RAW’s East Coast Take on Toronto’s Contemporary Mid-Rise

RAW Design, the award-winning architecture firm from Toronto, is taking their urban contemporary aesthetic to the east coast with a new mid-rise condo project.

The new six-storey loft-style project in Halifax, dubbed Southport, playfully borrows design elements from the nearby shipping container terminal.

“Southport has been designed to showcase the robust industrial character of the Halifax port,” said director of RAW, Roland Rom Colthoff. “We have used the language of containers; the steel, the colours and the modularity, to create a living environment which takes pride in its setting and context.”

Killam Development, local partner to Toronto’s Urban Capital, will sell half the units as condos and rent out the rest.

“Southport has been designed to suit the lifestyle of urbanites who are proud of the industrial heritage of their city,” added Colthoff. “It will feature a proud raw aesthetic in keeping with the industrial heritage of the harbor.”

Condo sales will start in November out of the two small industrial buildings on the site. Construction on the new building is slated to start next spring and should take about 18 months to complete.

The Toronto-based firm was recognized by the Ontario Association of Architects in 2009 as the profession's Best Emerging Practice. While their project experience includes many varied building types and forms, an increasing demand to live downtown Toronto has resulted in the emergence of a more modest type of development: the mid-rise.

“Mid-rise condos provide the opportunity for many people who do not want, or cannot afford, a house in the city to become part of a recognizable neighbourhood and build on its positive qualities,” said Colthoff. “Mid-rise condos also provide empty-nesters and their children an opportunity to stay within a community they already know or were raised in.”

In addition to neighbourhood access, the mid-rise offers a number of lifestyle benefits compared to its taller counterpart. To start, the scale of a mid-rise project provides purchasers with a greater sense of community even within their own building.

While mid-rise residential projects are nothing new in Toronto — RAW is working on a number of these sites across the city from Mimico to Roncesvalles and Gerrard to Woodbine — Halifax has just begun to see this condo trend develop over the last few years.

Colthoff says that as architects, they are particularly interested in this form of building as it is a responsible way to grow neighbourhoods, ensure economic vitality and activity on our streets, and because they offer a unique design challenge.

“In our 109OZ project located at 109 Ossington, we carefully crafted individual components to relate directly to the heights of adjacent buildings. We also used a mix of materials and forms, which we feel reflect the surrounding structures and Ossington’s dynamic streetline.”

RAW Design has an assortment of projects on the go in Toronto including: TEN93 at Queen and Dovercourt, Totem Condos at Yonge and Dundonald and The Nest on St. Clair Avenue West near Oakwood.