The Tale of Two Facades
By Misha Bereznyak
It’s rare to get a natural experiment in architecture where you have two facades next to each other that are alike in so many ways, providing a unique opportunity to see exactly how the remaining differences impact the appearance and appeal of the buildings. But luckily, Toronto did provide us exactly that, with two buildings of very similar volumes, colour, and materiality.
I became interested in these two buildings since I was passing them every day, which gave me an opportunity to see the same details again and again in different light and weather conditions.
What I find striking is that one of the two is much richer, despite being built as a warehouse, likely on a low budget with conventional methods.
I’m only going to focus on these facades as seen from Adelaide Street, even though both buildings also face other, perpendicular streets, and one of them also has a separate tower element above. I’ll also keep to the main parts of the buildings, between the base and the top, since there is enough to discuss in just those parts.
The closer building to us is the Commodore building at 317 Adelaide Street West, which was designed by Benjamin Brown and built in 1929. The further building is 30 Widmer Street, the theatre district residence, designed by BDP Quadrangle and built in 2025. There was a significant intent in the design of Widmer to relate to the Commodore, which is one of the reasons there is such strong similarity between them.
From the street, the two buildings appear to have about the same volume. They are very close in their colours and also appear to be very close in material. The Commodore has brick, while Widmer is using precast concrete with a brick pattern and colour. Both buildings have strong articulation of vertical ribs and recessed horizontal bands. Both also use only a small number of window types, and in both cases, the windows have a vertical proportion.
The design of Widmer excels in a few things. The materiality is very strong, and the colour is a little more vibrant than in the Commodore. This is especially remarkable for Toronto, where new development with brick often disappoints as in the design phases the renderings show vibrant colours while the actual building ends up being black and grey.
Widmer uses deep, narrow vertical ribs that provide a rhythm. The ribs are accompanied by recessed horizontal bands at the floor slabs that add intermediate articulation, breaking the vertical lines and providing additional richness. From afar, you only see the repeating vertical ribs, and together with the colour they create a strong magazine-y quality.
There is also a certain element of mystery to the building, because you cannot see the windows until you get relatively close since they are recessed behind the ribs.
In spite of these strong characteristics, the Commodore manages to achieve a much richer and more appealing appearance.
The overall depth of the ribs in Widmer is much greater than in the Commodore. The distance from the plane of the windows to the exterior plane of the deepest ribs appears to be about twice as large in Widmer as in the Commodore.
And yet, there is a much greater feeling of depth in the Commodore facade. There are layers and differentiation among the typical elements, creating shadow and perceived depth. The vertical ribs themselves are articulated with recesses that create a second layer; the horizontal bands are recessed from the vertical ribs and also have a relief within them. The window sills are narrow and protruding, contributing to depth and contrast. Widmer also has protruding window sills, but because they use the same material and are much thicker, they provide much less contrast.
Another reason the Widmer achieves less depth is that the large depth and the density of the vertical ribs make the other elements much less present.
Widmer repeats a single type of rib, while the Commodore sets up a hierarchy of major and minor ribs. The major ribs group the bays: three above the entrance, and combinations of two to either side.
The variation is enhanced by a pronounced corner in the Commodore; it is only slightly recessed from the rest of the facade, but that’s enough to create a feeling of division of the building mass.
The Commodore achieves a strong vertical feel. In spite of the very strong vertical ribs in Widmer, it reads like a mass because they are so deep and that they hide much of what’s behind them from many points of view. In the Commodore, the vertical orientation is strongly felt from most viewing angles.
The stronger vertical orientation in the Commodore is also in the windows. In Widmer, the windows have taller proportions and they are separated by only narrow horizontal bands, compared to wider proportions and tall horizontal bands in the Commodore. But in the Commodore, all the windows are divided into three, while in the Widmer many are not divided at all, ending up with a much wider look.
Unlike Widmer, the Commodore does not have a sense of mystery, since you can see its windows from most angles. But this difference is also what makes it feel more alive: the visibility of the windows suggests a connection to the life and human activity inside, which is very much lacking in Widmer. In contrast, at some angles, Widmer could be perceived as an object without any human presence at all.
The treatment of the base of these buildings (the bottom two levels in both cases) is also very different. In the Commodore, the base is very present, while in Widmer it is practically disappearing – it is recessed, dark, and reflective – exactly in the place where the building most interacts with people on the street.
Both buildings have their strengths and weaknesses, and by the standards of most contemporary work, Widmer does a very good job. But fundamentally, I think the Commodore’s approach is the better one: it achieves richness and interest, so there’s more to look at and more to discover.
This is remarkable for a few reasons. One is that the Commodore was built for low-status activity: it was used for warehousing and garment production, which would limit its budget and the general willingness of the developers to invest in its appearance, while Widmer was designed for a hotel and residential units. The other consideration is that, in the Commodore, the parts that face the streets are all there is, while in Widmer they are only the base, with a tower above, so this base contains only a relatively small part of the building’s floor area. The tower itself has a relatively plain design, which means that more could be invested in the podium. And yet, despite these two factors, the Commodore still achieves more.
Now, it is fair to say that some of the richness of the Commodore was possible to achieve at relatively little cost because masonry was a common construction method and skilled masons would have very little problem executing that design. But that would only be a valid comparison if Widmer had to use a flat panelized system on a low budget – but that is not the case as it was able to use precast concrete, which is much more expensive. And while it was simple for the Commodore to achieve complex articulation, it is still very simple compared to what has been done with brick in the past.
While obviously we will always be bound by budgets and by the relative costs of construction methods available to us, I think the Commodore does have a lot to teach, as an almost run-of-the-mill century-old building achieves remarkable appeal, playfulness, and depth, and does it with very simple construction.