Project Category: Featured

Part of a campus of buildings belonging to the OCAD (Ontario College of Art & Design) University, the Rosalie Sharp Pavilion occupies a prominent site in downtown Toronto at the corner of Dundas and McCaul Streets, directly across from the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO).
In response to the client brief, we designed a landmark building that functions as an interactive threshold at the northern edge of the McCaul Street campus corridor, reflecting the scale, massing, and form of the urban context, while reinforcing the university’s brand and presence.

The Pavilion is wrapped in a perforated stainless-steel scrim that represents both formal and technological innovation. The intricate laser-cut pattern is in fact a data visualization map of Toronto that reinterprets the city, highlighting art and design institutions, public art installations, and pockets of artist communities. The lacy structure gently peels away from the edges of the building, creating visual intrigue with its complex and compelling patterns and animating the street with views to students working on their art and design projects inside.

The addition of the Pavilion to the OCAD U campus represents a contextually responsive gesture that helps knit the larger community together architecturally, promoting greater cohesion and dynamism in the neighbourhood. Characterized by a harmonious integration of institutional, cultural, retail, and residential uses, this campus corridor provides an enriched urban experience for those who live, work, and study here. The Pavilion is a highly visible and expressive building that signals one’s arrival on campus, activates the streetscape, and heightens OCAD U’s identity. It is a fitting complement to the commercial galleries on the north side of Dundas Street, and in adopting an exterior expression that defers to Frank Gehry’s remaking of the AGO, it manifests a consistent architectural vocabulary along the south side of Dundas Street, conveying coherence and continuity. 

The project comprises a complete transformation of a building that formerly housed administrative offices into an efficient, student-centric, and largely open-concept plan. We retrofitted existing mechanical and electrical systems to meet a stringent sustainability mandate and pursued upgrades to deliver a high-performance envelope and cladding system. The interior conveys a raw industrial aesthetic — the material palette consists of concrete, masonry, glass, and steel — and features studios along with exhibition, meeting, and event spaces to expand digital and work-integrated learning.

The reimagining and reshaping of the Rosalie Sharp Pavilion, both inside and out, represents a significant advancement in OCAD U’s continued transformation of this important arts, education, and cultural precinct, reinforcing its unique position as Canada’s “university of the imagination.”

Our extensive work at Pope Francis Elementary School in Timmins, Ontario included a 15,500-sf addition that houses a lobby, a library, and classrooms as well as upgrades to the existing 23,400-sf elementary school and affiliated YMCA Child Care Centre. Ultimately, we doubled the size of the existing school by building a two-storey addition to the single-storey portion of the existing school and bridging that single storey to connect the second floors of both buildings. This required the strategic demolition and underpinning of the existing lower floor as well as coordinating the existing mechanical systems with the new system.

The building is organized in a radial plan, with three distinct wings extending from a central core that accommodates space for the kindergarten play areas. We undertook the strategic reconstruction and reorientation of the school’s main entrance and reorganized the overall site plan to improve the way the school interfaces with the neighbouring community and accommodates bus laybys.