TUDA Hat Trick! Three of Our Projects Win 2021 Toronto Urban Design Awards

Seneca College – Centre for Innovation Technology and Entrepreneurship

Award of Excellence, Public Buildings in Context Category

The Centre for Innovation Technology and Entrepreneurship (CITE) showcases Seneca’s commitment to entrepreneurial innovation as well as a sustainable vision for the future inspired by an Indigenous worldview. The design, which evolved through extensive consultation with Seneca’s executive leadership, academic stakeholders and the Indigenous Education Council, brings together applied research, commercialization, specialized training and an entrepreneurial incubator for both students and industry leaders.

The building and landscape design were conceived as an accessible, permeable and highly integrated system to reconnect the campus to the city. The result is an active landscape that simultaneously works to capture and control storm water, reduce the urban heat island effect, promote biodiversity, and support human health. The Innovation Gallery, at the core of the building, is a highly adaptable space for student engagement, display and events that creates a new, vibrant presence for the College on Toronto’s busy Finch Avenue corridor.

CITE works in harmony with surrounding topography and natural systems to increase the sustainability and resiliency of the entire campus. The building and landscape design were conceived as an accessible, permeable, and highly integrated system to reconnect the campus to its disparate parts and to the City. The result is an active landscape that simultaneously works to capture and control storm water, reduce the urban heat island effect, promote biodiversity, and support human health.

Click here for more on Seneca College CITE.

Toronto Metropolitan University – Daphne Cockwell Health Sciences Complex 

Award of Merit, Public Buildings in Context Category

In response to rapid enrolment growth, limited land assets within an intensifying urban core and the need to consolidate four disparate departments of the faculty of health sciences, Toronto Metropolitan University developed an ambitious project brief for the Daphne Cockwell Health Sciences Complex. Responding to challenges presented by a confined, urban site, our team proposed a new typology for the University: a vertical campus that celebrates density, urbanity and a radical mix of uses as key characteristics of 21st century learning. A continuous thread of public space, described in vibrant orange cladding, connects four diverse academic departments to each other and to the city beyond.

Working on a downtown campus in a rapidly growing city poses a unique challenge: project stakeholders are not limited to occupants and administrators, but also include community members, neighbouring institutions as well as city staff and politicians. The vision statement “Creating Connections for a Healthy City” along with guiding principles around inclusivity, public realm and sustainability were developed in consultation with the entire spectrum of stakeholders. This vision provided a proverbial compass to keep all parties oriented to the project priorities over the complex process of design and execution.

Click here for more on the Daphne Cockwell Health Sciences Complex.