001 — About

We've been building Toronto
for twenty-five years —
and we're only just getting started.

Founded in 1999, Bazis has shaped some of the most consequential addresses in the country's largest city. This is how — and why — we do it.

002 — Origin

A practice rooted in Toronto, built for the long view.

Bazis was founded with a deceptively simple thesis — that the most enduring real estate in any city is the kind that feels, after thirty years, like it has always been there.

That thesis has guided every project since. We choose corners over campaigns. We pay attention to the way the morning light meets a sidewalk, and what's across the street. We invest in materials that age well, and architects who understand that the easiest way to date a building is to chase a trend.

The result is a quietly unmistakable portfolio: One Bloor at the city's most-photographed intersection, the Emerald Park towers anchoring the north end, and a generation of mid-town addresses that locals point to without naming the developer — which is, in our experience, the highest compliment a building can earn.

003 — Selected Milestones

A chronology, abridged.

Each entry below represents either a delivered residence, a notable acquisition, or a milestone in the firm's development of how it works.

1999
The studio is founded
Bazis is established with one project, one office, and a stated commitment to building only the kind of residences its principals would themselves choose to live in.
2012
Crystal Blu, Avenue Road
A boutique residence sited steps from the Royal Ontario Museum. Among the first projects to define the firm's later signature: low suite count, oversized windows, hand-finished materials.
2015
Emerald Park delivers
Twin towers anchoring Yonge & Sheppard. The project becomes a model for transit-anchored mixed-use density across the city's north end.
2017
1 Bloor East completes
At what may be Toronto's most-photographed intersection, the building immediately becomes the corner's defining structure — a result the firm anticipated, and designed for, from day one.
2020
1 Yorkville delivers
A sixty-storey landmark in Toronto's most exclusive postal code. Among the first delivered residences in the city to feature integrated wellness amenities at the scale the building required.
2024
Six new communities announced
The firm's most active development pipeline to date — Queen & Church, 895 Lawrence, 750 Mt. Pleasant, Bayview Woods, and two flagship Yonge corridor sites.
2026
Today
Six communities in active pre-construction; one under construction; eight delivered. A growing residency program for early-career architects and a quietly substantial portfolio of completed work.

004 — Principles

What we look for in a site.

Most developers find a parcel and ask what fits. We tend to do it the other way around.

I.

Place before plan.

A site is studied like a portrait — its sightlines, its sidewalks, the rhythm of its neighbours — long before architecture is briefed.

II.

Materials that age slowly.

Limestone, bronze, oak, terrazzo — chosen for their patina at year thirty, not their photograph at year one.

III.

Held to a longer horizon.

Every project is designed twice — once for the day it opens, and once for the resident who arrives in 2055. The second design always wins.

005 — Studio

The people behind the work.

A studio of architects, planners, designers, and builders. The names below lead the firm — but the work itself is delivered by a team of seventy.

MG

Michael Gold

Founder & Principal

SK

Sarah Kowalski

Director of Design

JR

James Roy

Director of Development

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