Last year, CreateTO and TO Live announced that a team led by Hariri Pontarini Architects was the winner of the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts (STLC) Design Competition. The winning team also included LMN Architects, Tawaw Architecture Collective, Smoke Architecture and SLA. Earlier this year, Hariri Pontarini Architects did a town hall where they unveiled further details of the million-dollar plan to redevelop the facility.
The winning design to reimagine the STLC in Toronto’s St. Lawrence neighbourhood is called Transparence. The design features a high-performance transparent façade that wraps the existing structure and incorporates various Indigenous design elements, such as the exterior, which was inspired by the role of Wampum belts in storytelling, artistry and craft, as well as a circular ceremonial fire at Front and Scott streets.
Hariri Pontarini’s presentation offered a sneak peek into the future of the STLC, which is aiming to redefine a landmark cultural destination in the centre of downtown Toronto.
The new STLC is aiming to be both an attraction and creative hub for artists of all kinds as well as students, educators, patrons, and neighbours. The redesign is also aiming to liven up the area through the creation of two fully accesible state-of-the-art performance spaces, and an addition of free indoor and outdoor public spaces, including a public plaza adjoining Berczy Park.
The vision for the design includes a new aproach to accessibilty, state-of-the-art technical and digital capabilities, and an inclusive space welcoming and celebrating diverse audiences and artists. The new facility will feature a total of three rehearsal halls with full audio and digital capacity.
“The new STLC is an opportunity to reclaim public space in the dense urban core of the city while renewing the ongoing commitment to the artists of Toronto. It is an iconic project, setting the stage to define the 21st-century performing arts centre through its ability to offer a welcoming space for all people while fulfilling the need for permanent artist studios and creation spaces in order to uplift the rich creative economy of the city,” said Clyde Wagner, president and CEO of TO Live.
“The new STLC will be a destination for future visitors to the city for generations and a space that artists and the community will be proud to call their creative home.”
The new STLC will be one of the first certified net zero performing art centres in Canada that will combine a high-performance façade with efficient systems and on-site energy generation.
It will feature four floors that will function as a cultural ecosystem aiming to embrace the entire process of performing arts. The ground floor, which has an L-shaped area, will feature large doors to invite performances. The main ground-level Main Hall will be equipped to accomodate various configurations for programming and the 650 to 1,000-seat theatre can be reconfigured to suit several performance styles.
The second and third floors will provide an experience that acts as an interlude between the Main Hall and Acoustic Hall. This “messy middle ground” aims to celebrate the process of production.
The second floor will house studios, rehearsal rooms and informal performance spaces. While the third floor will contain additional studios, it will also feature a KidZone with its own separate entrance.
The fourth floor will prioritize performance, events and views with its jewel being the 300-seat Acoustic Hall designed for unamplified music and performance. This hall is oriented to the building’s main axis facing west to overlook Scott Street Plaza, and will offer guests views of the CN Tower.
“At the current STLC, everything is hidden inside. You can’t see anything from the street,” said Siamak Hariri in a conversation with Wagner. “When you take an orange, slice it, go like this and the whole fruit comes out. That’s how we approached this project. That led to this bigger idea coming from this quote I love from Susan Sontag, which is about transparency— what you see is what you get.”
“I think there’s something beautiful about that in the way that we are one thing on the inside sometimes and one thing on the outside.”
TO Live anticipates breaking ground on this project in 2026 and opening the doors to the new STLC in 2030.
To watch the recording of the public open house, click here.
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