RC110 JanFeb 2024 - Magazine - Page 16
TOP100 PROJECTS
STANDING TALL
How a high-rise courthouse
was brought to life in the heart
of downtown Toronto
By Mark Cardwell
AN JUSTICE BE BETTER SERVED if it’s dispensed in the con昀椀nes of a
sparkling new building with cutting-edge technology and
security features and an architectural design that balances the
need for dignity, authority, and independence with the principles of openness, transparency, and accessibility?
Amaury Grieg certainly thinks so. And the Paris, Francebased Canadian architect believes the new $1-billion courthouse in
downtown Toronto—a decade-long building project he was intimately involved with—delivers on all counts.
“Courthouses are like mini theatrical stages,” said Grieg. “The
acoustics must be impeccable and the sight lines perfect. Superior
craftsmanship is also required because these spaces express authority
in the civic role of justice. They must express dignity of the judiciary—but that must also extend to people and provide for a digni昀椀ed
experience. Those principles and guidelines permeated every design
decision we took on the Toronto project.”
Planned and built collaboratively by EllisDon on behalf of Infrastructure Ontario and Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General,
the new Ontario Court of Justice—now the largest courthouse in the
province and the second biggest in Canada, after Calgary Courts
Centre—has been receiving rave reviews from users and stakeholders
alike since it became operational in March 2023.
Located a stone’s throw northwest of Toronto’s iconic City Hall on
a long-vacant lot on Armoury St. where a quarter-million Canadian
soldiers trained for war in a fortress-like warehouse that was torn
down 60 years ago, the new 19-storey courthouse (which includes two
underground levels) is home to 63 courtrooms, 10 conference settlement rooms and 90 judicial chambers, as well as o昀케ces for Crown
attorneys, justices of the peace and other legal and public services.
The nearly 800,000-square-foot of gross 昀氀oor area in the new high
rise also brings together the people and processes from six provincial
criminal court locations from across Toronto, as well as specialized
courts that deal with issues ranging from drugs and mental health to
youth and Indigenous people, together under one roof in the heart of
Ontario’s capital and Canada’s biggest city.
“By integrating most Ontario Court of Justice criminal proceedings
into one courthouse, we’re supporting equal access to court services
that are currently dispersed across multiple court locations,” Ontario
Attorney General Doug Downey said at the building’s o昀케cial opening in Feb. 2023.
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“The consolidation of resources will permit centralized criminal case management, a greater concentration of expertise, and the
e昀昀ective and e昀케cient scheduling of judges, attorneys, court sta昀昀 and
interpreters to support the timely processing of criminal matters.”
The opening marked the end of a process that began when Ontario
Premier Kathleen Wynne’s minority Liberal government announced
in its May 2014 budget, that a new Toronto courthouse would be built
through IO to “address capacity pressures in aging facilities” and to
save more than $700 million over 30 years by consolidating operations from several third-party leased spaces.
In the request for quali昀椀cations that was sent out in April 2016—
followed by a request for proposals in October of the same year—IO
set the creation of a barrier-free, functional facility that would allow
visitors and occupants to travel throughout the building—albeit in
separate secure areas, much like an airport—as a key priority for the
new Toronto courthouse project.
IO also began preparing the building site by carrying out an archeological excavation on behalf of the Ministry of the Attorney General.
Dubbed the Armoury Street Dig, it uncovered thousands of artifacts
dating back to pre-armoury days in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when the site was home to succeeding waves of European and
African American immigrants, including refugee slaves who came to
Canada via the Underground Railway.
As work to unearth the site’s past was going on, so too were e昀昀orts
aimed at creating a vision for its future by the handful of world-class
construction companies and consortiums that could dream of landing
such a prestigious building project.
RENEWCANADA.NET
INFRASTRUCTURE ONTARIO
Mark Cardwell is a
freelance writer based in
the Quebec City region.
Planned and built by EllisDon on behalf of Infrastructure Ontario and Ontario’s Ministry
of the Attorney General, the new Ontario Court of Justice is the largest courthouse in
the province and the second biggest in Canada.
