SUGAR BEACH
TORONTO (ONTARIO), CANADA

SUGAR BEACH

TORONTO (ONTARIO), CANADA

Project
An urban beach next to the Redpath Sugar Factory

Client
WATERFRONT Toronto

Year
2008-2010

Status
Built

Sugar Beach is the second urban beach proposed for Toronto’s downtown waterfront, and the latest addition to the amber necklace of Toronto’s lakefront beachscape. It is a sequel to HtO, the waterfront’s first beach park. The proposal for Jarvis Slip playfully recomposes other signature elements of the city, with Toronto playing the role as its own design precedent. The omnipresent horizon of the lake and adjacent industrial buildings recalls Georges Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières (1884). Tinted by sugar spray carried on westerly breezes from the neighboring Redpath Sugar Factory, a series of hard rock candies with colored stripes and dozens of pink umbrellas are scattered across a sandy wedge of beach along the Jarvis Slip. Integrating the future Waterfront Promenade, along with a plaza for programmed and unprogrammed events, the design playfully adopts some of the most enduring elements from Toronto’s emerging landscape identity—beaches, bedrock, trees, and water—as well as the urban horizon and a trace of the city’s past industrial mood.

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Partnership
The Planning Partnership, Halsall Associates Limited, The Municipal Infrastructure Group, Dillon Consulting Limited, Éclairage Public, Andrew Jones Design

Surface
8500 m2 (2 acres)

Prizes

Toronto Urban Design Awards Award of Excellence - Large Places and Neighbourhood Designs – Canada’s Sugar Beach – Toronto, Ontario

Canadian Society of Landscape Architects
Regional Honour – Canada Sugar Beach, Toronto, Ontario

Credits
Row 1 / Photo, Nicola Betts, July 2010
Row 2 / Plan, CC+A, January 2010
Row 3 / Photo, Nicola Betts, July 2010
Row 4 / Photos, v, July 2010
Row 5 / Photo, Nicola Betts, July 2010
Row 6 / Photo, Nicola Betts, July 2010
Row 7 / Photos, CC+A, July 2010
Row 8 / Photo, CC+A, July 2010
Row 9 / Photos, Nicola Betts, July 2010
Row 10 / Photos, Nicola Betts, July 2010
Row 11 / Photo, Nicola Betts, WaterFront Toronto, July 2010; Photos, CC+A, July 2010
Row 12 / Photo, Miles Storey
Row 13 / Photo, Nicola Betts, July 2010; Photo, CC+A, July 2010
Row 14 / Photo, CC+A, July 2010
Row 15 / Photos, Eastern Construction
Row 16 / Photo, Jesse Jackson, 2010
Row 17 / Photo, Badger416 on Flickr
Row 18 / John Ferri (www.johnferri.com)
Row 19 / Photo, Martyn Weir
Row 20 / Photo, Nicola Betts, July 2010
Row 21 / Photos, Nicola Betts, July 2010
Row 22 / Rock, St-Alexis-des-Monts, Québec, CC+A, September 2009;
Rock extraction, St-Alexis-des-Monts, Québec, CC+A, November 2009;
Rock assembly, Jarvis Slip, Ontario, CC+A, January 2010
Row 23 / Perspective, CC+A, Janvier 2009
Row 24 / Vignette - Umbrella, CC+A, March 2010;
Vignette - Girl on the rock, March 2010;
Vignette - Muskoka chair, CC+A, March 2010;
Vignette - Toe rail, CC+A, January 2008;
Vignette - Beach house, CC+A, January 2008;
Vignette - Willow, CC+A, January 2008
Row 25 / Perspective, CC+A, january 2009
Row 26 / Perspective, CC+A, March 2010
Row 27 / Photomontage, CC+A, March 2010; Christmas card, CC+A, December 2008
Row 28 / Photomontage, CC+A, March 2010
Row 29 / Plan, CC+A, January 2008;
An Afternoon at la Grande Jatte, Georges Seurat, 1884-1886;
Bathing at Asnières, Georges Seurat, 1884;
The Seine at la Grande Jatte, Georges Seurat, c.1887
Row 30 / East Bayfront Precinct Plan, CC+A, January 2008;
Photo of Redpath Sugar, WaterFront Toronto, December 2007;
Candy reference, source unknown