Toronto Star

The entry from West 8 & du Toit Allsopp Hillier.

Waterfront revitalization is starting to look like a shore thing. The winner of a $20-million competition to redesign Toronto’s central waterfront was announced today; the blue-ribbon jury unanimously chose West 8, a Dutch-Canadian team headed by Rotterdam landscape architect Adriaan Geuze. The wide-ranging and civically ambitious proposal would remake the waterfront at every level, big and small, micro and macro. The over-arching goal is to ensure “continuous public access” to the waterfront. That includes lighting standards as well as the dismantling of the Gardiner Expressway. Though the latter goes well beyond the competition’s terms of reference, it indicates the scale of West 8’s approach. “The competition was focused on the slipheads,” Geuze points out. “But we were convinced we couldn’t find a solution without having a larger concept in mind.”