Camera – Stephen Bulger Gallery – Mongrel Media

Address: 1026-1028 Queen Street West
Architect: Hariri Pontarini Architects
Clients: Atom Egoyan and Hussain Amarshi

Project Description

This project includes an assemblage of film related spaces: a small editing suite; Mongrel Media (a film distribution company); the Stephen Bulger Gallery of photography, and Camera - a lounge and café-bar with an innovative 51-seat digital screening room. A former hardware store, the building was gutted and restored, retaining the original structure and unveiling a brick façade and hidden architectural features such as tin ceilings and an original fireplace. These are set off by refined contemporary interventions including a lead-coated copper canopy, oak and limestone flooring, teak and oak windows.

The ground floor frontage doubles as a sliding wall of glass which glides from Camera into the Stephen Bulger Gallery, blurring the distinction between the bar and the street, and also linking the two ground floor occupants. Camera and Mongrel Media share a common entrance that provides visitors a suggestive glimpse of the staircase to the private offices above. Throughout, there is a sense of unity, playful symmetry, and consistent materials and colour.

Jurors' Comments

In this imaginative reclamation of a small Victorian structure, the architects have provided a refined home for three enterprises concerned with the art of imagery. The building plays its civic role with distinction, by bolstering the historic streetscape, lending elegance to a downtown neighbourhood changing from shabby to quietly chic, and providing an example of the new uses to which Toronto's old buildings can be put.