BREITHAUPT BLOCK III
Kitchener, ON

The Planning Partnership worked with Martin Simmons Sweers Architects and Perimeter Developments on the design of the public realm for the third phase of the historic Breithaupt Block redevelopment in Kitchener, Ontario. The new office building includes and entry forecourt, a public plaza, and has frontages on 3 streetscapes. The public realm boasts Canadian Stanstead Grey granite paving, with matching seatwalls, curbs, and planters. Custom designed stainless steel plates that wrap architectural feature columns in the forecourt portray the history of the rubber industry in Kitchener. In the public plaza, flexible seating can be found in the form of seatwalls, wooden ‘islands’ and a sloped turf lawn that covers and obscures the vehicular entrance to the underground parking. A small lawn anchors the north plaza providing a palette for Shayne Dark’s “Caught in Motion” sculpture as well as two European Beech trees which will act as statement tree specimens many years into the future. Throughout the site, colour references the original salmon-orange soles of the Wellington boots once made on site.

The project won the Urban Design Excellence Awards at the Kitchener Great Places awards gala 2023.