Yes Chef! Campaign

About the project from the architects

Two new projects at the Chef School will energize and project George Brown College as a centre of culinary excellence. The transparency of the architecture will open up two new windows into the life and excitement of the Chef School. Through their geography and visual connectivity from King Street to Adelaide Street they will effectively initiate Frederick Street as a central thoroughfare of the expanding St. James Campus.

The 300 Adelaide Street East project, an addition, will create a twin, glassy transparency for the Chef School. In a neighborhood of solid, almost impenetrable masonry buildings, a glass curtain wall is proposed to provide views into the expanded school and to culinary classes being conducted in new kitchen labs located at sidewalk level on Adelaide Street.

The sleek stainless steel kitchen islands and exhaust hoods, engines of food production, will shimmer like Lamborghinis in an automobile showroom.

Beyond the new addition lies an array of interior renovations that include infilling of a new floor in the interior atrium at ground floor level and the addition of a spectacular new meeting room suspended over the atrium at third floor level. The interior alterations will transform the spatial qualities of the school by opening up a large central area of the ground floor for student use and for special events. The student cafe will be elevated from the lower level to the second floor where from a central location it will enjoy increased daylight in the atrium and views over the central area of the ground floor.

The 215 King Street East project will preserve and adapt a listed heritage building and convert it to three upper floors of classrooms and the Chef School student restaurant at street and lower levels. The architectural adaptation respects the brick structure built in 1917 by preserving its finest qualities and uses a transparent, modern architectural language to express the exterior and interior of the new restaurant.

A new super scaled window will be installed as a layer of glass in front of the existing brick on both the King and Frederick facades – marking the restaurant and its glass canopied entrance at the prominent corner. A dramatic chef-centred identity for the restaurant will be achieved by locating and displaying the open kitchen and food preparation area in the corner window and entrance way. By interlocking dining room and kitchen, the concept of ‘Chef’s Table’ will be expanded to the scale of the whole restaurant.