Victory Silo
Victory Soya Mills operated near Toronto Harbor from 1940 to 1991. Once a bustling hub of activity, the site eventually fell into disuse, and the only remaining structure, a 35-meter-tall silo, was added to Toronto’s Heritage Register in 2004. Recognizing the waterside location’s potential to help revitalize the harbor area and integrate it with the rest of the city, Waterfront Toronto—a partnership between the city of Toronto, the province of Ontario, and the Canadian government—held a design competition to explore redevelopment strategies for the Victory Silo and the surrounding site.
Our Denmark studio, Schmidt Hammer Lassen, submitted the winning entry, which imagines Victory Silo as a mixed-use development that clusters commercial enterprises, public spaces, and residential buildings in and around the iconic structure. Instead of preserving the silo as a passive historical monument, we envisioned it as a lively landmark that links the past with the present and anchors the new neighborhood in its historical context.
Along with the silo, three new mixed-use buildings provide residential, commercial, and retail offerings connected by parks, streets, and plazas. By blending these functions with a publicly accessible courtyard and other green spaces, we created a dynamic urban environment that reactivates the waterfront and connects it to the neighborhood and the city beyond.
We preserved the original cylindrical concrete structure and topped it with a new, relatively lightweight mass timber addition that will be visible from a distance, over the tops of other new construction. The concave curves of the addition artfully reflect the silo’s sequence of cylinders and beckon.
Toronto’s official motto, “Diversity, Our Strength,” reflects its multicultural mindset and inspired our approach to the site’s development. Toronto has welcomed more than 100,000 immigrants every year for the past 20 years, making it the fastest growing city in North America and one of the world’s most culturally diverse. Tapping into the rejuvenation of the entire harbor area, Victory Silo creates a new neighborhood that integrates with and enhances the city’s existing tapestry of cultures and communities.
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