A 10-metre-long cantilever elevates the temple over the large parking area required by the municipality, allowing the building to fit on its site.
LOCATION Markham, Ontario

ARCHITECT Shim-Sutcliffe Architects

TEXT Katherine Ashenburg

PHOTOS James Dow, unless otherwise noted
It should not be possible for a building to hang in the air?even when the building is a sacred space. But long before the Wong Dai Sing Temple?s defiant post-tensioned concrete cantilevers took shape on paper, the very existence of a Taoist place of worship at the southern edge of Markham, Ontario, was dubious. ? It was either an act of sheer will and determination?or simply a miracle,? said Brigitte Shim, FRAIC, in September 2016. She was accepting the Governor General?s Medal in Architecture, on behalf of Shim-Sutcliffe Architects, for the now-realized project Shim?s intimation that the temple might have been birthed through divine intervention hints at the fact that this is no ordinary building.In 2007, the Fung Loy Kok Institute, whose members follow a blend of Confucian, Buddhist and Taoist ideas, with tai chi an important part of its practice, bought land on Steeles Avenue. Their membership (which is predominantly non-Asian) was growing in the suburbs and beginning to plan a new temple. Unfortunately, by then organized religion had become a fly in the ointment of Markham?s real religion: parking. A large Buddhist temple, a mosque and a synagogue lined up in a row on Bayview Avenue had brought a ...