Morrison Hall blends ‘politely’

The bustling St. George Street thoroughfare at the heart of the University of Toronto’s downtown campus might well become known as Zeidler Row in the wake of the opening last fall of Morrison Hall.

Architecture

U of T residence offers a quasi-historical look

Toronto

The bustling St. George Street thoroughfare at the heart of the University of Toronto’s downtown campus might well become known as Zeidler Row in the wake of the opening last fall of Morrison Hall.

The first tall building on the prevailingly low-rise, historic, eastern half of the campus, the residence marks the third major building by Zeidler Partnership Architects on a single block at Canada’s largest university.

The 80,000-square-foot residence accommodates 270 students in single rooms.

It consists of a three-storey podium running east-west between St. George Street and the back campus and a 13-storey tower anchoring the west end.

“Given the small site and the room count allotted to the new project, we couldn’t build a homogeneous-height building here,” says Tarek El-Khatib, partner-in-charge at Zeidler Partnership Architects. “But we wanted to maintain a harmonious street facade.”

The building, constructed by Aecon Buildings at an estimated cost of $21.8 million, rises between two Georgian Revival-style, low-rise University College residences.

The architects were faced, essentially, with two massing choices: broad and squat, or a tall point tower.

“To get the number of rooms we needed in a low, pancake layout, we would have had to build a couple of storeys higher than the existing buildings,” says El-Khatib.

“But building a much wider, five-storey building out to the perimeter of the site would have spoiled sightlines for the existing, vintage buildings. And so we have a low podium with a 13-storey tower flush with the street line.”

Morrison Hall was designed to blend “politely” with its campus neighbours. The three-storey podium continues the street wall along St. George Street, maintaining the same cornice height as the Whitney Hall and Sir Daniel Wilson residences.

The podium’s pale yellow brick cladding is contextual in front and rear, continuing the colour and texture of Sir Daniel Wilson next door and the back-campus facade of University College.

The tower’s grey zinc cladding co-ordinates with the traditional slate roofs of Whitney Hall and Sir Daniel Wilson.

“We fought for the zinc. It ages more gracefully than aluminum and catches the light better,” says Eberhard Zeidler, Zeidler Partnership Architects senior partner and Morrison Hall design adviser.

Neither the city nor the university wanted a flat-topped building. The program called for a quasi-historical, articulated look rather than stark minimalism. To that end, robust pillars rising up the tower sides allude to the Modernist concrete buttresses of Sidney Smith Hall across the street, and to the Gothic buttresses of Soldiers’ Tower across the back campus. The pillars become more pronounced as they ascend the tower’s setbacks.

The tower itself offers dramatic views across the campus to the midtown Toronto skyline.

The loading dock was fashioned from leftover space between Morrison Hall and Daniel Wilson.

To solve the problem, Eb Zeidler created a gate that conceals the area. “There was no budget for a gate, so I designed it as a gift.”

The firm’s previous projects on St. George Street are the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management and Innis Residence.