Montgomery Sisam Architects with Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios completed the Myhal Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Canada.

The Myhal Centre for Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship (the ‘Myhal Centre’) heralds a new era in engineering education, designed to break down artificial barriers between disciplines, facilitate collaboration, encourage active learning, accelerate innovation, and develop entrepreneurial talent. The building includes in its composition a 468-seat lecture theatre, state-of-the-art collaborative classrooms, workshops, makerspaces and light fabrication facilities as well as several multidisciplinary research centres and institutes. It balances these 7,500 square metres of net project-based program space with an additional 7,500 square metres of shared social learning spaces. Program spaces are standardized and flexible to meet current learning needs and respond to changing technology and methods of teaching. Social spaces are designed to encourage informal and spontaneous interaction.

The elegance and simplicity of the design respond to the building’s privileged place on the main campus thoroughfare while respecting adjacencies to major heritage buildings, the integrity of the campus master plan, and the larger urban realm. The attention to detail, rich material quality, abundance of daylight, and curated views serve to enrich the experience of those within. True to its pedagogical mission, the Myhal Centre advances and advocates for sustainable development in accordance with the triple bottom line. The building targets a useful services life of 100 years premised on the durability of materials and assemblies, the flexibility of structure and systems and a high performance, bio-climactic envelope that supports passive lighting and ventilation. It opens as the most energy efficient building in the downtown University of Toronto Campus and one of the three most energy-efficient academic buildings in Canada.

Design: Montgomery Sisam Architects with Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios
Design Team: Robert Davies, Peter Clegg, Jake Armitage, Jason Dobbin, Simon Doody, William Harispuru, Tony Ross, Shannon Wiley
Contractor: Bird Construction
Photography: Tom Ridout, Adrian Ozimek, Daniel Ehrenworth