In almost any city on the planet, the scale and density alone would be enough to turn heads. Indeed, the 1.2-hectare, 598-unit Keybridge Estate is now among the densest places in London, its jumble of volumes prominently capped by a 36-storey height peak. For a visitor from Toronto, however, the scope is almost banal: Across Canada’s largest metropolis, former strip malls, warehouses and sprawling parking lots are now routinely transformed through master-planned developments, many of which dwarf the Keybridge Estate. Yet, a walk through the tight-knit network of cobblestoned mews and laneways unfolds with uncommon intimacy, framed by ample seating, greenery, and an assertive red brick architecture seamlessly knit into the surrounding urban fabric. We’re not in North America anymore.   

Designed by local architects Allies and Morrison, the development in the neighbourhood of Vauxhall forms part of an impressive portfolio of master-planned communities across London. At the recently completed Goodluck Hope, for example, 841 homes fill out a 2.72-hectare site on the River Thames promontory animated by a staggered array of brightly coloured ceramic brick volumes and generous — and largely car-free — shared spaces. Touring the place with Angie Jim Osman, a Canadian-born architect with the firm, we stop in the midst of elegantly narrow mews, fronted by a row of townhouse-style homes. Every volume’s brick face sports a distinct pastel hue. Osman turns my attention to the entrances, each of which is framed by a low partition that doubles as a bench. I ask what it’s for. “You can set down your groceries as you get out your keys,” she says. A few moments later, we glimpse a resident do just that. 

It is a fleeting moment, but one that epitomizes a neighbourhood where urban density is combined with a quiet, comfortable and distinctly sociable milieu. A far cry from the sterile character often associated with new development, the place already feels lived in and settled; it’s complemented by retail, including a bakery and a farm shop, and greenery. Up close and afar, the collage of towers, mansion blocks and maisonettes feels of a piece with London’s eclectic urban fabric, down to the brick textures and rows of gabled roofs. It’s a sensibility that’s set to cross the Atlantic, with Allies and Morrison designing a pair of pivotal projects in Toronto: the 11.5-hectare Mr. Christie’s cookie factory site on Lake Shore Boulevard and the 2.79-hectare Beltline Yards.    

For the English designers, both Canadian projects will be among the firm’s largest built works, scaled to meet the enormity of Toronto’s fast-growing population and acute housing shortage. And they’re not alone. As Allies and Morrison get set to take on transformative private-sector developments, the City of Toronto has engaged London-based public housing specialists Karakusevic Carson Architects to lead the final phases of mixed-income redevelopment in both Regent Park and Alexandra Park. On the waterfront, meanwhile, one of Toronto’s most high-profile sites is set to be capped with a landmark tower by London architect Alison Brooks.

The British influence on Toronto is far from new. A product of the erstwhile empire’s settler colonialism and persistent Indigenous erasure, contemporary Toronto retains no shortage of imperial monuments, as well as long stretches of quaint Victorian row housing, now wielded as a political wedge between heritage preservation and the urgency of sustainable population growth. As the city grew into an unlikely metropolis, British designers continued to shape the architectural landscape into the 21st century, with marvels like Will Alsop’s Rosalie Sharp pavilion at OCAD U and civic beacons such as RSHP’s soon-to-open St. Lawrence Market North. Even the high-rise boom bears its share of trans-Atlantic authors: WilkinsonEyre recently designed the CIBC Square office complex and Foster & Partners is responsible for a pair of luxury condominiums, including The One, a controversy-plagued super-tall.        

What’s happening now is different. While Allies and Morrison, Karakusevic Carson, and Alison Brooks are all acclaimed designers in their own right, their vocabularies are not drawn from the global lexicon of starchitecture but from the realities of housing needs and the ambitions of community-building. For Toronto, such commissions represent a departure from the Bilbao era–flexing of architectural star power, the gateway to the cringe of early 2000s “world-class city” aspiration. Instead, their designs accomplish the more modest yet meaningful goal of introducing welcome departures from urban design norms. These are new recipes for tomorrow’s fabric buildings.

At both Beltline Yards and the Mr. Christie’s site, Allies and Morrison are working within — and challenging — well-established local typologies and pro formas, transforming post-industrial sites well beyond the city’s expensive, amenity-rich downtown and its occasional architectural bijouterie. For Karakusevic Carson, meanwhile, the redevelopment of social housing communities in downtown Toronto represents a North American expansion of the firm’s affordable housing portfolio, which exclusively serves public sector clients. 

On the waterfront, Alison Brooks’ Quayside tower comes closest to the architecture of spectacle. Poised to transform the eastern bayfront site once earmarked for Google’s Sidewalk Labs, the 70-storey residential building — now marketed as The Western Curve by developers Dream and Great Gulf  — will form the height peak of a prominent new district also set to include designs by Henning Larsen and Adjaye Associates. Distinguished by its sculptural balconies, ceramic detailing and (hopefully) vibrant high-rise greenery, the elegant yet assertive form promises to draw the eye. It will also welcome pedestrian activity at street level, where a series of arches gently delineates the body of the building to a more intimate scale, eschewing the common North American strategy of “breaking up the massing” to create the superficial impression of multiple smaller buildings. 

Back at the Allies and Morrison office in Southwark, architect Alfredo Caraballo joins Osman to offer an in-depth look at their upcoming Toronto projects, starting with the complex at 2150 Lake Shore. Even by Toronto standards, the scale of it all is staggering. Led by developers First Capital, the master planned mixed-use community envisions some 7,500 planned homes spread across over 30 buildings, expanding the density of the Humber Bay Shores into a wedge-shaped lot that is awkwardly tucked between the Gardiner Expressway and Lake Shore Boulevard. Belying the imposing scope, the public realm is artfully broken down into a network of nooks and crannies — punctuated by a larger shared space and framed by a collage of forms and textures. “There is not a single right angle between a building and another building,” says Caraballo, describing the careful layering of buildings as an “urban picturesque.” 

A covered galleria anchors an eclectic public realm animated by retail, office space and a hotel, as well as a daycare, school, public library and a community centre. The energetic convergence of commercial and civic uses is complemented by the porous, winding network of laneways that culminates in a broad spine of greenery framing a new streetcar loop through the heart of the complex; here, a retained industrial water tower bearing the Christie’s logo retains pride of place. While the sprawling site is currently a vacant lot, the firm’s renderings convey an interplay of brick surfaces that immediately distinguishes the plan from its blue-glass surroundings. 

At first glance, the spectrum of solid brick tones and textures forms the project’s prevailing aesthetic signature. Yet, the sensitivity to urban placemaking is more acutely a reflection of Allies and Morrison’s departure from Toronto’s urban design norms. At Humber Bay Shores and across the city, 21st-century high-rises are characterized by slender towers atop bulkier “base buildings.” In principle, the setbacks — formalized via the Tall Building Design Guidelines — lend commercial streets a welcoming, pedestrian-friendly and human-scaled urban grain while limiting shadows. Has it worked? 

After a two-decade condo boom, a walk through Toronto’s most radically transformed neighbourhoods yields little of the intimacy or variety that defines the city’s older commercial streets. Just as breaking up the massing fails to meaningfully turn large buildings into small ones, low-rise podiums (and the big box corporate retail tenants that typically occupy them) offer unconvincing simulacra of their urban antecedents. “Sometimes, the rules create quite lateral buildings, with setbacks on setbacks on setbacks, which can feel a little bit alienating as a pedestrian,” says Osman. In other words, I’d much rather take a stroll through Keybridge Estate or Goodluck Hope over Humber Bay Shores, Liberty Village or CityPlace. 

Yet the difference is a matter of relatively simple strategy. While Toronto’s development guidelines push for mid-rise base buildings and high-rise towers to be integrated into a single form, Allies and Morrison are leveraging the size of master-planned sites to create a diversity of housing types and street-level experience with varied typologies. In lieu of a tower stacked atop a mid-rise base, why not a sequence of tightly packed individual buildings? “We can create new types of public spaces, while still maintaining a diversity of typologies and housing types,” says Caraballo.

And the spaces are appealing, with the mews and laneways creating pleasantly quiet nooks for a café or restaurant patio. “Parks and large shared spaces are very important,  but it’s also nice to have intimate moments where you feel more sheltered and comfortable,” says Osman. Throughout Allies and Morrison’s Humber Bay Shores site — which features landscape architecture by DTAH — there are very few straight lines or 90-degree angles across the public realm, inviting a sense of exploration, with a similarly angular composition of buildings as backdrop.    

As the colossal 2150 Lake Shore project, set to be developed in phases,  continues to progress through the City of Toronto planning process, Allies and Morrison’s more recently announced Beltline Yards is poised to push the envelope even further. Led by design-driven developers Hullmark and BGO, the project will transform the Canada Goose industrial complex at the corner of Caledonia Road and Bowie Avenue. Like Etobicoke’s Christie’s site, the project takes on an awkwardly shaped lot that hugs the curvy western terminus Beltline Trail, a linear park popular with pedestrians and cyclists. Here, the plans call for light industrial uses and maker spaces to be re-integrated into a community, celebrating the local heritage (and economy) of manufacturing.   

Alongside nearly 2,000 homes (divided between rentals and condominiums), the eclectic master plan envisions nearly 28,000 square metres of industrial and commercial space, along with a 1,000-square-metre community centre. Developed in partnership with local architects SvN, the landscape plan retains half of the 2.79-hectare site as open, shared spaces. In classic Allies and Morrison fashion, the public realm is a jumbled tapestry of greenery and hardscaping; a procession of laneways connect to the Beltline Trail and lead to a central square. The site’s size allowed the architects to strategically situate the mandated loading and servicing areas — another vibrancy-killing bane of North American urbanism — at the corners of the lot to minimize their incursion onto the public realm, a strategy also employed at 2150 Lake Shore. 

Ranging in height from five to 42 storeys, Beltline Yards’ buildings are a characteristic jaunty jumble of bricks and sawtooth roofs. While the effect is whimsical, Allies and Morrison’s portfolio is defined by deeply rational buildings. “We actually design very simple, spatially efficient rectilinear buildings, but the way that they are staggered across the site is what creates a sense of variety, along with a few chamfered edges at the corners,” says Osman. Yet, there’s something undeniably playful about Beltline Yards, where the tropes of Toronto urbanism are gently turned on their heads. Across the high-rises, the massing is visually varied, with multiple colours and textures employed across the body of the towers. But instead of quietly disappearing into a blue-glass sky or imitating an older streetscape, these buildings stick out all the more. Here, the effect is not camouflage but emphasis.  

Leaving the Allies and Morrison office, I cross the Thames and walk north. In Hackney, I meet Paul Karakusevic, whose acclaimed firm works exclusively for public sector clients. Across London, Karakusevic Carson Architects has collaborated with local councils to revive and reimagine affordable housing for the 21st century. Celebrating local architectural heritage and emphasizing civic engagement, the firm’s portfolio is distinguished by handsome buff brick forms, an embrace of street-level activity, and thoughtfully well-resolved residential interiors, all with an emphasis on high quality material finishes. In downtown Toronto, the firm is undertaking some of its largest projects to date: It is leading the design of the final phases of the landmark Regent Park redevelopment and taking part in the ongoing revitalization of Alexandra Park. 

For Karakusevic, the projects may present a different geographic and cultural context but they are driven by the same set of values. “It starts with deep engagement with the local community, and is guided by a series of listening sessions and consultations,” says Karakusevic. As the early vision for apartment buildings and a community centre at Alexandra Park takes shape, the plans for Phase 4 and 5 of Regent Park offer a preview of the firm’s architectural language. Developed in close partnership with local heritage experts ERA Architects for Toronto Community Housing (TCHC) and Tridel, the mixed-income community will feature almost 3,000 new homes across a 6.5-hectare site, with the residences divided between affordable homes (40 per cent) and market-rate condominiums (60 per cent). In addition, the plan calls for nearly 8,000 square metres of retail and office space, along with a 3,500-square-metre community centre and a 2,300-square-metre public library.  

Spread across a three-block row between Gerrard and Oak Streets, the scheme comprises a series of simple but confident brick courtyard buildings, anchored by a central pedestrian spine of greenery that spans the length of the site. In a slight contrast with Karakusevic Carson’s British portfolio — which mostly comprises freestanding towers and mid-rises — the vision utilizes the tower-and-base-building typology favoured by City of Toronto planners. Yet, while the form is familiar, the architectural expression is uncommonly confident and cohesive. Largely free of jogs and setbacks, the simple rectilinear buildings are unified by a common brick language that spans across both the mid-rise and tower volumes, their efficient forms interrupted only by strategically chamfered edges to create a more welcoming public realm. 

Crucially, the values informing the design have crossed the Atlantic intact. “I have a strong belief that all of our buildings — wherever they are — should last 300 years,” says Karakusevic. “For the public sector in particular, it’s crazy to design a building with a lifespan of just 40 or 50 years. And then what happens? Unlike a private developer selling condominiums, you have a long-term economic stake in the community. Using quality materials and building great homes with generous spaces and lots of natural light is an investment in the future. And whether we’re working in London or Toronto, the priorities are the same: How do we design for a thriving community? How do we create the most livable and comfortable homes possible?”

In North America, these questions aren’t typically asked. According to ERA’s Graeme Stewart and Ya’el Santopinto — who played a key role in bringing Karakusevic Carson to Toronto — local planning and architecture is often more reactive in nature. “In Toronto, we worry about how a building fits into the zoning envelope and meets urban design guidelines,” says Santopinto. “It’s part of the reason why we’ve ended up with a lot of mid-rises that have a ziggurat form, for example, because the form of the building was primarily designed as a response to planning limitations. Within that form, you’d then try to fit in as many units as you can.” It’s a recipe for awkwardly shaped homes and carbon-intensive buildings.  

“In British architectural practice — and particularly for Karakusevic Carson — their approach is more from the inside out,” says Santopinto. “You start by designing good homes, good residential layouts, and then the rest of the building emerges to support that.” In some respects, we used to follow this same paradigm in North America, too, but abandoned it as a byproduct of misguided mid-century planning. “Arguably, the modernist tower block offered a more generous unit than more recent buildings. Optimistically, we’re now starting to have these conversations, and to see these conventions evolve,” says Santopinto. 

Understanding how and why we build the way we do necessitates historical context and consciousness. As Stewart explains, much of the city’s regulations emerged in response to the mistakes of the 20th century. “A lot of our design and planning conventions and regulations are rooted in a response to the problems with mid-century planning, with Le Corbusier-inspired design, and with the ‘tower in the park’ model of urbanism,” says Stewart, recalling an era when thriving neighbourhoods were regularly demolished for highways and residential towers were erected with little regard to surrounding built and cultural context. 

“We can connect a lot of our norms and regulations to Jane Jacobs’ values about protecting fine-grained urban retail and preserving connections between neighbours and across communities,” says Stewart. “And I think that those are generally good values. But what we sometimes forget to ask ourselves is how well all of our rules actually end up supporting those values.” It’s a question worth raising. Do setbacks and base buildings really create a fine-grained retail street? Does a 45-degree angular plane for mid-rises meaningfully protect the character of surrounding residential neighbourhoods? And for that matter, should it? Are two exit stairs and double-loaded corridors required to ensure fire safety? Over the last two decades, there’s ample empirical evidence to suggest otherwise. 

As my return to Toronto approaches, the question of values stays on my mind. On my last day in London, I’m due to meet Alison Brooks. Before heading to her Kentish Town office, I stop at King’s Cross. Immediately north of the station, an ambitious mixed-use redevelopment has transformed a long-derelict site into a civic showpiece, including a new British headquarters for Google. Led by Allies and Morrison, the plan has integrated a range of residential and commercial settings along the water’s edge of Regent’s Canal.

At the heart of the neighbourhood, a pair of Victorian warehouses have been restored as Coal Drop Yards and the new civic square in between them is topped by a striking pair of “kissing buildings” by Heatherwick Studio. To create the spectacle, the roof of each warehouse was rebuilt to curve out above the square and meet its counterpart in an embrace. I’d seen the photos, but in person, I’m surprised to find it feels somewhat bulbous and unresolved. Then again, starchitecture sometimes works out that way. But it’s not what I’m here to see: From the square, Heatherwick’s kissing buildings frame Cadence, a recently completed apartment building by Alison Brooks Architects. 

Perched on the north end of Lewis Cubitt Park, the 16-storey tower meets the green space with an elegantly slender southern face; a simple and rectilinear red brick punctuated by a syncopated rhythm of arches, loggias and fenestration. The effect is both graceful and assertive. From the trio of arches that cap the uppermost storey, my eye is intuitively drawn down to the sidewalk, where the building’s broader base is articulated by another row of arches, delineating the public realm into a series of more intimate spaces, including storefronts and residential entrances. It invokes a fine urban grain — and adds a sense of depth – while maintaining a confident and aesthetically consistent architectural language. 

And in Toronto, Brooks is designing her tallest building yet; the 70-storey Western Curve on Queen’s Quay. Like Osman, Brooks is a Canadian architect in London, making the project something of a homecoming for the Welland-born and Waterloo-educated practitioner. It promises to be some homecoming. Distinguished by its terracotta cladding and rounded balconies, the building boasts a series of arched entries that elevates the public realm. And like Cadence, the Toronto tower conveys a consistent architectural language all the way along its tall body. Along the lower levels, the balconies give way to a porous emerald-green base, creating an inviting environment at the human scale.  

From a planning standpoint, the design promises to achieve many of the outcomes championed by planners (and articulated in Toronto’s Tall Building Guidelines) while largely eschewing North American design norms. And in a skyline dominated by generic blue-glass window walls, the terracotta cladding, bronze balcony railings and high-rise greenery promises to be a focal point. For Brooks, the tower’s assertive bearing is deeply intentional. “At a certain point in my architectural evolution, I thought ‘why do we want to make buildings float?’” she tells me in her London office. 

In a philosophical sense, it is a question of architectural honesty. “Loads want to meet the ground, and one of the most poetic, expressive moments in architecture is that point of arrival with the earth,” Brooks says. “If you think of it as coming from the sky to the ground, it’s sort of celebrating that moment: ‘Here I am, I am a big building, and I’m a very heavy thing.’ In a way, a mission of mine is to restore the idea of gravity, mass and permanence in architecture. It’s making that moment where a building meets the public realm something to celebrate.” 

On a more prosaic level, the building’s solidity signals the future. To wit, the updated Toronto Green Standard calls for a reduced window-to-wall ratio, limiting inefficient glass facades that invite solar heat gain. At The Western Curve, the use of terracotta is more than an aesthetic choice. “It’s about reducing overheating through passive design, and it’s using an earth-based material — as well as low-carbon concrete — that’s fully recyclable,” says Brooks. Not for nothing, it’ll look better than back painted spandrel glass.  

While Allies and Morrison’s and Karakusevic Carson’s design languages arguably carry notes of Victorian nostalgia, Brooks’s contextually attuned buildings are also boldly contemporary. At Oxford University, for example, the rhythm of a preserved Edwardian Baroque building is translated across a new stainless steel roof that nods to its surroundings without succumbing to imitation.

The contrasts are deeply intentional. “I think it’s important to be unapologetic,” says Brooks. “One of the things that happened to us as contemporary architects is that it’s weighed down by this idea that anything we build is going to be worse than anything that was there before 1900. If you’re doing an addition to a house, for example, it’s okay as long as it’s totally invisible. And, at a larger scale, the damage done to cities throughout 20th-century urban renewal — particularly in North America — has obviously shaped how we think. But I think the important thing is not to defer to history, but to be in dialogue with it.” 

For a Torontonian, the point hits home. While our best practices in architecture and urban design remain heavily rooted in the idea of mitigating harms and “impacts” while preserving character, the city’s rapid evolution and radical diversity is also our cultural signature. Like most of us, I was born outside of the country, speaking another language. And I feel right at home in a city whose official motto is “Diversity, Our Strength.” Yet, this evolution often feels at odds with a building culture that treats the Victorian past as a prelapsarian Eden to be preserved at all costs. If we’re proud of the city’s evolution, shouldn’t our architecture express that? If we believe the Toronto of 2050 will be a better place than the Toronto of 1950, why does our design culture so often seem to convey the opposite idea? 

It’s not up to the British to provide the answers. While the trio of architects is set to reshape the urban fabric for the better, their presence is only a complement to our own evolving culture, putting another architectural language — and the different civic values it represents — in conversation with our own. As Allies and Morrison shape new communities, standout designs by Canadian practices like Hariri Pontarini, SvN and Henriquez Partnership Architects are also driving an evolution in form and thought for master planned urbanism. Meanwhile, many of the city’s boutique practices — including gh3*, Superkül and Partisans — are experimenting with new high-rise paradigms. As Brooks puts it, it all creates a dialogue. For now, after all, the British projects are just ideas on a screen, with the messiness of construction and visible value-engineering yet to come. But it should be enough to get us thinking. 

Leaving Brooks’s office, I’m running late for the flight back home. No matter the destination, I inevitably find myself excited to be back in Toronto. As the plane makes its approach to Pearson, I crane my neck out the window and snap photos of the skyline, like a tourist visiting the place for the first time. It looks different — and bigger — after every trip. This time, we’re landing in the middle of a summer haze. The sun is in my eyes and I can’t make out much. Somewhere on the horizon, the skyline is an impressionistic blur. I see the outline of a city, and my imagination fills in the rest.