Diamond Schmitt-designed Ontario rec centre opens

by nithya_caleb | October 5, 2018 3:19 pm

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A revitalized and expanded recreational facility has opened in Oakville, Ont., to meet the needs of a diverse and growing community. Designed by Diamond Schmitt Architects[2], the Trafalgar Park Community Centre[3] transforms a site that has been a community hub for more than 60 years.

The heritage Oakville Arena, with its distinctive wood-truss roof system, is preserved and enlarged, and now connects to an adjacent recreational facility. New program areas include a full-size gymnasium, running track, seniors centre with amenities, fitness centre, and public meeting spaces. The ice surface was expanded to National Hockey League (NHL) size, with additional seating, new dressing rooms, and an enclosed warm viewing area.

“Originally, the community centre addition was to have gone behind the rink and we pulled it to the street to activate the urban landscape and preserve the park setting,” said David Dow, principal, Diamond Schmitt Architects. “With the new building almost equal in size to the arena, we established a design dialogue between the two by emphasizing the mass of each. The large-scale existing roof is balanced against the mass of the cantilevered upper floor of the new building.”

A new fire station was added to the corner of the site. Interactive displays and historical artifacts were also installed in a Fire Education and Heritage Room. A contrasting colour palette of whites and dark grey accents on the community centre is inverted on the fire station.

The 6038-m² (65,000-sf), $37-million project is one of the first in Canada for a municipal client using the integrated project delivery (IPD) model. Under this arrangement, client, architect, and contractor work in close collaboration and operate as a team to apply lean construction principles to design, fabrication, and construction.

Source URL: https://www.constructioncanada.net/diamond-schmitt-designed-ontario-rec-centre-opens/

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