Bloor Street towers vie to be the One

Rendering of The One, tower on the southwest corner of Yonge and Bloor Streets, Toronto. Foster & Partners/CoreArchitects.

Among the new crop of very tall residential towers being built outside of the core in mid-town Toronto are two on each side of Yonge Street at Bloor Street, forming a giant gateway close to the Yorkville shopping area.
Confusingly both towers have “One” in their names.
On the southwest corner (location of the historic, demolished Stollery store) is the site for “The One.” At 84 storeys and 340 metres high, this tower will be the highest building in Canada.  The U.K. firm Foster & Partners together with CORE Architects of Toronto are the architects, with Read Jones Christoffersen structural engineers,  MCW  mechanical-electrical engineers, and Cole Engineering as civil engineers. Mizrahi is the developer. Construction is due to start in June.The One  has a 31-sq.m floor plate, which gives it a slender profile and a base designed as a ring of “mega-piers” to provide column-free space for the retail streetfront spaces. It will also have a 9.6-m wide entrance courtyard off Bloor Street and an underground concourse. The exterior includes fritted glass designed to discourage bird collisions,  overhangs and “winter garden” balconies.
On the southeast corner is “One Bloor,” (formerly “One Bloor East”). It is 75 storeys and already rising high. It has huge glass walls a facing the busy street corner, long curvilinear vertical components above, including a glass strip and deep concrete balconies. Hariri Pontarini are the architects for Great Gulf, the developer; Jablonsky Ast are structural engineers and Able Engineers are doing the mechanical-electrical design.
A half a block away, above Holt Renfrew at 50 Bloor Street West, another 71-storey condominium tower has been proposed.