Cloud Park is a fantastical place, one that celebrates Toronto’s unique connections to the lake and the islands, that plays off Toronto’s diverse and often dramatically phenomenal climate, that imports a bit of island culture to the harbourfront. It’s your first experience of island life and all its richness and quirkiness, rather than your last experience of the bustle of the city.
CLOUD PARK VIEWPORT TO THE HARBOUR
PARK AS TERMINAL TERMINAL AS PARK
ISLAND CULTURE IN THE CITY
FOUR SEASON DESTINATION
The cloud is manifest as a dramatic new foggy gateway from Bay Street; as a full and brilliant canopy of trees illuminated by the sun and by discrete night lighting; and as an enigmatic series of misting plazas and pools that offer entirely new experiences (swimming and even floating, bubbly hot tubs!) along the harbourfront. The cloud cools when it’s hot, warms when it’s cold, and creates a dramatic but ethereal new icon at the harbor’s edge. The park strategy re-establishes clear physical and visual linkages from the city to the harbour by removing the tunnel and hill that block views to the islands from Bay Street. It opens additional views to the ferries and to the entire sweep of the harbour through clearings in the tree canopy and through positioning of various programmatic elements and viewpoints: the Water + Ice Plaza at harbour’s edge, the sloping lawns, undulating mounds, and elevated bluff of the Hills; the floating walkways, platforms and pools in the Swim Basin. It also integrates the redesigned Jack Layton Ferry Terminal into the park itself, so that the entire park becomes part of the waiting experience for the ferries, and the terminal operates as much as a park pavilion (with concessions, ice skating rentals, etc) as it does a terminal and ticketing operation. It also expands the queuing area of the park as a multi-functional plaza-grove, offering much additional space, generous and shaded seating clusters, and even a nearby adventure forest playground and Water Plaza to burn off excess energy. Otherworldly. Enigmatic. Ethereal. It’s design with a light touch, with a pragmatic eye, but with a substantial transformative impact on how we can all re-connect to the harbour and experience the lakefront anew.
A FANTASTICAL PLACE
FERRY SLIPS FROM THE HOLDING BOSQUE
ADVENTURE PLAY FOREST
KAYAKING IN THE BASIN
YONGE STREET
BAY STREET
CLOUD PARK AT DUSK
FLOATING HOT TUBS
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YORK STREET SLIP
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YONGE STREET SLIP
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FLOATING WETLAND AND FISH HABITAT POOL HOT TUB SUN DECK SWIM PLAZA SUNNING LAWN PARKING TURN-AROUND ADVENTURE PLAY FOREST PERFORMANCE SPACE DROP-OFF JACK LAYTON SCULPTURE SEATING AND WAITING AREA ELECTRONIC TICKETING FERRY TERMINAL WATER PLAZA TICKET KIOSK HOLDING BOSQUE SERVICE BUILDING SERVICE ACCESS FISH HABITAT YONGE SLIP PROMENADE
CANOPY MASTER PLAN 1:500
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VIEWS
SURFACES
MOUND EXISTING WETLAND POOLS WOOD HARDSCAPE
LIGHTING
PEDESTRIAN
VEHICULAR
PRIVATE PUBLIC SERVICE EMERGENCY
CLOUD GATE VIEW FROM BAY STREET
THE CANADIAN LANDSCAPE WITH A TWIST
THE HILLS, THE GROVE, THE PLAY FOREST
Landscape is fundamental to our Canadian identity. Light, shifting and dappled by the varied tree canopy, from evergreen and leafy forests; wild terrains of rock sculpted by epochs of ice; of water, a still mirror in the lake or rushing over rapids, falls and pools. It is these essential elements—tree, rock, and water—foundations for a national spirit; inspiration for our dreams, arts and culture.
TREE
ROCK
WATER
CLOUD
Canada’s Eastern Deciduous forest, from humble conifers to lush leafy species, is re-constituted across the entire park site, forming a diverse yet all-encompassing canopy. The grove intensifies at particular moments, creating dense and shady seating areas and ethereal ferny hillsides. The grove dissipates toward the center of the park, opening the view from Bay Street to the harbour and creating dappled shade and pockets of sunlight toward the water’s edge. The grove’s gridded organization expands and contracts to frame views and to accommodate people and bicycles and park and ferry operations. It is arranged to celebrate textures and fall color gradients from park edges to the center to create subtle but perceivable changes in spatial and atmospheric effect, and to reinforce the distinct nature of nested spaces within the park. It also gives way to clusters of existing trees that may be retained to add contrast and scale. Even the Log Benches and climbing structures of the Adventure Play Forest are designed as abstractions of the fallen log, harking to the full life cycle of Canada’s forests.
Ancient Canadian Shield rock formations, carved by glaciers long ago, are reconstituted in the continuous granite plaza beneath the trees. Igneous granite underfoot will ensure the plaza will withstand the stream of summer crowds moving to and from the ferries; the plaza expands the waiting areas into flexible spaces for other kinds of events, and includes seating groves for reading and waiting. The paving itself is adapted from the Harbourfront Promenade standard of granite sets, with maples leaves tracing the fully accessible and continuous promenade from York to Yonge Street Slips, and then fading out toward both city and water. Tilted stone slabs at the edge of the Swim Basin evoke the limestone ledges of eastern Lake Ontario’s Prince Edward County and work as warm perches for sunbathing and people-watching.
Lake Ontario is Toronto’s greatest natural resource—our primordial source of water, ecology, recreation, and economy—and a vital asset to be amplified and celebrated through the changes of our four dynamic seasons. Views of and to the harbour are created to make real and strong connections to people—and to make lasting impressions. Water in the park is made interactive and fun, through the Water + Ice Plaza (splash pool in summer, skating rink in winter); through the swimming pools and communal hot tubs floating in the lake; and through the nowprotected Basin on the park’s west edge for kayaks and canoes. The ecology of water is honoured, with floating wetlands in the Basin and under-water grasses in the Yonge Street Slip edge that provide vital habitat to native Northern Pike and related fish species.
Here’s the twist. The Cloud animates Toronto’s famous lake fogs that envelop the city, and the gentle mists that rise from the harbour on magical summer mornings. This natural phenomenon is manifest in new ways in the park. The Cloud is a marker and gateway at the newly opened Bay Street entrance to the park, enveloping the existing bridge between buildings in a dramatic year-round mist that can be experienced close up, at a distance, and even from within the bridge. Water mists and fog fountains oscillate between the gentle pools and skating ice of the Water + Ice Plaza, while bubbling hot tubs and warm swimming pools create ephemeral vapour in the Swim Basin. The Cloud brings a cooling respite in the humid summer, and a welcome warmth in frigid winter; it delivers thermal and experiential contrasts that are palpable: at once playful and stimulating, and even exotic, languorous, and sensual. The clouds accumulate to form a constantly changing, mystical, and ephemeral icon that embraces the drama of Toronto’s skyline yet offers a light touch at waters’ edge.
JACK LAYTON TERMINAL INTERIOR
SWIM PLAZA AND SWIM BASIN FROM THE BLUFF
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FERRY PAVILION TERMINAL MAIN SPACE CAFE TENANT SPACE TRASH ROOM TENANT STORAGE ROOM PUBLIC WASHROOMS PUBLIC WASHROOMS
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FERRY OPERATIONS BUILDING SECURITY ROOM WORKSHOP OFFICES KITCHENETTE WASHROOM 1 WASHROOM 2 MEN’S LOCKER ROOM WOMEN’S LOCKER ROOM STORAGE/MECH. ROOM
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SITE ELEMENTS TICKETS KIOSKS GLASS FENCE REFLECTIVE WALL MOSAIC WALL FEDERAL AREA FENCE VEHICULAR GATE
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TERMINAL PLAN 1:200
JACK LAYTON TERMINAL
MINERAL
Part extension of the Cloud Park hardscape and part homage to the beautiful frozen ice sheets drifting in the Toronto harbour in winter, the terminal’s floor combines various finishes of locally sourced stone in a pattern reminiscent of the building’s footprint.
CANOPY
A luminous and undulating ceiling comprised of maple wood slats ripples like a wave and filters light like a lush tree canopy, extending the vibrant environment of the park into the terminal. The slats’ orientation can be optimized to shade the interior in summer months and allow a maximum amount of natural light to enter the space in winter.
TRUNK
Branching out like the structure of a tree or a leaf, the soaring glu-lam timber framework of the terminal arches above the central space, creating an airy volume and allowing for large openings on all sides.
FOLIAGE
Using an array of polychromatic pearlescent tiles, the reflective cladding of the pavilion shimmers in the sunlight and captures the vibrancy of its park and city surroundings. Dynamic and colorful, the terminal’s envelope connects with the ever-changing foliage of the Canadian landscape.
Whether approaching from Queens Quay through a cooling veil of fog in summer, or from the Toronto Islands in winter, with expanses of frozen lake before you as the ferry churns the ice, the new Jack Layton Ferry Terminal will first appear as a multifaceted jewel-like pavilion. Framed by trees in various states of seasonal change, the new terminal will embrace you with its five sculpturally curved and pearlescent facades: one each for the five orientations it addresses: the city, the Holding Bosque, the ferries, the islands and the park. Sited carefully between these, the building will no longer block the views that matter, but enhance them, redefining your relationship to the lake and the Toronto Islands. As an integral moment in Cloud Park, the terminal pavilion unites the iconic with the functional, seamlessly combining the way the park and ferry operations are experienced and the way they work. Firmly rooted in the design of the landscape, the pavilion is accessible to both ferry and park users, thereby expanding and integrating the life of each. With its carefully considered siting, scale, form and amenities, the new building enhances visitors’ experiences in all seasons, and provides an important new addition to Toronto’s civic realm. The one story pavilion gently increases in height from land to water, forging strong connections between them. Its unique diagonally stepping roof will create varying perceptions from different vantage points in the park, while incorporating clerestory glazing that illuminates the interior with a special light. Upon entering the building, visitors will be rewarded with a soaring and luminous space. Beneath an undulating ceiling of maple wood slats, passengers and park users will be drawn to expansive views of the Toronto Islands beyond, unless they are drawn to the café and others amenities first. Once outside again in the park, they might notice subtly distorted reflections of themselves and their environment in the terminal’s slightly concave facades. And they will almost surely come to see their new Jack Layton Ferry Terminal and Cloud Park as both a real and fantastical place.
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE STOSS LANDSCAPE URBANISM ARCHITECTURE nARCHITECTS ARCHITECTURE ZAS ARCHITECTS STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING SIMPSON GUMPERTZ & HEGER CIVIL ENGINEERING THE MUNICIPAL INFRASTRUCTURE GROUP MARINE ENGINEERING SHOREPLAN ENGINEERING TRANSPORTATION ENGINEERING BA GROUP LIGHTING OMBRAGES - ECLAIRAGE PUBLIC ECOLOGY PLANDFORM PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT LURA COST ESTIMATING ALTUS GROUP