Exterior view.
TEXT Leslie Jen
Located in Whitby, one of the fastest-growing municipalities in the Greater Toronto Area, the Durham College Centre for Food (CFF) goes beyond the basic culinary and hospitality management education to encompass event planning and food science, along with agricultural and horticultural programs. The choice of Gow Hastings Architects seemed obvious, premised on the firm?s recent successes in culinary education facilities for Humber, Centennial and George Brown Colleges.
The Centre for Food stands out from its surroundings, which include a busy highway.
As a satellite to Durham College?s main campus in adjacent Oshawa, the small but developing Whitby campus aims to preserve its agrarian heritage despite its immediate context of dreary and uninspired strip malls and fast-food establishments. The CFF is a compelling presence and a definitive landmark for the region, boldly announcing itself along Highway 401 that snakes along Southern Ontario from Windsor to the Quebec border. View of the building’s spacious atrium.
At just two storeys, the long, low form grounds the building in the landscape, establishing a connection to fertile fields to the south and orchards to the north. Responding to the extension of Consumers Drive eastward, the CFF inflects ever so slightly, its two skewed volumes meeting in a central double-height atrium space?marking the public entry to the building. Distinguished by a lush, green two-storey living wall, the...