WINNER OF A 2020 CANADIAN ARCHITECT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
?This is a big building that seems comfortable, with qualities of delicacy and softness. It brings something quiet, even if it?s busy from a programmatic point of view. It?s well-detailed in its sustainability aspects. The facade moves in and out, allowing the park to terrace through the building. It is also the most successful integration of mass timber that we saw among the entries. It?s the whole package, in a large, significant project.? ? Stephan Chevalier, juror
The research centre will be Canada?s largest hybrid mass timber public building, and will showcase how the structural technology can be used in a curvilinear building.
From the mid-19th century until 1976, what was originally known as the Provincial Lunatic Asylum occupied this site. The Queen Street campus of what is now the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) has undergone profound changes since then, and the design of its new Research Centre evokes a much older and very different meaning of the word ?asylum?: an oasis for compassion, care, dignity and respect. A reminder from the site?s past contrasts starkly with the transparent, curvilinear new building that signifies its future. Fragments of the brick perimeter wall constructed by residents of the 1850s asylum have been retained; these Heritage Wall remnants are re-imagined as a frame for?and threshold to?an inclusive and inviting hub of activity supporting mental health.

Site axonometric...