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PLANT Architect Inc.

PLANT Architect Inc.

Toronto, ON, CA

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Junction Craft Brewing wins Architectural Conservancy Ontario Heritage Award

By PamelaYoungPLANT
Oct 22, '18 4:10 PM EST
Taproom, Junction Craft Brewing (Photo: Steven Evans Photography)
Taproom, Junction Craft Brewing (Photo: Steven Evans Photography)

On October 11, 2018, Architectural Conservancy Ontario (ACO) awarded the Paul Oberman Award for Adaptive Reuse (Corporate) to PLANT Architect Inc.'s transformation of a 1930s former industrial incinerator into the new home of Junction Craft Brewing. ACO states that this award, named for the late founder of Toronto-based Woodcliffe Landmark Properties, "recognizes those responsible for projects that highlight and incorporate significant heritage structures in fitting and imaginative ways, thereby conserving them for future use and enjoyment."

Constructed in 1934 in Toronto's west-end Stockyards, the building once known as "the Symes Road Destructor" served originally as an incinerator and later as a wast transfer facility, before being decommissioned in 1996. For more than a decade, this massive, elegantly detailed building lapsed into dereliction. It was then acquired by a developer in 2012, and has now been fully renovated.

Junction Craft Brewing's 1,358-m2 space, which opened in April 2018, contains a brewery, taproom, retail space, and office space. Designed to do double duty as an events venue, the brewery has hosted gatherings ranging from rock concerts to catered private parties. (It has hosted more than 30 weddings, including the recent nuptials of a PLANT team member.) "We wanted to keep the space as raw and flexible as possible," says PLANT Partner-in-Charge Lisa Rapoport. "We left the marks of time and successive alterations on the interior walls, and aimed to create a space that would fully support the brewery's operations while also being a great place to meet a few friends for a drink – or hold a large social gathering."

"The redesign and refurbishment of the Symes Road Destructor by Junction Craft Brewing and PLANT Architect Inc. is an impressive example of the adaptive reuse of a venerable heritage building by a business," ACO states. "Their work retained the stunning Art Deco design and industrial character of the site, while repurposing it for a technically demanding manufacturing system. They have not only saved but revitalized one of the few remaining buildings from the industrial enclave once critical to the Stockyards area of the Junction."

The other 2018 nominees in the Corporate category for ACO's Paul Oberman Award were One Spadina Crescent/The Daniels Faculty of Architecture - University of Toronto (by NADAAA with ERA Architects), and several Hamilton, Ontario, projects by Core Urban Inc., a property development firm specializing in adaptive reuse.