From The Globe and Mail — Queens Quay waterfront redesign thoughtful, modern urbanism

ALEX BOZIKOVIC The mason was chipping away the granite by the inch: Picking up each small block, studying its lines, knocking off a facet before laying it firmly in place. Then he moved on to the next 10-centimetre hunk of pink stone, as he and his colleagues filled in the face of Queens Quay.

“This is how it is done,” said landscape architect Jelle Therry of the firm West 8, “in very small ways, but very carefully and with great craft.” Mr. Therry was giving me a hard-hat tour of the street, which reopens this week after a three-year renovation by West 8 and Toronto’s DTAH that is largely complete.

This 1.7-kilometre project for Waterfront Toronto is a street, but that’s not a simple thing. It has been shaped with real craft and with clear thinking about materials, traffic, climate, crowd psychology and the culture of the city. The Queens Quay project will be an example of thoughtful 21st-century urbanism. Read more: Queens Quay revealed: Why the waterfront redesign is thoughtful, modern urbanism at its best - The Globe and Mail