The five jury members selected just two awards of excellence for presentation this year.
Awards of merit went to Hurontario Design Collective for building execution, and to the Confederation Parkway Bridge project in the city core, for innovation on a community and city-wide scale.
Neill Haggart, vice president for Daniels CCW Corp., the developer for One Park Tower, at 388 Prince of Wales Dr., said success for his company comes from attention to detail, workmanship and design.
"We're one of the companies that gets that," he said. "We have an emphasis on architecture and design. You have to make it buildable and make it contribute-able to the city design."
The building is modeled after the statuesque Gothic influence in New York City with gargoyles on the eighth and 32nd floors. This is now the third building by the company to win this award in Mississauga.
Award winners for excellence had to exemplify the City's design principles along with the criteria of significance to the city, significance to the community, innovation, context and execution. Winners for merit had to exemplify the city's design principles along with one or more of the criteria.
One of the judges, Matthew Blackett, said the submission, "were good. They exemplified the variety of challenges Mississauga faces as a growing city. What jury members looked for was developments that were unique but fit in the context of their surroundings," he said. Interesting architecture alone wouldn't have won without also addressing issues like pedestrian access or sustainability.
The Log Cabin, moved from near the mouth of the Credit River and refurbished and reintegrated on the Bradley Museum site in Clarkson was selected not only because it was a heritage building, but because it now is a valuable meeting place for the community, he said.
The cabin, at 1620 Orr Rd., was moved to Mississauga in 1967 where it was central to Port Credit community life. It was slated for demolition in 2002 but a community effort was able to document, dismantle move and rebuild the cabin at the Bradley Museum site.
Scott Kelly, of Log Farm Building, one of the designers of the project, said some of the difficulty with the project came from the old hardware such as old metal, and crooked and rotten wood.
Michael Spaziani, another designer for the project, said another difficulty with the cabin came from bringing the structure up to current building code standards without disrupting its historic appeal. There is now a fire escape from the second floor but it's tucked away so that it doesn't stand out.
During the event, the top locations were revealed from the My Favourite Mississauga Space project. Of the 150 submitted spaces, one for every Mississauga ward was selected based on the public voting.
dkurek@mississauga.net
