King Street West, which gave its name to the project, connects Toronto's high-rise business district with mid-rise and low-rise residential areas. The architects of the BIG bureau proposed for this place a harmonious and extremely logical scheme for organizing a residential complex, taking as a basis Moshe Safdi, assembled from cubes-cells "Habitat 67". The result is a huge anthill with 500 apartments, as it should be - complex, pragmatic and devoid of chaos.
Emphasizing the regular layout of the quarters, the architects gave the plan of the future building the classic shape of a regular rectangle with an open courtyard. Moreover, half of the yard will be planted with trees, and half will turn into a square. But then they themselves violated the strict geometry, drawing up a plan, like a children's designer, from separate cells, each of which is rotated at an angle of 45 ° relative to the red lines of the streets - this way more sun should get into the apartments. Like three-dimensional histogram graphs, residential cells grow out of “pixels”. Moreover, they grow in waves, at different heights. These waves will literally cover (but not visually crush) the three historic buildings on the site, and the openings formed between the old and the new will provide access to the courtyard. Thus, the usual routes of the townspeople between the three parks are preserved, running right through the construction site.
The total area of the complex will be 67 355 m2. Its lower part, exactly to the height of historical buildings, will be occupied by small offices and shops, and in the upper, multi-level part, apartments will be located. The stepped relief of the roof (or is it roofs?), Firstly, does not prevent sunlight from penetrating into the courtyard and almost all apartments. Secondly, it forms terraces, which are planned to be landscaped and even planted with trees. As a result, a very complex and varied landscape is created for the residents of the complex. On the one hand, it is quite organic for a metropolis, but on the other hand, it is divided into small, more or less proportionate modules for a person. So, while retaining the complexity of the compositional solution of the Safdie building, characteristic of brutalism, Ingels deprives his future building of its ponderousness, introducing a distinct humanistic stream.
