The optics of it all

From the foot of Yonge Street, the short trip to Sidewalk Toronto’s central office captures a city in transformation. All around the Quayside district, surface parking and vacant lots are rapidly giving way to development as construction reinvents the lakefront with new housing, offices and schools. But past the cranes and concrete, the formerly nondescript, now brightly coloured building at 307 Lake Shore Boulevard East envisions another kind of city.

Inside, an ambitious concept