For the longest time, Quebec’s schools, like many schools in Canada, were associated with humdrum architecture. This was not particularly because of the architects involved (often a stable roster of firms), but because of unimaginative programs, poor budgets, and overemphasis on security issues. Flat roofs were the norm—as were artificially lit corridors, predictable classrooms, and paved yards surrounded with chain-link fencing.

And then, on November 7, 2017, totally out of the blue, an unexpected trio held a press conference. Chef Ricardo Larrivée and triathlete Pierre Lavoie, both darlings of Quebec media, had joined forces with well-known architect Pierre Thibault. They were determined to prove that if you provided children with joyous, dynamic learning spaces, if you encouraged them to be physically active, and if you engaged them in learning to prepare healthy meals, you just might have a tremendous impact on their future—and on the future of our societies. As Ricardo put it, the trio hoped to create conditions that “would make children eager to go to school.”

The threesome had managed to convince Sébastien Proulx, then Education Minister, to invest three million dollars for a two-year period (a mandate that was later renewed) in the setting up of what they called a Lab-École—a research centre for experimental, progressive schooling—closely connected with Laval University’s School of Architecture. Initial research for the project included visiting dozens of schools located across the province, but also in Denmark, Japan, and Finland, as well as meeting with teachers, school directors, and others to develop ideas and concrete solutions. Then, work started in earnest, exploring ideas through drawings and models, and developing guiding principles for the optimal spatial organization of elementary schools. These guidelines were published in manuals that would serve as a base for the Lab-École’s next steps.

The first real-life testing ground for Lab-École’s research took place in a Quebec City neighbourhood. Stadacona School was initially going to be renovated, but had to be demolished. ABCP architecture and architect Jérôme Lapierre, the latter a close collaborator with Pierre Thibault, were selected to design a replacement building, which incorporated some of the ideas being developed by the Lab-École group. 

But the bigger effort was yet to come. Five other elementary school locations were then selected across Quebec, and each of them became the object of a major open architectural competition. As this article goes to press, four of the resulting new and renovated schools are now open; the fifth one, located in Gatineau across the river from Ottawa, is still under construction.

Simultaneous design competitions, all with anonymous entries, were launched in 2019 to choose the professional teams that would eventually design and build the five projects, within the Lab-École’s guidelines. The conditions were far from perfect: no remuneration was offered for Phase 1; the schedule was extremely tight; and the requirements were demanding, the competitors having to produce two perspectives, a site plan, plans of all floors, a significant section, as well as a model. Nevertheless, the Lab-École received a total of 160 entries for the five sites. Quite a few well-established firms were among the participants. This was a surprise, since such firms tend to shy away from anonymous, unpaid competitions. This high level of participation was probably due to the fact that, for decades, most of the province’s schools had been kept in the hands of a very select group of firms. For established firms which had never managed to build a school, entering one of the five competitions was a way to get a foot in the door. And of course, for younger, emerging teams, it was a chance to break through the system. 

This is exactly what happened at École des Cerisiers in Maskinongé, a small municipality of 2,250 people. Here, the smallest (2,770 m2) of the five Lab-École schools was awarded to a consortium headed up by two young women—architects Lucie Paquet and Paulette Taillefer. The duo was initially selected among four teams asked to develop their concept during a second phase: at this point they teamed up with Leclerc architectes, an established firm with a long record of school building, to eventually win the project.

École du Zénith (4,350 m2) and École de l’Étincelle (3,577 m2) went respectively to Pelletier de Fontenay (again with Leclerc architectes) and to a consortium of two up-and-coming firms, Agence spatiale and Appareil architecture (with BGLA architecture). Finally, École du Boisé-des-Prés, the largest (6,365 m2) of the school projects, was won by a consortium of two well-established firms, Lapointe Magne et associés and L’Oeuf. 

The vision proposed by the Lab-École researchers was summed up by architect Pierre Thibault in a Radio-Canada interview aired in August 2020: generous interior spaces, sloped roofs, the widespread use of wood, bleachers for various activities, and community gardens outside. 

The projects completed so far are all interesting in their own right, although there is a slightly uneasy similarity between two of them, École du Zénith (four kindergarten and 12 elementary classes) and École de l’Étincelle (three kindergarten and 12 elementary classes).
In both cases, the solution was to break the school down into small, interconnected pavilions, grouped around a partially enclosed exterior court. Sloping roofs and wood façades create a home-like feeling, highly evocative of Quebec tradition. At École de l’Étincelle—a project that was recently awarded a Governor General’s Medal in Architecture—the school also seems to offer a clear nod to the area’s iconic “Little White House.” Within walking distance of the new school, the small building is a strong symbol of resilience for the community, having survived the destructive floods of the summer 1996.  

At École des Cerisiers, the site included an existing school, which had to be integrated into the project. The architects’ response was subtle, as they managed to cleverly navigate between the 1950s structure and the contemporary intervention. The project raised a lot of enthusiasm in the municipality, which invested extra funds for its realization. As at several of the other sites, the school’s ground floor was planned so that the gym and the kitchen area could be made directly accessible to the public outside of regular school hours.

For École du Boisé-des-Prés, the architects delivered a much larger, complex project under an imposing roof structure. The program provided for eight kindergarten classes and 17 elementary classes. The building is characterized by its large aluminum-clad volumes and the strong presence of a community-accessible gym to one side of the public entrance. The sloping site also made it possible to locate the school kitchen so that it can be reached directly from outside, or by using the interior stairs. The school’s pièce-de-résistance is its central agora, with its generous bleachers that project to the exterior. One of the lead designers, architect Katarina Cernacek, acknowledged that the Patkaus’ early school projects had been a source of inspiration.

Conclusion

Studying the whole Lab-École operation, one cannot ignore the serious budget overruns—which, to be fair, were in large part due to Covid-related difficulties such as the increased cost of materials and labour shortages. Looking back at the work accomplished and at the results, Lab-École co-founders prefer to talk about “investment” rather than “expense.” They might be right. 

Curiously, a rather similar school building program had been initiated in British Columbia during the 80s and 90s. Thanks to the efforts of Vancouver-based Marie-Odile Marceau, then regional architect for the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, a series of award-winning, well-published schools were built across the province for several First Nations communities. The use of wood, welcoming interiors, natural light, proximity to nature—it was all there! It took decades, but finally, the message has made its way across the continent.

This time, the Lab-École experiment may have a lasting effect in Quebec education. Even though the Province may not launch another school competition for a while, expressions such as “child creativity,” “natural light,” and “collaborative spaces” have now found their way into official Guidelines for primary school design in Quebec. That, in itself, is a huge victory. And the unexpected trio—Ricardo Larrivée, Pierre Lavoie and architect Pierre Thibault—should be thanked for it.

Odile Hénault is a contributing editor to Canadian Architect.

École du Zénith, un Lab-École

LOCATION Shefford, Quebec | CLIENT Centre de services scolaire Val-Des-Cerfs | ARCHITECTS Pelletier de Fontenay + Leclerc Architectes | ARCHITECT TEAM Thomas Gauvin-Brodeur (Leclerc Architectes), Hubert Pelletier (PdF), Etienne Coutu Sarrazin (PdF), Ghislain Gauthier (Leclerc Architectes) | STRUCTURAL Latéral (Thibaut Lefort and Alexandra Andronescu) | MECHANICAL BPA (Marco Freitas) | ELECTRICAL BPA (Jean-Claude Corbeil) | CIVIL Gravitaire |  LANDSCAPE Fauteux et associés in collaboration with agence Relief Design (Jean-François Bertrand) | INTERIORS Pelletier de Fontenay | CONTRACTOR Binet Construction (Charles-Antoine Busque) | AREA 4,350 m2 | BUDGET $30.5 M | COMPLETION January 2024

École Des Cerisiers, un Lab-École

LOCATION Maskinongé, Québec | CLIENT Centre de services scolaire du Chemin-du-Roy | ARCHITECTS Lucie Paquet – Paulette Taillefer + Leclerc architectes | ARCHITECT TEAM Paulette Taillefer, Lucie Paquet, Thomas Gauvin Brodeur, Elaine Tat, Leslie Bellessa, Ibtissame Zandar, Hugues Patry, Étienne Pelletier, Alexandre Chartré-Bouchard | STRUCTURAL/MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL Stantec | LANDSCAPE Mousse Architecture de paysage | INTERIORS Lucie Paquet – Paulette Taillefer | CONTRACTOR Therrien | BUILDING ENVELOPE Envelop3 | AREA 2,770 M2 | BUDGET $16.8 M | COMPLETION November 2023

École du Boisé-des-Prés, un Lab-École 

LOCATION Rimouski, Quebec | CLIENT Centre de services scolaire des Phares | ARCHITECTS Lapointe Magne et associés + L’OEUF architectes in consortium | ARCHITECT TEAM Katarina Cernacek, Sudhir Suri, Jennifer Benis, Pascale-Lise Collin, Martin-F. Daigle, Alain Desforges, Aurélia Crémoux, Agata Najgebauer, Océane Purnham, Aline Gabriel-Chouinard, Benjamin Rankin, Ronnie Araya, René Chevalier, Chantal Auger, Caroline Corbex, Daniel Pearl | STRUCTURAL Latéral Conseil | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL Gbi Experts-Conseils Inc.| LANDSCAPE Pratte Paysage | CIVIL Vinci Consultants | INTERIORS Lapointe Magne et associés + L’OEUF architectes | CONTRACTOR Construction Technipro BSL | ARCHITECT COLLABORATOR FOR SITE SUPERVISION Proulx Savard Architectes | AREA 6,365 m2 | BUDGET $35 M | COMPLETION June 2024

École de l’Étincelle, un Lab-École

LOCATION Saguenay, Quebec | CLIENT centre de services Scolaire des Rives du Saguenay | ARCHITECTS Consortium Agence Spatiale – APPAREIL Architecture – BGLA Architecture | ARCHITECT TEAM Stéphan Gilbert (BGLA), Kim Pariseau (APPAREIL Architecture), Étienne Bernier (Agence Spatiale), Lydia Lavoie (BGLA), Marc-Olivier Champagne-Thomas (APPAREIL Architecture), Johanie Boivin (previously with Agence Spatiale), Jérôme Duval (Agence Spatiale), Pascal Drolet (BGLA) | ENGINEERS LGT (now WSP) | LANDSCAPE Collectif Escargo + Rousseau Lefebvre | ENVIRONMENT/SUSTAINABILITY Martin Roy & Associés | MEP Pro-Sag Mechanique Inc | ARTIST Mathieu Valade | AREA 3,577 m2 | BUDGET $16.75 M | COMPLETION September 2023

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PROJECT Marine Drive Academy, Sheet Harbour, Nova Scotia

ARCHITECT FBM

PHOTOS Julian Parkinson

In general, articles about new school designs concentrate on their aesthetic merits alone. A friend calls this “ogling the architecture.” But if form does, indeed, follow function, an educational building should manifest its end use: to be a well-designed place that enhances teaching and learning. The Marine Drive Academy, designed by Susan Fitzgerald of Halifax-based firm FBM, achieves both goals effortlessly. In this case, the designer and the school earn a solid “A” grade.

The town of Sheet Harbour, Nova Scotia, is at the eastern extreme of Halifax Regional Municipality, about an hour-and-a-half drive from the city. The 800-person town is snuggled into the rugged Atlantic coastline and enclosed by dense forests. About 30 separate communities send children to Marine Drive Academy—some with bus rides up to an hour long—and 18 percent of its 275 students have Mi’kmaw roots. The school is also a regional resource. Once Covid-19 restrictions are lifted, community groups will have access to the field, gymnasium, shop, drama, nutrition, textile and music facilities. In a village, the school is, as one teacher put it, “a common thread. Everyone has a connection to the school, which brings people together.”

Fitzgerald attributes the success of the building to the intense interaction with students and staff in developing the concept. The standard process for K-12 design involves a School Steering Team (SST)—a stakeholder committee recruited by the school board, usually with only one or two keen student representatives. As Fitzgerald points out, “At the SST, one doesn’t hear from the students who are struggling or unhappy.”

Luckily, an end-of-semester school event coincided with schematic design. Fitzgerald and the FBM team seized the opportunity to meet one-on-one with many students and staff in a friendly atmosphere. In congenial interviews, students of all ages shared their responses to questions like: “What makes a good learning space?” and “What should the perfect school be like?”

It was immediately clear that the students’ interests were not focussed on the “three Rs.”  Instead, the local outdoor lifestyle predicated an emphasis on the making aspects of education: shop technology, textiles, nutrition, art, music and drama. Fitzgerald says: “It’s phenomenally important to talk with the students. We turned the qualitative information we collected into quantitative notes, so, if a lot of students said the same thing, we added it to our research folio and watched as patterns appeared. For example, one pattern suggested a need to merge subjects and receive knowledge in different ways—to be much more open about how students can learn things.”

Another key strategy was to put making and creative spaces in a central location, instead of the usual approach which tucks them far away from the academic areas. As a result, shop technology is given a place of honour: large windows in the lobby look over the two-storey workshop and media lab below.

As school principal Ronnie Reynolds explains, “This building is all about options.” Teachers have flexibility to stay in the classroom while some of their students do projects in the adjacent widened corridor, dub­bed a learning street. They maintain supervision through generous glazing, which can be shuttered with sliding whiteboard screens. The ability to move quickly from classroom to project space, says one teacher, “extends the teaching time: two minutes to set up, and they [the students] are learning in both places.”

An expanded version of this strategy is noteworthy in the aptly named da Vinci Space on the upper level. It’s a break-out area, where, as in Leonardo’s notebooks, science and art meet. At one end, a demonstration counter with sink is used by science and art teachers alike, creating opportunities for hybrid teaching. A designated art classroom opens completely to the da Vinci Space via a movable glazed partition. High tables and stools enhance the functional flexibility: students are free to move around the tables and seating to suit their projects.  Pull-down outlets provide convenient access to power for charging devices or running demonstration equipment. At the ends of this makerspace, as on the other floors, the plan includes nooks for privacy or quiet conversations.

Overall, the school takes form as an L-shaped plan, with gym, music, and drama areas on the short side of the L and classrooms on the long side, both looking onto a south-facing courtyard. The main lobby forms a hinge-point with wide stairways up and down. The lobby will also feature, in the near future, a large mosaic mural with design input and participation by the students. The image is being developed in collaboration with FBM, and depicts an abstracted map of the Eastern Shore, with pictograms representing each of the three dozen communities served by the school. Adjacent to the lobby, stepped seating leads from the cafeteria to the raised music room, creating a natural stage and socializing space. The drama and music rooms interconnect, inviting shared activities. Designed with an acoustical engineer, these rooms can be adjusted with panels and thick curtains for theatre, choral or instrumental practice.

The classrooms are efficiently placed at either side of the learning streets: middle grades occupy the lower level, elementary is located on the main level, with easy access to the courtyard’s play structure, and high school students occupy the upper level, near labs for science, textiles and nutrition. On each level, there are administration and communal-use rooms at the elbow of the L, which narrows the hallway and gives a sense of passage between the neighbourhood-like groups of classrooms. “We used the grade and window placements to our advantage to create a sense of identity for each level,” says Fitzgerald.

Gender non-specific washrooms and gym changeroom compartments are popular with students, and have been successful in eliminating a major source of bullying opportunities. Each washroom cubicle has its own ventilation, light and sprinkler, along with a European-style floor-to-ceiling door. The sets of stalls are easily supervised from the hallways and, during Covid protocols, kept students safely separated. In a school that Fitzgerald is currently designing, each washroom cubicle will have its own sink, too.

Marine Drive Academy is one of the largest buildings in the area, and Fitzgerald, who is also a registered interior designer, purposefully exposed many of the building elements so that students and public can appreciate its construction. Intumescent paint and fire shutters allow for exposed joists, columns and cross-bracing. Ducts and light fixtures are revealed, rather than concealed in dropped ceilings. On the exterior, a large silver silo takes a prominent place: it contains wood pellets, a by-product of the local forestry industry, that fuel the school’s heating system. As a LEED Gold-targeted building, the environmental aspects of the design add to its learning opportunities: toilets flush with collected rainwater, natural daylighting is omnipresent, 100 percent outdoor air circulates throughout, and durable surfaces make maintenance easy. As many students will seek careers in the trades, teachers can use the building as an effective demonstration tool.

Fitzgerald conceived different colour schemes for each of the three levels, with bold accent hues applied to millwork and furniture selected in complementary colours. The exterior, too, is graphically satisfying: it’s a clever composition of white cementitious panels contrasted with wood-veneer accents, reminiscent of the brown-and-white bark of the region’s paper birch trees. Super-graphics on the beacon-like chimney are visible from the highway, and are also used to mark the main entrance.

Darrell MacDonald, Director of Educational Facilities at the N.S. Department of Infrastructure and Housing, worked with FBM in matching the program to the design. This involved extensive collaboration with the school to assign space within the allotted footprint. By aligning gym size with enrolment, it became possible to add a weight–training room. The interdisciplinary learning streets were made viable by trading some normally enclosed spaces for widened corridors. Similarly, the library is no longer a defined, lockable room, but extends into the learning streets at all levels, using portable bookshelves that can be rolled out of the way as needed. Teachers and students peruse the shelves at their leisure; searching for particular books encourages multi-level hunts and serendipitous finds.

The libraries are not the only link between levels. Interconnecting lightwells overlook the lower level, not only for light, but also enabling conversation between elementary and middle students (who are, often enough, siblings).

Each learning street terminates at floor-to-ceiling windows, and views to the harbour are carefully framed from the cafeteria and lobby windows. From the inside, the school feels nestled in nature. This is a source of inspiration and calm for students. A teacher reports that one pupil, when stressed, would stand at the window and settle down watching his own “dancing tree.”

Students arrived in September 2020 amid pandemic restrictions, and after a very strange half-year of distance learning. Staff could sense the smiles under the masks. “Their eyes were lit!  You could tell they were awe-struck, and still are,” reports one teacher. Marine Drive Academy had replaced four older schools. Leaving those claustrophobic and technology-poor buildings and entering this new, light-filled, invigorating school energized both teachers and students. This well-designed environment responds successfully to the hypothesis that capital-“A” Architecture can embrace and augment capital-“E” Education.

Halifax-based T. E. Smith-Lamothe, MRAIC was Senior Architect with the N.S. Department of Transportation and Housing, where he specialized in educational, heritage and healthcare projects.

CLIENT Nova Scotia Infrastructure and Housing | ARCHITECT TEAM Susan Fitzgerald (FRAIC), Nataleah Hanlon (MRAIC), Matt Davis (MRAIC), Kaitlyn Labrecque (MRAIC) | STRUCTURAL SNC Lavalin | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL DUMAC Energy | LANDSCAPE Gordon Ratcliffe Landscape Architect | Interiors FBM | CONTRACTORS Avondale Construction LTD., BIRD Construction, Leading Edge Excavation & Trucking | EDUCATIONAL CONSULTANT CS&P Architects | LEED Solterre Design | CODE RICAS Engineering LTD. | ACOUSTICS Swallow Acoustic Consultants LTD. | CONSTRUCTABILITY Grey Cardinal Management Inc. | COST Hanscomb Ltd. | FOOD SERVICES Joe George & Associates | AREA 6,000 m² | BUDGET Withheld | COMPLETION September 2020

ENERGY USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 99 kWh/m2/yr (Supplied from renewable wood pellets for building heat, outside air tempering, and domestic water heating) | WATER USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 0.137m3/m2/yr from stormwater and 0.027m3/m2/yr from an on-site potable well

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“When children come into contact with nature, they reveal their strength,” wrote Maria Montessori in her treatise on children’s education, The Discovery of the Child. That guiding idea is at work in architect Tye Farrow’s new addition for the Toronto Montessori School, an independent school in Richmond Hill, north of downtown.

Farrow added a bow-shaped building to the front of the campus for preschool-to-grade-six students, framing a new courtyard learning garden studded with birch trees. Facing the parking lot, there’s a second garden, generously sized for caregivers and families to socialize after drop-off and pick-up. He worked with landscape architect John Quinn, who designed the gardens with native perennials, and used mounded forms that create a sense of shelter and enclosure.

But it’s inside, rather than outside, that Farrow’s interest in nature truly takes form. How can architecture go beyond the biophilic approach of using single elements like living walls, he asks, to engage the “experience and memory of mood, natural shapes, forms, and light?”

It’s a question that he’s been pursuing intuitively through architecture for decades, and more recently, through academic research. Last year, Farrow completed a Master of Neuroscience Applied to Architecture Design from the University of Venice IUAV, making him the first Canadian to obtain this degree. “We are living in what has been described as the ‘golden age’ of neuroscience research,” says Farrow, “which is leading to innovative ideas about how to live a fulfilling and healthful life, and the role our built environments play in this equation.”

Some of the insights he’s garnered are about why young brains thrive when kids are in natural environments. It turns out that neurons light up when we encounter the fractal patterns that are abundant in the natural world. Our brains are also stimulated in situations of “positive ambiguity”—places that are visually coherent, but that also have sufficient variety that we need to make sense of things.

In the showcase atrium of the school, Farrow put these principles to the test. The fractal-inspired structure alludes to the branches of a tree, with a purposefully complex combination of circular arches and triangular brise-soleil elements. The building’s radial plan gives the wood-beamed roof a slight asymmetry as it moves through the curve. Similarly, you enter the atrium under a line of skylights, set off from the central axis. Mirrors are placed above the fireplace and doors leading to administrative areas, bending the space further. “It’s about playing with perception in subtle ways that you may not perceive consciously,” says Farrow.

The intent of these manoeuvres is to create a space that intuitively feels good—a kind of interior counterpart to the Japanese practice of shirin-yoku, or forest bathing. Under the atrium’s canopy, students test the aerodynamics of paper airplanes, parents share news over morning coffee, and the community convenes in all-school assemblies.

All of the atrium’s structural elements are in wood, with steel connections concealed. Large green triangles, set above the courtyard-side openings, also allude to trees—and to the geometric shapes favoured in Montessori toys—but the space doesn’t pander to children. It has a sophisticated, peaceful feel that is a balm to brains of all ages.

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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.

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ARCHITECT P3Architecture Partnership

In a marginalized Regina neighbourhood known as North Central, the contemporary mâmawêyatitân centre stands out amid the humble vinyl-sided and eroded clapboard houses. Mâmawêyatitân (roughly pronounced mama-WAH-yah-tin-tin) is a Cree word meaning “let’s be all together.” In this case, the moniker is quite literal: the building is a conflation of high school, daycare, community centre, library and satellite police station. It’s a weave of wildly variegated, potentially conflict-generating programs within a single complex—which is why its strategic design is so crucial to its success.

Designed by Regina-based P3Architecture Partnership (P3A) and funded jointly by the Regina Public Schools (Province of Saskatchewan), City of Regina and Regina Public Library, the mâmawêyatitân centre was completed in 2017 after a long process of negotiation and consensus building. First, the architects and other stakeholders had to establish trust and buy-in from community members, largely Indigenous and lower-income, who had a right to be skeptical. Aside from belonging to demographic groups that have been systematically marginalized, they had endured vague (and then broken) promises about the proposed centre since the idea was first discussed in 2001. By the time design development finally got underway, the program faced serious provincial funding cuts and had lost two major components—a health clinic and a food store—that were originally supposed to be embedded within it.

When construction started, the project extracted some harsh trade-offs: the new construction obliterated all the existing buildings on the site, including a century-old brick high school. That particular building was arguably of heritage value, but also carried an unfortunate visual evocation of residential schools for its mostly Indigenous student body. The existing community centre, of more recent vintage, also had to be demolished in order to construct the new unified, multi-programmed building.

The centre aims to embody Indigenous principles in its materiality, by abstracting the Prairie locale’s wide horizons in its opaque sky-blue glass and Tyndall-stone base. “The building is about the place itself, but also everyone’s experience of the place,” says P3A principal James Youck.

In its programming, the centre goes far beyond the typical multifunctional building, where different users have separated zones, or distinct groups use a facility on weekdays and on weekends. The logistics of creating a deeply integrated space—that is, space that can instantly or in some cases simultaneously serve multiple purposes—required much research and many conversations.

The high school, for instance, needed to access the commercial kitchen, workshop, art studio, theatre and library—all spaces which would be available for community use as well. And yet certain zones—the after-school hangout room, councillor’s office, daycare (devoted strictly to students’ children) and faculty quarters—would be accessible only to the high school students and staff. The central administrative and reception area would be partially shared, partially integrated; that is, city and school staff would have their own specifically designated work stations, but both would share office supplies and equipment anchored in a back room.

The architects collaborated with the usual gaggle of government bureaucrats, but also with local residents and Indigenous Elders. The latter advised on everything from colours to the particular placement of the Elders and Ceremony Space, which they directed the architects to position prominently beside the main community entrance.

Walking through the mâmawêyatitân centre, I’m struck most of all by the deceptively complex floor plan. I say “deceptively” because on entering the building, it reads like a fairly standard (and slightly corporate) building. But a close analysis of the ingress and egress points, and the placement of the various multipurpose rooms bespeaks a highly strategic Rubik’s cube of transformable and interactive spaces. There are no demarcation lines between user groups; instead, spaces seep or surge into one another. Certain rooms, like the workshop and commercial-grade kitchen, serve different end users once the school day ends, and they are designed with embedded moveable walls to expand, contract and secure the spaces as needed. Other areas, like the library and the commons area, serve different user groups simultaneously. (The library is open to the public throughout the day, when it’s also used by students.) These zones have a different spatial strategy.

Architecturally speaking, each of these spaces is “non-binary,” as it were, projecting an identity like a hologram projects an image that is ever-changing as the viewer shifts position. The central commons area, for instance, reads much like a traditional community centre lobby when one approaches it from the building’s main public entrance. But from atop the bleacher steps of the second-storey high school zone, one’s view focuses on an installation of suspended bicycles hanging from the ceiling of the commons. It’s a youth-centric gesture that seems to “belong” to the high school while not seeming out of place for the larger community.

In the middle of the building is the largest space: the main multipurpose room, overseen and used mostly by the City of Regina as a community gymnasium. For performances and larger events, it can be rendered even larger by activating the attached stage and opening the room’s folding glazed doors to let it spill into the commons. The commons, in turn, opens onto the rear outdoor space, landscaped with Indigenous-inspired plantings. A rather stark paved area between the building and the landscaped zone was designed to be screened and visually enriched by a wood pergola, which has not yet been realized due to budget cuts during design development.

Be advised that the architectural firm’s name—derived from its earlier iteration as Pettick Phillips Partners Architects—bears no relationship to the notorious development process known as “P3”. And for sure, it would have been challenging—maybe impossible—to pull off a project with this degree of foresight and inclusivity under the standard P3 process, which blindly favours the immediate cost cut over the qualitative benefit. So much daylighting, so many entrances and exits? Not strictly necessary on a blindly functional basis, and yet crucial to delivering efficient, secure multipurpose programming. The building’s generous glazing and multiple access points allow users to instantly see if, when and how a space is occupied from their dedicated ingress point. For the neighbourhood outside, the transparency of the highly activated building also ensures that Jane Jacobs’s “eyes on the street” are present for the neighbourhood.

A thoughtful attention to spatial occupation and sightlines plays out throughout the building. Both the daycare and the satellite police station are tucked discreetly out of the sightlines of the high school entry zone—close by, but not overtly in the face of the students. The high school’s student washrooms are designed as a panoply of separate single-user rooms, rather than the near-universal communal washrooms. That strategy—though a little more costly in terms of space and dollars—avoids creating one of the most fertile grounds for bullying in a school.

Two years after completion, how is the approach of being “all together” working out? Inside and out, the structure still looks pristine, with virtually no traces of vandalism. That attests to its acceptance and embrace by the community, says Youck. But he also notes that the acceptance was hard won, and is an ongoing, ever-renewing process. An outdoor pergola, if and when it receives funding, will add much-needed organic warmth and a brise-soleil to the rear area. The centre’s highly flexible common spaces do allow for an informal pop-up grocery and periodic visits by a mobile health unit, but the loss of the on-site health clinic and food store remains Youck’s biggest disappointment about the project.

Both the architects and the community are cognizant of the need for more services, more resources and more time to overcome the disadvantages of long-standing marginalization, says Youck. The mâmawêyatitân centre is designed to facilitate this restorative process during adolescence and beyond. But Youck himself acknowledges that it will take years to know the true measure of the success for the building. “It’s really the next generation where we’ll see this come to full fruition.”

Adele Weder is an architectural curator and critic based in British Columbia.

CLIENT City of Regina, Regina Public Schools and Regina Public Library | ARCHITECT TEAM Chris Roszell (MRAIC), James Youck (MRAIC), Brenda-Dale McLean (MRAIC), Sherry Hastings, Nitish Joshi, Ashton Fraess, Rebecca Henricksen, Deb Christie | STRUCTURAL JC Kenyon Enegineering | MECHANICAL MacPherson Engineering | ELECTRICAL ALFA Engineering | CIVIL Associated Engineering | LANDSCAPE Crosby Hanna & Associates | INTERIORS P3Architecture Partnership | KITCHEN Burnstad Consulting | COST BTY Group | LEED/COMMISSIONING MMM (now WSP) | CONTRACTOR Quorex Construction Services | AREA 10,500 m² | BUDGET $32 M | COMPLETION September 2017

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“It’s busier than I’ve ever seen it,” says Gavin Affleck of Montreal’s Affleck de la Riva architects, who has practiced for 30 years. “Students and graduates are basically hired instantly,” says Anne Cormier, of Atelier Big City. Every firm in Quebec seems to agree: work is plentiful. Architects are comparing the current boom to the build-up of Montreal in the pivotal decade of the 1960s.

This winter, Montreal’s real estate sector overtook Vancouver as the second largest market in the country after Toronto. In the past year, housing has shown strong price growth, a period when prices in other cities softened. And the city still has “a lot of catching up to do,” says Gavin Affleck: there are many empty downtown lots that remain from the 1980s and 90s, when recessions and the threat of separation from Canada put the province in an economic rut.

The boom is also affecting heritage buildings, which are being restored and converted to new uses. The biggest of these is the multi-building Royal Victoria Hospital site, which flanks the southern edge of Mount Royal. The site sat in limbo for several years, but McGill University is now planning to convert the former hospital’s main building, a heritage structure dating back to 1893, into campus teaching and research spaces. In Old Montreal, the million-square-foot Gare Viger, Montreal’s original train station, is being converted into a mixed-use development by Provencher_Roy.

Good times come with challenges, and the biggest is a shortage of skilled intermediate and senior-level staff. It’s a generational challenge faced by firms across Canada, but on that is perhaps particularly acute in la belle province because of the language barrier—architects need to pass a French competency test to transfer their credentials to Quebec, slowing movement from other provinces.

The cities may also be underprepared for the current sudden growth. Maxime-Alexis Frappier of ACDF, who also works in Vancouver, says that Montreal lacks the tall-building regulations of the West Coast. “We are going to face challenges about the residential densification downtown,” he says. “Vancouver has strong criteria to protect the public realm; in Montreal, they have allowed us to go higher to have a greater density, but the projects still have large floorplates and a high podium.” Nonetheless, some private sector actors have taken the lead in delivering quality architecture. “Developers are understanding that good design can sell well,” he says.

On the public side, Quebec’s competition system has long been the envy of architects in the rest of Canada: a way to ensure quality architecture, and for young firms to land major projects based solely on their design chops. All provincially subsidized cultural spaces with a construction budget above $5-million must be procured through competitions, and municipalities can opt to use the competition system for other buildings, a choice frequently made by the City of Montreal. And indeed, many of Quebec’s best-known firms—including Montreal’s Atelier TAG and Atelier Big City—came to prominence through design competitions for theatres, libraries, and other publicly funded facilities.

In recent years, the system has been subtly changing. Adversity to risk, and particularly the threat of cost overruns, have led municipalities to tighten competition requirements. Many competitions now come with detailed technical and functional programs at the outset, tight budgets, and requirements for the applicant to have at least a decade of experience in practice as well as a certain number of completed projects of the same type. As a result, fewer firms are able to compete—and those that do succeed tend to get pigeon-holed in sectors based on their previous experience.

Still, says Gavin Affleck of Affleck de la Riva, the process is ultimately continuing to succeed in delivering quality work. “If you get shortlisted, you’ve really worked hard on your conceptual approach,” he says—a phase that often gets short shrift with the compressed timelines of private sector projects. Several upcoming projects awarded through competitions have won Canadian Architect Awards for design-stage work: these include Pelletier de Fontenay, Kuehn Malvazzi, and Jodoin Lamarre Pratte’s Insectarium in Montreal, KANVA’s renovation of the nearby Biodome, Atelier TAG and Architecture49’s installation of an observation belvedere in the lantern of Mount Royal’s Oratoire Saint-Joseph, and Saucier + Perrotte and GLCRM’s Gabrielle-Roy Library addition in Quebec City.

Perhaps equally important, the competition system has helped sustain a small-firm culture in Quebec. While many engineering firms merged in the 1990s, the typical Quebec firm is still a small to mid-sized enterprise—“an artisanal production,” as Affleck puts it.

This has been healthy for an architecture community that is active, in many ways, in creating its own fortune. Lobbying efforts, led by OAQ president Nathalie Dion, are advancing a provincial architecture strategy, which would further solidify architecture’s importance to Quebec culture. Architect Pierre Thibault was one of the champions of the grassroots Lab-École campaign to improve the design, food, and opportunities for physical activity in Quebec’s public schools. As part of the program, competitions are starting soon for renovations of several schools—and the rules have been opened up so that younger architects will have an opportunity to get in the game.

This article is part of our State of the Nation series covering Canadian architecture region by region.

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Ten years ago, the thriving market in oil, gas and potash led to a “Saskaboom,” which brought along plenty of work for architects. The economy has declined significantly since then. But with relatively few architects in the province—about 110 in all—there is still enough work to go around. “Firms seem to be adapting to the new normal, where the work is slow but steady,” says James Youck of Regina-based P3Architecture Partnership (P3A).

For a small community of practice, Saskatchewan architects are behind some impressively progressive ideas. Indigeneity has been a topic of conversation in the provincial association’s last three annual conferences. It’s a pressing matter in a province where sixteen percent of the population identifies as Aboriginal. The Gordon Oakes Red Bear Student Centre at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, designed by Douglas Cardinal to provide resources to Indigenous students and opened in 2016, occupies a prime spot on the main academic quadrangle. Moreover, “firms are looking at how truth and reconciliation can affect not just aesthetics, but the process by which projects are delivered,” says Youck.

“How do you work in that space of reconciliation, without being yourself Indigenous?” asks Jim Siemens of Oxbow Architecture, who is also the current SAA president. The answer: very carefully. “There are many practitioners here carrying on and striving to do just that,” he says.

One manifestation of this approach might be seen at the mâmawêyatitân centre in Regina, by P3A. Indigenous community members were engaged as part of an in-depth local consultation process. Named with a Cree word meaning “let’s all be together,” the building is a shared use facility, jointly funded by the city, the library, and the local school board. It includes a high school, daycare, community policing centre, and recreational complex, among other functions. But instead of each group having its own entrance and perhaps sharing hallways, the centre is more deeply integrated—at the programming level as well as from a service and delivery perspective. “70 percent of the Centre’s spaces are shared between groups, while only 30 percent of the space is dedicated to a single group,” says James Youck.

There has also been an ongoing discussion with the University of Saskatchewan about starting a school of architecture; Indigenous placemaking could well be one focus of such an institution. But the process has stalled out, and a timeline for reviving it isn’t clear. Still, local architects feel that having an architecture school would give a significant boost to the design culture of the province. A can-do attitude, grounded in the region’s pioneer history, can sometimes result in a good-enough mentality among clients, says Youck. “If all you need is a roof over your head, you may feel a pre-engineered building is enough—why would you look to push a design further?” Adds Derek Kindrachuk, of Saskatoon’s Kindrachuk Agrey Architecture, “A school of architecture would be huge for our city and province—it would go a long ways in fostering appreciation for what architecture can be.”

In the meanwhile, local firms are working in increments to demonstrate architecture’s potential for creating transformative private and public places. The residential component of Oxbow’s practice, for instance, stemmed in part from a commission for a Kinsmen lottery house, to be raffled off for the charity. “People in Saskatoon love touring lottery homes,” says Jim Siemens, describing how as a Friday night excursion, a couple might opt to visit an open house at a lottery home, rather than going to the movies. In contrast to the typical suburban houses offered as prizes by the charity, Oxbow worked on an urban infill site to create a modern house that respected traditional massing and alignments.

The result has garnered many positive reactions. “People innately understand architecture,” says Siemens, “In some way, things like lottery houses give them access to that.”

Regional building typologies are also at the heart of a project by Kindrachuk Agrey which is bound to have instant, intuitive appeal. They’re designing an aging-in-place wellness community modelled on the De Hogeweyk dementia care village in the Netherlands. The forward-thinking environment located in the Village at Crossmount will support residents in a safe, non-institutional environment that includes outdoor plazas and a grocery store, library, restaurant, theatre and other amenities, including a daycare supporting intergenerational care. Residents will have private bedrooms in small-scale group homes, with like-minded peers. “There will be all the things you need to carry on with regular daily activities, supported by caregivers,” says Derek Kindrachuk. “There’s nothing like this around in North America.”

The Dutch complex on which De Hogeweyk at Crossmount is based opened in 2009 and has seen residents with advanced dementia who are more active and at ease than at typical nursing homes. The founders of De Hogeweyk have endorsed the Saskatchewan project and are supporting its development team.

At a larger scale, the recently opened Remai Modern gallery, designed by KPMB Architects, provides an important civic space for Saskatoon. There is discussion over new central libraries in Regina and Saskatoon. A convention centre and downtown arena may also be in the works for Saskatoon, when funding becomes available.

Perhaps the most frequented public space in the province is a building that’s not architecturally distinguished: the new stadium in Regina. The immensely popular Roughriders are known for their loud, proud and loyal fan base. Siemens wonders if it might be possible to cultivate a similar sentiment for the province’s arts and architecture. “If we were that proud of our symphony, our gallery, imagine the increased impact that the arts and design could have in our community.”

This article is part of our State of the Nation series covering Canadian architecture region by region.

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A WELL-ROUNDED EDUCATION

PROJECT Branksome Hall Athletics & Wellness Centre, Toronto, Ontario

ARCHITECT MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects (MJMA)

TEXT Rei Tasaka

PHOTOS Shai Gil

Branksome Hall, an independent all-girls school founded in 1903, is located in the heart of South Rosedale’s Heritage Conservation District in downtown Toronto. Since its main building at 10 Elm Avenue was purchased over a century ago, the school has been forward-thinking in acquiring properties in the area. It now has accumulated 13 acres of land and a rich inventory of historic buildings. Over the past few decades, Branksome has delivered state-of-the-art facilities that adaptively reuse—and cleverly weave between—its collection of century-old traditional homes.

The newest of these additions is the Athletics and Wellness Centre (AWC), completed by MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects (MJMA). The designers are known for their fast-growing portfolio of campus and community athletics buildings that are sound in architectural and aesthetic excellence. The AWC is no exception.

As David Miller MRAIC, partner-in-charge at MJMA explains, quality athletic facilities are key attractors for student enrollment. Branksome’s principal, Karen Jurjevich, more fundamentally sees the AWC building as an “invitation to wellness,” promoting fitness and nutrition but also encompassing mental health. Well-being, in her view, is a critical element in Branksome’s education. To this end, the new facility boasts a saltwater training pool, shallow pool, gymnasium, fitness centre, dryland rowing room, dance and yoga studios, as well as a rooftop terrace, offices, meeting rooms, kitchen and dining hall.

The plan is efficiently organized in two parts: a two-storey linear volume along Mount Pleasant Road, and a single-storey wedge that frames a series of courtyard spaces around adjacent heritage buildings. From the exterior, the AWC is a clean-lined, low-lying charcoal grey box that looks unassuming and muted. That appearance is purposeful, subtly celebrating the two traditional materials—masonry and glass—that tie together a century of buildings on the evolving campus. Despite its extensive frontage along Mount Pleasant Road, the building expresses a sense of modern construction while remaining discreet.

Branksome has personal significance, as I attended the school starting from Grade 5. Many of the classes took place in the various historic buildings across the campus. The hallways were beautifully detailed in dark wood, the classrooms filled with natural light, and the windows offered views toward expansive lawns, courtyards and trees.

As a student, I was aware of the constant renovations to the older houses and lengthy construction periods at the new Junior School, which at times resulted in makeshift classrooms. Returning after almost two decades, one better appreciates the significant challenges inherent to campus planning within awkwardly shaped tight sites, adjacent to a ravine conservation area, and nestled in a tony residential neighbourhood.

In addition to meeting conservation authority guidelines and heritage setbacks, site regulations for the AWC plot stipulated a 12-metre height limit. The second floor also needed to align with an existing pedestrian bridge, crossing Mount Pleasant Road from the main campus. Integrating the two major volumes of pool and competition-height gymnasium within these parameters was a challenge. The clever solution was to stack them—the heavy tank at the bottom and the gymnasium on top—which required only a minor variance from the site’s zoning.

The two volumes, project architect Olga Pushkar explains, are “either elevated or down below, but never in street traffic.” This positioning ensures the privacy of the swimming pool, whose fritted clerestory glass faces busy Mount Pleasant Road, bringing light down into the space but obscuring views of the swimming girls. In contrast, the elevated gymnasium, fitness area, and dance and yoga studios are treated with expansive sections of glass curtain wall, putting the centre’s vibrant activity on display. The glass also affords students views of the traffic and adjacent historic buildings, strengthening their connection to the city and the campus.

MJMA’s approach to the public realm around the building is logical and respectful. The landscaping highlights the existing ravine system through bioswale systems that clean the site’s run-off water. These swales wind alongside a walkway edged with pavers engraved with alumnae names, leading to the lower sports fields. The landscape is best appreciated from the AWC’s rooftop garden, lush with flowering ground covers. A new courtyard tucked behind the AWC—an asphalt parking lot back when I was a student—feels intimate, the dark exterior masonry wall providing a sense of enclosure, with rooftop mechanical units carefully screened from view.

In addition to athletic facilities, the AWC is also a place where students convene for lunch, and can grab snacks between classes. The kitchen and servery has a culinary show-kitchen feel: bright, open and equipped with stainless steel appliances. Warmth is given through thoughtful accents, such as a wood-burning pizza oven and wooden shelves displaying seasonal fruits and vegetables. A view opens towards the adjoining dining hall—its walls and ceilings beautifully clad almost entirely in white oak—and to the ravine beyond.

“Food is a social endeavour,” says Branksome principal Karen Jurjevich, “and that is why students gravitate here.” I remember the cafeteria at McNeil House, the building that previously stood on the AWC’s site: it was bright, with rows of large wooden tables and benches where we dined in groups. This sense of community is carried forward in the new dining hall, where a fireplace lounge acts as a hearth at the south end of the room.

In Jurjevich’s view, the building as a whole creates an environment that can “promote calmness, the opportunity to feel the outside while you’re inside, through natural light.” Throughout the facility, the use of glass lends a sense of openness and constant connection to the community within. All the main activity spaces at the AWC are visible from a series of transparent walkways. These function in turn as the building’s circulation corridors, a viewing area for the pool and gymnasium, and as spill-out spaces for informal gatherings.

Among these, the most lively is the community concourse, says MJMA principal David Miller, where an overpass crossing Mount Pleasant Road enters the upper level of a skylit foyer. On axis with the overpass entry, the main staircase—a durable, yet elegant combination of oak, steel and glass—traverses to a lounge area overlooking the pools. The concourse joins into the main corridor, while offering views to the heritage buildings and the courtyard spaces outside. Dark grey masonry along the foyer wall also brings the outside in, by wrapping the exterior finishes into the main space.

There is much care taken in detailing and choice of materials to achieve an extraordinary quality of lightness, and also to maintain views without clutter—allowing users to see only the activities behind the glass. Materials and finishes consist mainly of a neutral palette of white porcelain tiles, limestone, white oak, concrete and glass. Jurjevich says that white was chosen consciously, as not only energizing, but having “a feminine quality…you feel that this is a women’s institution.”

“Everything the student touches is warm,” adds project architect Pushkar, pointing to the use of white oak for seating alongside the gymnasium and the pool, the wooden floors of the serene dance and yoga studios, and on stair handrails and steps. Soft light-grey limestone walls also lend a sense of coziness as students walk up and down the stairs.

Much of my time as a Branksome student was spent engaged in team sports and athletics. Together with the other girls, we nurtured team spirit, developed friendships and built self-confidence—through a good morning’s practice in the rowing room, cheering loudly for the home team during swim meets, setting up badminton nets in the gym, and speaking to friends in the change rooms, hallway, study areas and cafeteria. This handsome new facility will surely continue to nurture the campus, with its ever-evolving spirit. It is a beautifully rendered container that celebrates the athletic activities it holds, into which Branksome’s students will add their powerful personal energy.

Rei Tasaka is an architect and urban designer based in Toronto.

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