One thing that Toronto knows how to do well, is create condo’s out of historic structures. The CN Tower which was once the tallest freestanding structure in the world has fallen to the likes of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and the Canton Tower in China. So, what do you do with one of the most iconic buildings in the world? You open it up and let people live on it.
Quadrangle, Toronto-based architecture and design firm, has imagined a way to renew the building’s cachet: turn it into the CN Tower condo, a residential building unlike any other in the city.
The firm has developed preliminary designs that use cross-laminated timber (CLT), which would be affixed to the side of the tower. Made by laminating together pieces of spruce, pine or fir, CLT is making gains as a popular building material due to its versatility and a carbon footprint that’s much smaller than steel or concrete.
The lightness and strength of CLT would make it possible for the condo units to be attached to the CN Tower’s existing wings, a wind-shielding feature. CN Tower condo buyers could purchase made-to-order units in a diverse range of layouts and, because CLT buildings are produced in factories and simply snapped in place on site, construction would be quick.
“Quadrangle’s proposal reinvents the landmark and in so doing also reinvents the tower as a symbol of Toronto’s ingenuity and progress,” says Quadrangle principal Richard Witt in a news release.
There are still some details that need to be ironed out like how to do you get the CLT’s in place, how to do you get your water and heating to these pods and of course, how much would one of these units cost? I’m pretty sure that living in the sky might be limited to the likes of Drake and The Weeknd.
Richelle Sibolboro 