South Parkdale Community Center
Academic 2nd Year Project 2020
Environmental Design - Interior Design Specification - OCAD University [Toronto, ON, Canada]
The project South Parkdale Community Center designed for the South Parkdale community, emphasizes on fully functional place considers the combination of collective identities and so encourages interactive activities while at the same time providing private spaces to meet personal needs. The project includes a redesign of the interior of an existing building on the corner of the intersection of King and Dufferin St, it is interior currently belongs to the Bank of Montreal and the building itself is a historic building.
The massing of the project gets inspired by tangram since South Parkdale has a very rich culture and the mix of culture as the project itself keeps reinforcing, it gives the sense of a tangram, each piece plays their own role but when they combine together, they can be many shapes and forms, flexible and vitality. That becomes the basic form of massing, consisting of several buildings in which every single block of them is geometry stitched after calculation. Adding light shelves on different heights also gives the overall structure a sense of overhanging, thus adding flows to this single-story building.
The main building height, which is the library, is 4.5 m and the height of the gallery is 3 m.The auditorium has a sloping roof, and the height of the tallest side of the wall is 4.66 m.
The project includes a small community library that will suit both silent study/reading and gathering together, the common room has also got a nice kids' leisure/books area for parenting. The workshop/meeting room is designed for both outdoor and indoor activities, making sure that everyone can choose their comfortable way. There is an art studio facing south streets that allows us to hold small classes for art interests, a double-glazed window will provide a nice soundproof effect as well as creates an interactive public view.
Besides, the library has also connected to a cafe, gallery, and auditorium for holding performances or community events. the gallery will be used for holding exhibitions considering that South Parkdale has some great artistic districts near Lake Ontario, the projects aim to take regard to different cultural influences of the place as much as possible.
Designer:
Victoria Lyu
