Instead of a conventional office tower, 8 Spadina Ave. consists of a 19-storey front section, with a 28-storey section and a 36-storey section behind, all interspersed with green roofs and terraces.doublespace photography
Canadians who have been working from home are slowly trickling back to offices, but the designers of an ambitious new project in downtown Toronto hope to direct that flow into the Well.
The Well is a giant mixed-use development at Spadina Avenue and Front Street West with three million square feet (278,710 square metres) of interconnected residential, commercial and retail spaces under a gigantic glass canopy. Sections are already open, and it is expected to be open fully by the end of this year.
The new precinct sits on a large swath of real estate once occupied by car dealerships, parking lots and the former home of The Globe and Mail, which moved across town in 2016.
The Well’s designers, Hariri Pontarini Architects, and developers Allied Properties REIT and RioCan REIT, have sought to create an area that blends the office efficiency of Toronto’s nearby Financial District with the high-end hipster chic of the city’s King Street West neighbourhood.
Key to making this blend work is one of the project’s anchor buildings, 8 Spadina Ave., a new 860,000-square-foot (79,000-square-metre) office complex. The building is actually three glass structures that are sequenced back from the avenue.
The design of the office building is a response to a demand from the city to minimize shadows over Clarence Square, a small park across the street.
A traditional office building would have its core come right down the centre, with the elevator shafts up the middle. We wanted to do something different.
— Michael Conway, associate partner at Hariri Pontarini Architects
Instead of a conventional office tower, 8 Spadina Ave. consists of a 19-storey front section, with 28-storey and 36-storey sections behind, all interspersed with green roofs and terraces. The effort to keep sun on the park worked; the design adds 22 minutes of daylight to Clarence Square that would have been lost to the shadows had a single large tower been built on the site.
The new office building, along with other parts of the Well, is connected to Toronto’s Enwave Deep Lake Water cooling system, an environmentally friendly system that deploys Lake Ontario water for climate control.doublespace photography
While making sure that the nearby park stays sunny is an achievement, the configuration of 8 Spadina Ave. aspires to achieve more, by being a workplace that can lure work-from-homers back to offices, says Michael Conway, associate partner at Hariri Pontarini Architects.
“A traditional office building would have its core come right down the centre, with the elevator shafts up the middle. We wanted to do something different,” Mr. Conway says.
Shifting the core to the north allowed them to set back the different parts of the building, “which had a lot of interesting consequences,” he explains.
“For example, it let us put in glass elevators which overlook the King Street West neighbourhood as people ride up to work,” he says. “Our design also let us put in a variety of floor spaces for different tenants and different types of companies, with lots of terraces so people can go outside. The views from different parts of the building are pretty spectacular.”
The office complex will be capped with a rooftop restaurant and outdoor terrace. “You’ll be able to go outside at the top,” Mr. Conway says.
The new office building, along with other parts of the Well, is connected to Toronto’s Enwave Deep Lake Water cooling system, an environmentally friendly system that deploys Lake Ontario water for climate control.
“We’re creating a relay system for Enwave’s water, so it can be collected here and sent to other buildings,” Mr. Conway says. “You could say that the Well actually is a well, for deep-water cooling.”
“I think projects like this are the future,” says Adam Jacobs, senior national director, research, Colliers Canada. “The Well is a unique development in the way it combines living, working and play (restaurants and entertainment) in a single facility.”
“Return-to-office has been slow,” Mr. Jacobs adds. Colliers Canada’s National Market Snapshot for the second quarter of 2023 shows a 10.5-per-cent vacancy rate for centrally located office space, climbing from just below 10 per cent in the same period last year.
Tenants and workers are looking for something beyond a humdrum space with four walls and cubicles, Mr. Jacobs says.
“There’s a ‘flight to quality’ trend that picked up speed during the pandemic and which continues. For designers, developers and owners, this puts the focus on making the office more attractive with amenities and convenient locations.”
Ken Greenberg, principal at Greenberg Consultants Inc., agrees. “Developers are now finding that they need to pay a lot more attention to their commercial tenants’ needs and the needs of the people who work in office buildings,” he says.
“A project like the Well can gain a distinct competitive advantage. It’s in a real neighbourhood, a walkable area where people can live and get to amenities close by,” he says.
The Well blends the office efficiency of Toronto’s nearby Financial District with the high-end hipster chic of the city’s King Street West neighbourhood.doublespace photography
People coming back to offices also want more choice in where and how they can work when they get there, Janet Pogue McLaurin, global director of workplace research for Gensler, a North America-wide architectural and design consulting firm, wrote in a company blog post in January.
A 2022 Gensler survey of U.S. workers found “people prefer the office, but only if it supports their work,” she said.
“In fact, workers in high-performing workplaces not only say that they prefer the office, but they also say that they need to be in the office more often than they are currently to maximize their individual and team productivity,” she wrote.
However, “the workplace must adapt to meet workers’ changing needs and expectations. First, the physical work environment needs to be designed to support the work. … A well-designed workplace can … ultimately, create workplaces where people want to be.”
Mr. Conway says the designers and architects anticipated this trend as far back as 2011 when the Well site was first put on the drawing board.
“The neighbourhood was considered a bit of a backwater because there wasn’t any one type of business or activity there that really drew peoples’ interest. But we looked at what was within a five- or 10-minute walk and realized that from Spadina and Front you could walk to the downtown core, to Union Station, Billy Bishop Airport and the UP (Union Pearson Airport Express train),” he says.
“With that kind of access to trains, subways and two airports, we realized it’s actually 10 minutes away from everything in the world.”