Canoe Landing Campus, Toronto, Ontario

The new Canoe Landing Campus by ZAS Architects houses a $65 million community recreation centre, public and Catholic elementary schools and a childcare centre within one innovative campus. The masterplan development recognizes the need for a missing social and educational nexus in downtown Toronto. 

Canoe Landing Campus was conceived to provide CityPlace—one of Toronto’s most populated residential developments—with the social infrastructure it needs. The City of Toronto and two publicly funded school boards collaborated to create better facilities than could have been built individually. Community engagement, urban design excellence, and sustainability have been integrated in a partnership model, providing a new solution to address the urban intensification.

“Canoe Landing Campus has been embraced as a place that builds a real sense of ‘neighbourhood’ for this vertical community”, says Peter Duckworth-Pilkington, Principal, ZAS Architects. “We started by listening to the residents and the result is a unique architectural response not previously seen in the city.”

Extensive planning and design options were explored, ensuring the new facility seamlessly merges with the existing, widely popular Canoe Landing Park. The result is a layered site with multiple public zones and play areas. The new campus provides opportunity for shared community spaces, and programming offers expanded possibilities for all ages.

The schools share indoor play spaces, a learning commons, gymnasium and educational areas. The outdoor park and community rooms are accessible by all. Bisected by a pedestrian corridor, the two-storey community centre connects with the three-storey schools volume through an elevated bridge, forming an east-west gateway.

“The building’s design welcomes neighbours to take part in community activities, allowing for a synergistic sharing of spaces between the community centre, schools, and childcare,” says Duckworth-Pilkington.  “Now, more than ever, physical space must foster meaningful human connection, while also remaining flexible to support communities with their evolving hybrid and virtual needs for years to come,” says Duckworth-Pilkington. 

Visible from the residences above, the dynamic roof is a vital element, both from a programming and sustainability perspective. Programming includes a running track, sheltered outdoor space for yoga and a full-sized basketball court. Neighbours in the adjacent residential towers now enjoy a remarkable view, similar to that of an open-air stadium.

Embedded within the outer frame, the “active roof” is complemented with passive zones, such as allotment gardens that serve the general neighbourhood and dense vegetation to control and improve water quality. Sustainability and resiliency are prominently integrated, including the introduction of photovoltaic panels that generate 10 percent of the building’s energy, meeting the highest level of the City of Toronto’s Green Standards.

Both schools and the City’s childcare center have separate and distinct street entrances. This three-storey area of the building is organizationally stacked, with the younger students on the lower level and the older grades on the upper two levels. A central motor skills area for kindergarten students transitions vertically through the building to become a learning commons area for older students. Common areas are integrated and shared, including the two gymnasiums, learning commons, and playgrounds.

ZAS also partnered with the Ontario Science Centre (OSC) to build its first-ever imagination-based indoor play and community space. The active space fosters learning around themes of urban food production, construction, the natural environment, and scientific principles. Learning apparatuses inspire imagination and creativity, ranging from an operational tower crane to a roller coaster track, climbing wall, oversized building blocks, and communication system with video projectors.

The outdoor space for the Canoe Landing Campus was designed to provide much-needed relief and connection to nature in an intensely urban environment. Native flora and natural elements were used to reconnect the site to its biospheric location. The intersection of pedestrian thoroughfares is marked by a “Listening Ears” public art installation and low benches shaded by trees, which provide an opportunity to people-watch or catch up with neighbors. During the school day, the site is a protected learning landscape of open-ended naturalized play/didactic elements including an outdoor classroom, climbing structures, and basketball courts. After-hours, the site is opened to the community, transforming into an impromptu amphitheater, basketball courts, and pedestrian routes that become promenades on which to see and be seen.

Along the streetscape, a transparent façade leads to a large, multi-purpose community room, conceived to host events from farmers’ markets to cultural presentations. The cultural ambition of this space was further galvanized by a creative partnership with The Bentway Conservancy, an independent charity that operates, maintains, and provides public programs under Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway.

Honouring the significance of the site, Canoe Landing Campus integrates Indigenous art as part of its architecture. Anishinaabe artist Que Rock and artist Alexander Bacon, based in Toronto, were commissioned to create a 90-metre-long mural on the south wall of the Jean Lamb Public and Bishop MacDonnell Catholic schools as a visual acknowledgement and reminder of Indigenous culture and history of the land. Featuring symbols such as the medicine wheel and the symbolic wisdom of all creatures, the artwork is funded as part of the City’s StreetARToronto (StART) Partnership Program.

ZAS and CEBRA Unveil University of Toronto's New Student Hub

ZAS Architects and Denmark-based CEBRA Architecture have unveiled a new student hub at the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus (UTSC). The new facility was made to be a learning landscape that promotes agile and asynchronous education through rooms and open public spaces spanning multiple floors. Artificial terrain flows from the outside in, creating a hybrid of social and study areas to support campus life.

The project includes 21 classrooms of various sizes and configurations ranging from a 500-seat auditorium to smaller 24-seat active learning environments. "We envisioned a truly flexible environment that broke down traditional pedagogies and instead, encouraged a fluid learning experience unconfined by the walls of the classroom," says Paul Stevens, Founder, and Senior Principal at ZAS Architects. "Peer-to-peer learning is emulated in all aspects of the design." Learning spaces sit on top of one another, creating opportunities for platform and bleacher seating.

On the exterior, the framed grid that forms the building’s façade creates a design that combines "various volumes, scales, surfaces and spatial qualities. Inspired by the form of Printer’s Tray predominantly used during the 19th Century, the building’s four distinct façades mirror the tray’s compartments and represent the diversity of spaces and educational environments within." The largely transparent facade is made with mullion-free structural glass panes.

Inspired by the Highland Creek ravine that weaves through the campus, the design aims to extend green space indoors. Meanwhile two rooftop gardens also merge indoor and outdoor spaces to enhance the public realm within the building’s upper levels. "Ultimately, this project is about more than classrooms. It’s about student support, both physically and mentally," says Peter Duckworth-Pilkington, Principal at ZAS Architects. ”Dedicating a state-of-the-art, central floor to student health sends a powerful message that well-being needs are not just accommodated at the University of Toronto, they are being prioritized."

UoT is getting a breathtaking new building with a green roof and lush gardens

New plans have been submitted for a brand new building at University of Toronto Scarborough which will see glassy new lecture halls and a massive green roof on campus. 

The five-storey building, dubbed University of Scarborough IC2, is designed by CEBRA Architecture and ZAS Architects.

Plans have been submitted for U of T Scarborough's new IC2 building. Photo by CEBRA Architecture and ZAS Architects via City of Toronto submission.

Proposed for land currently being used as a parking lot for students and visitors, IC2 will contain 19 new lecture halls, classrooms, study spaces, lab rooms, and 124 faculty and staff offices. 

Plans show that the ground floor will include a cafe, and sloping areas for seating and flower beds. 

The five-storey building will accompany the first Instruction Centre built in 2011. Photo by CEBRA Architecture and ZAS Architects via City of Toronto submission.

Atop the fourth floor will be a huge green roof and gardens, with a mechanical roof and rooftop. 

Designed as a companion building to the UTSC Instructional Centre, which was designed by Diamond Schmitt Architects and completed in 2011, this new building will sit just north at the corner of Military Trail and Pan Am Drive. 

First-floor planter areas and a green roof are planned for the building. Photo by CEBRA Architecture and ZAS Architects via City of Toronto submission.

A new six-storey, 1,244-vehicle parking structure is also planned, and will connect to the new building via an underground tunnel.