Architect: MJMA Architects
Location: London, Ontario
Completion Date: 2022
At East Lions park in London, Ontario, MJMA Architects accomplished an overhaul of the park’s recreation services, circulation, and landscaping. The agency additionally designed a model new group middle that replaces a disused out of doors pool. Clad in standing seam steel panels, perforated aluminum, and choose spans of glazing, the architects opted for a simplified materials palette to honor the legacy of town’s craft guilds which use the house.
The 42,000-square-foot group middle is a single story construction housing an aquatics middle—consisting of a leisure pool and 6 lane lap pool—a gymnasium, studying lounge, kitchen, artwork studios, and multipurpose lecture rooms. These varied packages had been organized to attach by way of the constructing’s central entrance foyer.
Positioned on the Southeast finish of the park, the architects supposed for the group middle to be an inviting and welcoming house from each orientation. The group middle’s west elevation faces the inside of the park, permitting entry to the pool, foyer, and health club, that are seen by way of clear glazing from the park. A greater than 100-foot-long bench, positioned beneath an overhang, extends the size of the aquatic corridor, permitting households a respite from solar and climate.
The aquatic middle {and gymnasium} are positioned on both facet of the doorway foyer, which is recessed from the 2 leisure services, creating house for a paved courtyard. The gymnasium can be seen alongside the group middle’s Southern elevation, as drivers go by alongside Wavell Highway.
The constructing’s group wing stands close to the park’s japanese boundary, connecting these services to 2 entrance courtyards, one accommodating pedestrians and public transit on the nook of the park and the opposite aiding the arrival of vehicular visitors inside a small car parking zone. As a part of the agency’s grasp plan for the park, new sidewalks had been carried out to attach facilities and restructure circulation by way of the location. Mature timber alongside the sting of the park had been preserved throughout building.
The formal composition and materials expression of the group middle was influenced by the work of Annie Albers, a German craft artist recognized for her prints and textiles. This emphasis on arts and crafts is mirrored in the neighborhood middle’s programming, which features a weaving and spinning studio for the London District Weavers & Spinners Guild. Naked materiality was prioritized for inside and exterior areas, by way of a mix of wooden, concrete, steel, and ceramic textile.
The facade of the group middle is primarily clad in vertical steel panels. Metal breakform panels had been chosen as a result of they’re light-weight and value efficient. Based on Ted Watson, Accomplice at MJMA, the panels “require a decrease stiffness issue from the construction, thus serving to to cut back metal tonnage—which could be important on bigger recreation centres with unrestrained double and triple top partitions.” 5 panel templates had been created and repeated throughout the facade.
Watson mentioned the agency thought-about plenty of exterior cement-based supplies earlier than finally touchdown on a facade system from LKMe, chosen for its “cost-effective nature.”
The panels had been all completed with the identical tone of grey paint, nevertheless, variations in depth, orientation, and breaks between panels resulted in varied circumstances when it got here to mild and shadow, thus creating the phantasm of contrasting colour.
Alongside the facade of the pool {and gymnasium}, perforated panels had been utilized to create a semitransparent barrier between the park and the recreation services. These panels had been one tenth of an inch aluminum break type plates. The panels enable for mild to enter the gymnasium, pool, and foyer with out important photo voltaic warmth acquire or glare. Slot home windows had been additionally carried out alongside these elevations to supply oblique daylight inside the gymnasium and swimming pool.
MJMA’s strategy to the undertaking’s vitality efficiency was difficult by the constraints of the recreation middle typology. As a result of necessity of enormous ceiling heights for gymnasium and natatorium areas, leisure facilities possess a excessive Thermal Power Demand Depth (TEDI) and Thermal Power Use Depth (TEUI). A higher quantity of vitality is required to warmth, cool, and dehumidify these giant areas.
To handle this, MJMA decreased the ceiling heights above the pool and health club as a lot as potential. The constructing’s massing was optimized by way of a constantly sloping roof, which permits the ceiling heights to rise and fall the place wanted.
The envelope of the group middle is 70 p.c opaque. This low window to wall ratio, together with excessive efficiency mechanical and electrical methods, and a rooftop photovoltaic system, improved the vitality financial savings of the construction. An LED dashboard within the foyer shows the group middle’s vitality efficiency metrics.
Water high quality within the swimming space was improved by way of using a vacuum regenerative media filtration system, permitting for extra environment friendly utilization of potable water, sanitizing chemical compounds, and thermal vitality.
