Sensitive Flesh music center Toronto


Mirko Daneluzzo
Year: 2010


The music center is located on the waterfront in Toronto, an evident part of the city’s skyline, representing the vibrant and growing music scene. The project uses the preexisting Canada Malting Silos industrial building to convert it into the contemporary form of a cultural beacon.

North Gate

The project is defined by a series of layers that have different performative qualities embedded, driven by internal and external forces that modify the character of the building as a person flows seamlessly through the space and experiences the curated environment of the building.


The layer system generates a collection of musical experiences, from the strong typology of the theaters characterized by a clean geometry, to the eroded geometry that conforms the spaces in-between, research and education institutions, and knits the project into the surrounding context.



The place suggests a unique script for design: Toronto is characterized by severe winters and hot summers. The external layer works as a protective skin in winter thanks the slow formation of an artificial ice barrier in between the fissures, and wind catchers to allows a natural ventilation in summer.
The eroded geometry deals with the aesthetic idea of "matte": matte is the finishing of dull and flat, without a shine on the surfaces. Matte stores the time’s patina, it absorbs the context, it becomes the context.

A matter of affection - an aditus for contamination: The body (the substance and the form) of the building becomes the tool to be affected and to affect: Its cavities as sensitive parts of the building.
“Wrinkle tissue”: time, memory, matter (molding character), geometry (set of rules), form.






Wrinkle tissue













Roof Detail