The Burnside Building is a relatively small office building of eleven floors: a nine-storey tower on top of a two-storey podium.

The podium, which is a very comfortable and pedestrian scale for this area of downtown, is clad in granite, and houses various retailers. The tower portion features unique precast panels that have a narrow, but vertically elongated profile, in between which sits a small window. The precast panels have the appearance of an outward facing “C” channel which add the effect of verticality to the building’s exterior.

The building was reclad in 2019 into a glass box, even at the podium level, no significant changes were made to the form of the building except for the enlarging of the entrance on Slater St.