Landmark Projects

CBC: Canadian Broadcasting Centre // Toronto

The CBC Broadcast Centre consists of 13 storeys located on a city block in downtown Toronto bounded by Wellington, John, Front, and Simcoe streets. Completed in 1992, the facility entered into service for CBC in 1993 after an extensive technology fit-out consisting of more than 50,000 linear feet of conduit and cable tray and 1,600-km of broadcast cabling.

The facility was designed to be future-forward in all aspects with architectural, structural, and mechanical/electrical infrastructural incorporating the emergent concepts that paved the way for Digital HDTV, Digital Radio Broadcast, and IT platforms such as internet-based Multimedia Cloud services. At the time, the Broadcast Centre was considered to be the most advanced facility in the world. The building contains 3 radio studios, 19 radio production studios, 3 television studios, 2 local television studios, 2 all purpose studios, and 1 national news studio. The CBC Museum is located on the first floor of the building.

The structure sits atop 3,000 massive hard-rubber pads to reduce the transmission of unwanted noise and vibrations from the surrounding exterior environment, and to this end, all studios are located in the core of the building. Operational redundancy is achieved via four 1250-kilowatt Cummins generators to provide power to critical loads. The atrium measures 10-storeys in height. An interesting aspect of the building is the wide variety of interior finishes used to assist in radio production. For example, the Radio Drama Studio contains three types of flooring (wood, concrete, marble), two stairs (spiral and straight) with two types of treads, a functioning kitchen adjacent to a functioning shower, and a panel furnished with a number of doors of varying materials; all these elements are utilized as natural/analog sound effects to enhance radio production.

Project Details:

Cadillac Fairview // B+H Architects
$330M » 1,700,000 sq ft » 1992