As the city of Toronto and Greater Toronto Area (GTA) continue to grow and thrive, transit and transit-oriented solutions need to keep pace.
Mobility has long been a challenge for many Torontonians, so we caught up with Gabriel Colombani, our Senior Architect and Design Manager for Ontario, Canada responsible for the design and development of many of the city’s transit projects, to get a valuable an insight into the conceptualization and design inspiration behind our work in the city; the challenges we’re looking to solve and the impact it will have on improving the mobility of all those who, live, work, study and visit Toronto.
Gabriel has more than 22 years of experience in the conceptualization, design and execution of major residential, commercial, institutional, parking and transit projects, including light rail, subways and airports.
"I act as a lead designer and design integrator, bringing together architects, structural and service engineers, along with specialist designers and BIM, to create coordinated designs for many of the city and region’s transit projects. My designs are used for the construction, but increasingly important is the need for them to support the ongoing operational maintenance once complete.
I work closely with our clients to understand the bottom line of their challenges. That way I can make sure we achieve design solutions that are sustainable over time and create flexible and customized schemes of work in collaboration. I also lead our transit business development team, identifying ways we can support our clients with future opportunities, taking a holistic and citywide view of developments to drive connectivity.
We’re currently designing the Transit Control Facility for the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC). This new facility will centralize all the operations of the subway, Light Rail Transit (LRT) and bus lines across the city that we have also developed. The facility is situated right in the urban heart of the city, so we’re sensitive in the design to the history and heritage of the building. We’re also deploying industry best practices in the reduction of energy consumption and carbon emissions to reduce the environmental impact of the project on the city.
One of the biggest challenges we’re facing in the transit and transportation sector is recruiting enough skilled, technical transit professionals to enable us to satisfy the demand and need for increased infrastructure in the region. That’s why we’re always investing in the training and development of our teams through initiatives like the Technical Academy, our Global Rotation Program and Innovation Pathway to provide ongoing opportunities to learn and grow".