King West
Toronto
Ken Greenberg has served as strategic planning and urban design advisor to the King Street West project a co-venture of Westbank and Allied Properties with BIG Architects and Public Work as designers. This ambitious project both in terms of its program and its built form involves a complex blending of old and new, integrating a significant increase in new life and intensity into an area which was an early twentieth century industrial power house with a legacy of fine mercantile buildings from that era. The issues of fit and integration pose the challenge of fully realizing the objectives of the city’s ‘Kings’ planning initiative for the rebirth of a fully mixed use sustainable new form of neighbourhood combining living, working, shopping, recreation and culture in a way which is sensitive to context while changing it dramatically. A fully mixed program of living (in new diverse forms); working, shopping and amenities in an already highly mixed neighbourhood will provide an unprecedented level of connectivity and porosity enhancing the local network of fine-grained pedestrian connections and spaces including a fully public courtyard. What was closed becomes extroverted, open and porous. What was single use and occupied for very specific and limited times becomes a vibrant 24/7 neighbourhood. As the residential population diversifies new living arrangements accommodating a broader cross-section of the population are accommodated including young families. New ways of working are emerging along this stretch of the King corridor that break away from the traditional office building and increasingly new ways of getting to work including walking, cycling and transit.