This project called for the renewal of the main entrance to University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) campus and greater connection to the community. The client had a need for a new gateway feature, and engaged Kearns Mancini in developing a vision and concept for the project.
What UTM desired was a substantial sense of presence at the front-door to its campus; a design that would be impossible to miss but also something that was in keeping with their history and location. A focus group took these ideas and worked with Kearns Mancini. As the work progressed through various iterations and with Kearns Mancini‘s guidance, the design team captured perfectly what the UTM was trying to envision and achieve.
grey container
Location
3359 Mississauga Road North, Mississauga, ON
Client
University Of Toronto
Status
Completed, 2013
Project Value
Confidential
Project Team
Jonathan Kearns, Peter Ng, Sharon Leung
Photography
Greg van Riel Photography
Background
The gateway design is an expression of UTM, of the very bedrock upon which the University is built – Credit Valley stone. The selection of material speaks to the site’s former use as a quarry, while the configuration of a gateway recalls the site as a transportation route for the original area inhabitants.
It expresses the strength and endurance of the educational institution that is UTM and symbolizes the growth and evolution of learning – beginning with nature in its stony rawness and evolving as education has to achieve greater precision, clarity and illumination. At the same time, the entrance speaks to the people who founded the University, acknowledging in particular the second Principal of Erindale College, Dr. John Tuzo Wilson.
Dr. Wilson was an internationally acclaimed geophysicist and geologist who advanced our understanding of plate-tectonics theory and conceived the Transform Fault, a major plate boundary where two plates move past each other horizontally. Inspired by the drama of shifting tectonic plates on a global scale, the design of the gateway pays homage to Tuzo Wilson and the Transform Fault geology for which he is so well known.
The new middle entrance places UTM strongly in the built landscape, for the first time giving the campus a clear identity and presence on Mississauga Road, one which transcends the notion of gateway and speaks to the evolving nature of education. The entrance has come to symbolize both the natural landscape of Mississauga, as well as the school’s achievements and future aspirations.
Dr. Katherine Lochnan
Art Historian
Other Projects
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