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STOCK T.C
By : Giannone Petricone Associates Inc. Architects
GRANDS PRIX DU DESIGN – 17th edition
Discipline : Interior Design
Categories : Commercial Space / Grocery Store : Platinum Winner
Categories : Commercial Space / Commercial Space 1,600 - 5,400 sq.ft. (150 - 500 sq.m.) : Gold Certification
Categories : Special Awards / Interior Design + Lighting : Silver Certification
Categories : Special Awards / Interior Design + Materials : Gold Certification
Categories : Accommodation, Restaurant & Bar / Restaurant > 1,600 sq.ft. (> 500 sq. m.) : Gold Certification
Stock T.C. restores and repurposes a historic Canadian post office to become a theatre of food, offering fine ingredients, prepared meals, vibrant dining, and event experiences. The concept began with a name: Stock implies stocked shelves, chicken stock, stockyards – essential building blocks from which to create this original, gastronomic destination.
The project aims to fashion a new hospitality design model for the repurposing of a heritage structure to not only rehabilitate its building systems, but also for the design of a new, customized occupation for its next 100 years.
Located in Toronto’s landmark Postal Station K, STOCK T.C offers an open market at grade, a 200-seat bistro on the second floor, and a third-floor garden room with circular bar and roof terrace while restoring the heritage attributes of this special 1936 Art Deco building. Its new use is imagined as a novel ‘emporium of food’ anchored by an open butchery and bakery at street level whose offerings thread their way up each floor to furnish various dining scenarios.
The design theatrically exposes the omnipresence of food preparation where theatrical prosceniums announce the thresholds between front- and back-of-house giving patrons a privileged view to the creative food process.
The ground floor open market is organized under an embracing, wool felt proscenium that aligns with the bakery and the butchery counters. The thick felt furls and lifts at the sculpted stair which in turn dramatically connects the lower open market and tavola calda hall to the slower, upper-level bar bistro.
To restore and repurpose the 1930’s structure, the perimeter walls were lined with a second skin spaced from the original shell, and from it hung shelving, custom lighting, and acoustic dampening textures. The approach extends the life of this historic site as a public interior and recalls the building’s history with ghosted vestiges: patches of colourful terrazzo floors were discovered and restored from beneath several inches of concrete, and custom light fixtures were designed to outline the exact dimensions of the original ceiling coffers. Playful design elements pay further homage to the building’s civic past, such as the second level’s bar lamp shapes inspired by envelope liners, and clerical filing cabinets cued the felt baffle ceiling. Postage stamp-patterned mosaic flooring is further echoed three-dimensionally with a series of custom wood and blown glass pendant, surface, and sconce fixtures in single-double configurations. Finally, framed by a mosaic proscenium, an orchestra of kitchens open to a dining gallery of tufted golden yellow banquettes, oak shelving and cork walls spaced from the original exterior walls to expose the historic windows and city views.
Arched portals that transport diners from a wine cellar into a light-filled event space culminates the experience on the third level. A custom-designed, thin-shell light dome defines an intimate, circular cocktail bar wrapped in slate leather emerging from glazed terracotta that gives way to a light-filled garden room. The space includes custom wicker banquettes with leather-strap canvas cushions, floor-to-ceiling windows and a woven chevron wood ceiling designed like a tree canopy to frame the dramatic Toronto skyline punctuated by custom globe light fittings that dot the room.
Collaboration
Interior Designer : Giannone Petricone Associates Inc. Architects
