Toronto Awaits Festival Centre
As the TIFF kicks off, moviegoers can expect new Festival Centre.
The dream of a home for the Toronto International Film Festival becomes reality. KPMB's winning bid is sure to add to Toronto's rising volume of unique architecture.
The Toronto International Film Festival has been stirring excitement in Canada's largest city, not only for its roster of films and dazzling stars who set foot on the red carpet, but for its fast approaching development of a new Festival Centre - an official name is yet to be decided.
In recent years Toronto has been actively trying to create an architectural identity and quite frankly, the city has a bit of starchitecture fever. Both Frank Gehry's design for the Art Gallery of Ontario and Daniel Libeskind's for the Royal Ontario Museum are aimed at completion for 2008.
But unlike both of these projects, the Festival Centre is a blend of private residential and not-for-profit institutional development. The five-storey centre for TIFF will act as a podium for 37-storeys of luxury condos in the heart of Toronto's entertainment district. The sale of 400 condo units will commence September 8th, and marketers are harnessing film festival buzz by calling it an "inner circle red carpet event". Prospective buyers are assured by the slogan that they will "get the star treatment".
Toronto based KPMB-Architects won the bid for the centre's design, and rightfully so. They are recognized as one of Canada's premiere architectural studios and their portfolio includes cultural, civic, educational, health care and performing arts projects across Canada and increasingly in the United States as well as in Europe.
Bruce Kuwabara is the leading architect on the project and has always been interested in the relationship between architecture and film. As he states in the festival daily:
"Architecture is the most public of art forms and film is the most popular; both present specific values and ideas that can be critiqued by the public. The public nature of this project is fascinating to me."
Presently a parking lot at the corner of King and John Street, and yes "King" is a reflection of British roots, the festival site was donated by the family of Ivan Reitman, the beloved Canadian director-producer of 'Ghostbusters' and 'Six Days and Seven Nights'. The centre will occupy a full city block and is estimated to have over a $200 million dollar impact on the city.
The five storey, 150, 000-square-foot festival podium will comprise of a public area on the lower three levels and closed office space for TIFF on the upper two levels. The ground level will feature a dramatic lobby with an atrium extending to the third level, a gallery space and reference library, as well as a year-round box office and retail shop. The second and third levels will house three state of the art cinemas and two screening rooms with over 1,300 seats in total.
The $173-million headquarters is expected to begin construction in early 2007 and targeted for completion in 2009. Go Toronto!
