meeting. The setback and the building façade welcome and recognize this and provide the space necessary to introduce a layer of landscape that provides rhythm, canopy and animation.

Alex Krieger
There is but one thing to admire about this humble residential development. It is, indeed, its modesty in restoring the small-scale fabric of its block and bringing back residents to this struggling neighbourhood. Some no doubt would wish for a less conservative architecture, but it is not the architecture that is noteworthy here. This is rather a commendable example of low-cost, mid-density housing that avoids undo innovation when local conventions suffice - not a bad way to re-invest in many of our older neighbourhoods.

Bruce Kuwabara
All that is old is new again. By introducing a laneway to the development plan, the project establishes conditions that are conventional to Toronto urbanism. The façades are less an expression of the articulation of all that was Victorian, and more an expression of current building codes. Witness the guardrails. Urban design requires architecture to translate and express its vision.

Lisa Rochon
Derelict land made liveable through fine urban design - it's a laudable ambition, but one that the city has understood and, in some cases, mastered since the 1970s. What's tiresome in this city is the formulaic approach to housing. If developers can't innovate contemporary housing on their own, they should reference some of the smart, humanized schemes to come out of, for instance, the recent Chicago Public Housing Competition.