Impossible Toronto makes imagined architecture visible, and the rules that stand in its way legible, for a city deciding what it wants to become.

Imagination is one of architecture’s responsibilities. Each study in this research program commissions architects to imagine a building type that Toronto’s rules do not yet provide for. It asks two questions. What would it look like here, drawn in detail and tailored to our streets? And which rules, exactly, stand in its way? The drawings answer the first. The Matrix of Impossibilities answers the second: it traces each obstacle to the rule behind it, from zoning and the building code to elevator and waste standards, and names the rules, not yet written, that would allow the building.

On the Courtyard, by Studio VAARO and Gabriel Fain Architects, was published in 2025. It learns from the European block, with its shared garden at the quiet centre. On the Side Street, its companion, will be published in early 2027. It builds on what Toronto already has: wide, leafy residential streets. The two studies disagree, and each lays out its case in full, for you to judge. Each ends with a punch list of the levers, if you find yourself persuaded.

Impossible Toronto: On the Courtyard

The first study in Impossible Toronto, by Studio VAARO and Gabriel Fain Architects, draws a courtyard block onto typical Toronto streets: a green centre, with dense, elegant buildings defining the edges. Visualization by Aron Lorincz Ateliers.

Impossible Toronto: On the Side Street

Office Ou and Odami turn Toronto’s side streets into linear parks lined with four-storey flats, in the second Impossible Toronto study. Visualization by Office In Search Of.