Completed in 1994, this new complex is the first permanent home for students enrolled at Innis College, situated directly opposite on the west side of St George Street. The form and silhouette of the residence was generated by what the architect Eberhard Zeidler has described as “a new fractal geometry.” The predominant factor that determined the forms was the existing array of historic Victorian and Edwardian houses that line the street to the north and to the south. To reduce the apparent scale of this six-storey complex and break down the bulky form, the architects designed the facade as four seemingly separate buildings whose massing is more sympathetic to the smaller domestic scale of the adjacent houses. Familiar Toronto building materials such as reddish-brown brick, light grey concrete, and grey roofing materials were used in a convincing manner to allude to the domestic communal “house” form of nearby student accommodation such as Devonshire House, Whitney Hall, and the Sir Daniel Wilson Residence. The architects purposely sought to introduce a complexity of architectural elements (as they had done in the adjacent Rotman School of Management to the south completed in 1995) that combine a variety of window expressions and a tripartite stacking of materials (stone base, brick body, and gable).

The project contains 46 four-bedroom, 28 five-bedroom, and 8 two-bedroom apartment-style suites arranged in a U-shaped configuration around an outdoor court. Interior corridors were arranged so that students would pass through common areas or “living rooms” that are visible from the street and the court. The common areas create a sense of home and community within each grouping of rooms.

Robert G. Hill