Toronto’s skyline of concrete, glass, and steel is getting some company in the form of a new generation of tall towers constructed out of wood, and the first of the bunch is already making headway.
The University of Toronto’s new Academic Wood Tower is quickly sprouting from the north end of the Goldring Centre for High Performance Sport at 110 Devonshire Place, just around the corner from St. George subway station.
This new landmark will provide new spaces for the Rotman School of Management, the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy in the Faculty of Arts and Science and the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education.
The 14-storey institutional building designed by Patkau Architects and MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects was first proposed in 2018, but it already had a bit of a head start before work even began.
Patkau Architects + MJMA
The new tower’s foundations, basement, lower floors, and elevator core up to the fourth floor were already constructed using concrete and steel as part of the Goldring Centre for High Performance Sport, which opened its doors next door in 2014.
The first construction activity for the long-planned addition came almost a decade later in mid-2023, when the pre-built base was stripped away of exterior finishes and prepped for the new levels to rise above.
A crane was erected in November 2023, and work on assembling the mass-timber structural frame has gradually progressed in the 14 months since. Timber beams now stretch to the seventh floor of the tower, meaning the building is now approximately halfway towards its final height.
Once complete, the building will stand as Canada’s tallest academic wood building, as well as the tallest timber-framed structure in the country overall.
The 18-storey Brock Commons Tallwood House Student Residence in Vancouver is Canada’s current-tallest all-wood structure at a height of 53 metres, though, thanks to taller floor clearances for institutional buildings, the 12-storey Academic Wood Tower would easily take the crown as the country’s tallest wood building, rising 77 metres.
However, they might not want to commission a plaque or anything permanent acknowledging this feat. These height records may not stand the test of time, as a new future of tall wood towers already looms on the horizon following recent regulatory changes.
Last year, the province amended the Ontario Building Code to allow the construction of timber buildings up to 18 storeys, a significant leap from the previous 12-storey limitation. Even before these changes came into effect, a new wave of much taller mass timber proposals began to emerge in Toronto.
Ontario now allows developers to build huge towers made of woodhttps://t.co/esQOTSq3W7
— blogTO (@blogTO) January 3, 2025
Since the U of T project predates this 2024 change, the wood tower was required to seek a site-specific exemption before its 14-storey plan was greenlit.
Still, other buildings that conform to the pre-2024 12-storeys-or-fewer envelope continue to come online across the city.
Toronto is getting a generation of stunning new buildings made entirely out of woodhttps://t.co/bZJroHqwSa
— blogTO (@blogTO) November 5, 2024
Among the most recent additions to the cityscape, the T3 Bayside commercial building and Limberlost Place project at George Brown College’s Waterfront Campus are already heralding in this new boom in sustainable wood construction.
