Myhal Centre, University of Toronto
Gallery
In Brief

Client:
University of Toronto

Location:
Toronto, Canada

Completion:
April 2018

Located at the heart of the university’s city centre campus, and designed in collaboration with Toronto based practice, Montgomery Sisam Architects, the Myhal Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship (MCEIE) is a cross-disciplinary research and teaching hub. It serves the University's wide range of engineering disciplines, from heavy mechanical engineering through to computer engineering.

The Centre signals a new era for engineering education through a design that encourages group work outside the traditional seminar room, providing dynamic and flexible environments that break down artificial barriers between people, foster collaboration, encourage active learning and accelerate innovation. 

Occupying the last unbuilt site along the University’s historic St George Street, the building acknowledges its significant position as a building in the round, providing a transparent and permeable ground floor creating both physical and visual connections to its surroundings.

The scheme includes a sophisticated 500 seat collaborative lecture theatre, workshop and Lab spaces, TEAL rooms, innovation incubator suites allied to industry presence rooms, versatile design studios, and a double-height extra-curricular club space called ‘The Arena’ as well as communal facilities including a café and shared social learning spaces. Read more about 'Spaces for Learning' in our Explore Journal.

Industry Presence

The MCEIE is designed to enhance the student experience and enable collaboration between students, faculty, alumni and, particularly, industry partners.

The design reflects the Faculty’s spirit of creativity, inclusivity and leadership, supporting and enabling the existing culture of innovative start-ups and patents coming from the school.

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A building in the round

The sense of how the building could facilitate collaboration was a prime driver behind the design. Clustering accommodation around and within an atrium space not only allows visibility between the different uses but encourages informal meetings at open staircases, balconies and walkways.

Transparency of rooms and open plan space which faces onto the atrium facilitates this, whilst adding life to this communal space.

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Sustainability
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MCEIE was designed with a 100-year design life and constructed to Toronto Green Standard Tier 2 level. As an exemplar of low energy design for the city, the building has an anticipated energy use intensity (EUI) of 100 kWh/m2 - less than half that of its university neighbours.
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Selected Awards

2019
WAN Gold Award Education Sector

2019
Toronto Urban Design Awards, Award of Merit

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Team

Architects
FCBStudios
Montgomery Sisam Architects
Structural Engineer
Read Jones Christoffersen Ltd
Building Services Engineer
Smith + Andersen
Sustainability Consultant
Footprint

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The Myhal Centre showcases an architecture that is disciplined and quiet. It is not about itself, but about the activities that will occur within it and change over time. This is an architecture that is robust and enduring.
Drawings
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