Announcements September 15, 2021

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

We’re excited to share that three of our projects are 2021 Toronto Urban Design Awards (TUDA) winners. Every other year, the City of Toronto holds its Urban Design Awards program to acknowledge the significant contributions that urban designers, architects, and other design professionals have on the look and livability of Toronto. The awards provide a snapshot of what has been accomplished and encourages us to reflect on how we can best contribute to the process of city-building while inspiring us to keep raising the bar.

Learn more about our winning projects:

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.

The Meadoway

Award of Excellence, Visions and Master Plans Category

 

Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, with a generous donation from The Weston Family Foundation, retained Perkins&Will to develop a Visualization Toolkit for the design of a community-powered greenspace that connects people and communities across the City.

Located within the mowed grasses of the Gatineau Hydro Corridor in Scarborough, Ontario, The Meadoway is a transformational project to develop 16 kilometres of underutilized, highly maintained monoculture into one of the largest urban and linear greenspaces in Canada. The Meadoway connects users to the natural environment, with more than 200 hectares of turf grass being transformed into a thriving meadow, creating biodiverse habitat for native plants, pollinators, and wildlife.

Once complete, The Meadoway will use nature to connect Toronto’s downtown with the Don River Valley and Rouge National Urban Park. It will serve as a blueprint for revitalization, a world-class example of active, linear greenspace, and a precedent for future hydro corridor restoration. The Meadoway’s community-powered greenspaces will connect people and neighbourhoods across the City of Toronto.

Click here for more on the Meadoway.

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.