The Nova Urban Towns is a four-storey back-to-back townhouse development in Toronto, Ontario, that helps to stitch together a struggling pocket of the city. The project is intentionally designed with a heavy street presence, using communal entrances to generate a hive of pedestrian activity and foster a genuine sense of connection and community where the buildings meet the sidewalk. Across its 42 residential units, set over an underground garage, the design breaks down its overall mass through the rhythm of alternating façade materials—a device that both animates the streetscape and scales the building into appropriately proportioned residential increments. Private rooftop terraces extend each home into the open air, providing inviting outdoor spaces while enriching the overall composition. Completed in 2021, Nova Urban Towns demonstrates how a modest back-to-back typology, handled with care, can knit a formerly overlooked pocket of the city back into its surrounding neighbourhood.
Stitching a forgotten pocket back into the city.
