Four Seasons Hotel and Private Residences Toronto Shines With Viracon Glass

OWATONNA, MN – With a five-star sleek and stunning façade, fabricated with Viracon glass, the new Four Seasons Hotel and Private Residences Toronto is the newest city landmark.The $500 million luxury hotel-condo complex stands 55 stories tall and joins the Toronto skyline. The Four Seasons flagship building houses 259 hotel rooms and 210 high-end condos, 110 in a neighboring 26-story east residential tower.

The Four Seasons Hotel and Private Residences Toronto greets guests and residents with an impressive glass curtainwall façade, allowing magnificent city views from every room. Located on the southwest corner of the site, the south tower contains hotel rooms in the lower portion with residential suites above. The residential suites on both towers feature open corners with terraces, which allows the building to appear more slender as the eye moves up.

The glass selection for the towers was a crucial part of the project. Located in the Yorkville area of Toronto, an area without many tall buildings, it was important to the architect that the Four Seasons fit the neighborhood and blend with the sky. The architect and his team spent a significant amount of time exploring different types of glass that would help them achieve the look they wanted. They even produced a full-scale mock-up of the façade and hoisted it on a crane to see how the glass would appear against the sky at the 10^th story level, which ultimately lead them to specifying VRE1-59 and VE1-2M from Viracon.

“With high-rises, it is hard to get a true picture on the ground of how the glass will look installed,” explains Peter Clewes, partner at architectsAlliance, the project’s architect. “The mock-up helped us select the right Low-E coatings for the performance and aesthetic we wanted. The blue-gray coloration allows the Four Seasons to blend into the sky, and reflect changing light and weather conditions year-round -- very appropriate, considering the name of the project.”

An eight-story extension on the south hotel-condo tower houses the ballroom, conference rooms, fitness center and other amenities. This amenities podium features glass panels with varying patterns of frit in a dotted line pattern to give the structure a fine transparency.

The project utilized approximately 390,000 square-feet of Viracon glass to provide a balance between light transmission and solar energy control. VRE1-59 is a radiant Low-E insulating glass that provides 50% visible light transmittance. VE1-2M is a Low-E insulating glass that provides 68% visible light transmittance.

“We choose to work with Viracon because of their experience in commercial projects and we could count on them to provide readily available, high-performing and quality products without delay,” says Clewes.

The Four Seasons Hotel and Private Residences Toronto opened in October 2012. The project team included architects architectsAlliance, Toronto, and Page + Steele, Toronto, general contractor Menkes Developments Inc., Toronto, and glazing contractors Ferguson-Neudorf Glass, Inc., Beamsville, Ontario and Toro Glasswall, Inc., Concord, Ontario.