Aedas R&D

Toronto York Spadina also known as Highway 407 Station is a key base in Toronto’s “Transit City 2050” Masterplan to reducing inner city congestion by providing a strategic interchange between private car park and ride, subway, express guided bus transit way and local bus services adjacent Highway 407. The scope required a low-maintenance, low-energy terminal with capacity for expansion within a vision for the development of the city. Key concepts of the scheme include minimising passenger circulation distances by anchoring the transit nodes around a central retail concourse, providing column free spaces for simplified way-finding and providing direct sunlight deep into the station and subway platform reducing the need for artificial light.

Within the available developable area and adjacent to a protected wildlife area design of the station in terms of circulation, natural daylight and structural constraints. The complexity of the interchange between the car park and the transportation required explicit yet dynamic control over the station geometry in response to structural, performance and regulatory constraints. These included (but were not limited to) the number of bus stops within the station, public and private zones, overshadowing of the roof to reduce solar gain, structural limitations of cantilevers and roof lights with regard to snow loads and the break of up thermal zones within the space.