Totten Sims Hubicki on winning team for Toronto’s Lower Don Lands

A consortium known as MVVA won the international urban design competition to design the Lower Don Lands on Toronto’s waterfront. The lands are a brownfield area of at the mouth of the Don River east of the downtown core.
The MVVA team is led by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates and includes consulting engineers Totten Sims Hubicki and Associates, Greenberg Consultants, Phillips Farevaag Smellenberg, Behnisch Architects, Limno-Tech, Applied Ecological Services, Great Eastern Ecology, Transsolar, RFR Engineering and Arup.
The winning scheme removes the river’s mouth from the Keating Channel to Lake Ontario. The idea is to reassert the river’s presence in the city and make the river an iconic identifty for the Lower Don Lands. The Keating Channel itself remains intact and will become a shopping promenade, linking neighbourhoods to the north and south. The plans will require flood protection for the Port Lands and the naturalization of the mouth of the Don River, which is already in process.
Three other international teams were involved in the competition. The judges were led by Toronto architect Bruce Kuwabara, and included Toronto structural engineer Morden Yolles. The development is being done under the auspices of the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation.