PUG Awards Best of the Best
Five Hundred Wellington wins “Best of the Best”
To mark the final year of the PUG Awards, a special award was given out which selected the best overall winner from the past ten years of residential PUG winners. The official press release for the 2014 PUG Awards can be read here.
Located on historic Wellington Street in downtown Toronto, Wellington Street was once a grand avenue with its hallmark public squares at each end, but industrialization saw much of the area converted to warehouses given its proximity to the nearby railway lands. The area however has recently experienced a development boom with businesses and residential properties reclaiming this once warehouse neighbourhood as it evolves into a model mixed-use community.
The challenge was to insert a very high-quality, exclusive condominium on a narrow, long infill site in a predominant warehouse district. The resulting design created a ten storey building with only seventeen suites on a compact development 19m wide by 65m deep.
Conceived and designed to fill a high-end niche in the downtown King West District, these ultra-luxurious penthouse-sized loft suites provide for half-floor suites and full-floor units, served by separate elevators that enter directly into the suites, each with a cabana terrace.
A major design directive was to provide substantial outdoor living spaces on terraces and decks, with floor to ceiling glazing where possible. The interior layouts are spacious and uncluttered and emphasize the feeling of a “luxury of space”. Five Hundred Wellington features high-end finishes and kitchens, gas fireplaces, and additional terrace amenities and services.
The exterior materials palette was kept simple and elegant, the brick was a charcoal iron spot, the soffits were Ipe, black zinc was used as flashings and metal panels, balcony guardrails were frameless, tempered glass and the exterior glazing was flush, silicon glazed where applicable.
The overall effect is a condo that engages the street with a playful façade on Wellington and that also fits in well with the massing and materials of the warehouse district.
