The 'skyscraper village' in Vaughan, Ont.Dave LeBlanc/The Globe and Mail
Stand at the corner of Maplecrete Road and Highway 7.
Okay, you there? Now close your eyes and point yourself south. While the St. Marys CBM ready-mix concrete plant is no longer on the corner, what you see is mostly sky, since every building is a sprawling, low-rise, industrial affair: autobody shops, machine shops, tire stores, warehouses, factories and HVAC suppliers.
Now spin around and look north. Bam! But how to describe it? It’s like some sort of ‘skyscraper village’ has popped up. An oxymoron, yes, but isn’t it like when you’ve been driving on a long, empty road and then, suddenly, a bustling little village seems to appear out of nowhere? But this isn’t nowhere – it’s Vaughan Metropolitan Centre.
“South of Highway 7 was historically not VMC,” says architect Richard Witt of BDP Quadrangle, “so that’s why none of this has seen much development. … So when the [TTC] subway got extended, it was getting extended to Walmart, so [the city] said ‘this is not good enough, what we need is a metropolitan centre, which is going to be high density.’”
The two of us are standing on the 48th floor of the partially occupied, 60-storey CG Tower (by Cortel Group), the lone brick-clad building in a sea of glassy towers, peering down at the ant-scape below. About 500 metres to the west is the armadillo-shaped TTC station (designed by Grimshaw and opened in 2017). But, save for Edgeley Pond and Park, there isn’t much between us, so, for now, this feels like an odd, vertical village. But, in a decade, things will fill out considerably.
“Have you ever seen the plan for the VMC? This is all going to be 40-storeys plus – a high-density neighbourhood,” says Mr. Witt.
He’s right, and it’s going to happen south of the highway as well. In October, 2024, Anthony Teles, reporting for urbantoronto.ca, described a plan by Toromont Industries to build “17 towers ranging in height from 43 to a striking 74 storeys” on an 11-hectare site west of Jane Street directly south of the subway station. And while there’s still hope that a few of those WZMH-designed towers might feature cladding more innovative and interesting than glass, right now Mr. Witt’s stepped back, slightly cantilevered brick beauty is the belle of this architectural ball.
“So it really comes down to an idea of home and what that is,” says Mr. Witt as we take the elevator to see a unit on the 55th floor with a wide terrace. “When you’re here, you come up close to that material. … You’re not faced with a scaleless material, you get a sense of a traditional home, which is brick.”
And, predictably, we both take off our gloves to touch it, since it’s got a nice purplish, almost iridescent sheen peppered with iron spots. And the windows are lovely as well: the black metal frames project out from the brick which, on sunny days, will create interesting shadow play.
All so lovely, but who, the hard-core Torontonian might ask, would ever want to live way up here? Well, while the ballet or the Blue Jays will likely always be down there, daily life – babies, groceries and even jobs – are moving to different “nodes.” It’s called the “Polycentric City,” and, writes Aleksandar Sasha Zeljic, it’s “the future.”
“In this model, several key districts can co-exist and offer something slightly different for the urban inhabitant, while also functioning like a self-contained ‘city within a city,’” he continues at Gensler.com. “When these city districts are built around well-planned transit infrastructure, ample public space, and mixed-use developments for work, housing, and leisure, they … create a sustainable future for the millions who will move into cities over the coming decades.”
According to the City of Vaughan website, the current population of 344,412 will balloon to more than 570,000 by 2051; that’s about the size of Hamilton.
Walking through the unoccupied units – some of them days away from completion while others still sport raw concrete walls – or the deep hole that will be the swimming pool, it’s fun to think about the folks who will willingly choose to purchase condominiums here. Will they be able to walk to work? Will their favourite coffee shop look out onto the whizzing traffic along Hwy. 7? And will they be proud of their distinctive brick tower?
Mario Cortellucci, who came to Canada in 1962 from rural Italy and worked in a car wash and pizza shop until founding Cortelli Construction in 1971 with his brother, did ask BDP Quadrangle for a building “like nothing that’s ever been done before,” remembers Mr. Witt. Or maybe it was Mr. Cortellucci’s son, Peter, but, either way, the architect produced a “tall building typological study” which consisted of 26 tiny, 3D-printed skyscrapers such as “the shift” or “the taper” for the Cortel Group to ruminate over. Mr. Witt, it should be noted, is chairman of the Canadian chapter of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH).
After talking through the pros and cons of each type, the cost of building and the marketability of the units, the team settled on the ziggy-zaggy, sculptural skyscraper in brick that’s touching the clouds over Vaughan today.
“I think a lot of people are used to big glass boxes,” Mr. Witt finishes. “What people really tell me a lot … is it looks like a New York building; a really strong, robust, confident tower for a big city.”
A big city just beginning to find its feet with big-sized architecture. But stand on the corner of Maplecrete and Hwy. 7 in 10 years, and it’ll be run-of-the-mill.