Zhingwaak Cultural Community Centre

This project was completed as part of my fourth year capstone design project. Given the open ended task of "solving an engineering problem" our team chose to explore the issues faced by a rapidly growing number of immigrants into the country. By researching immigration data, statistics, and site zoning, we chose a site in Cooksville, Mississauga. This area sees a large proportion of immigration settlement due to its proximity to the airport, accessible public transportation, and a wide variety of employment opportunities.

New immigrants to Canada face a variety of challenges when relocating to the country, specifically in their first year. A few of these issues include unaffordable housing, de-centralized services, and the overwhelming immigration process resulting in a high degree of anxiety. The goal of this project was to provide centralized services encapsulated in a cultural community centre that not only provides newcomers with administrative and institutional programming, but also provides a thriving community for newcomers to be welcomed into. The centre would also include short-term housing to help newcomers get settled.

Our design consists of a 2-floor accessible community centre featuring a library, gymnasium, thrift store, walk-in clinic/pharmacy, driving centre, community kitchen, daycare, Service Canada, Service Ontario, counselling services, classrooms, multifaith room, and workout space. On top of the community centre sits 4 floors of short-term housing allowing for up to 280 residents in apartment style units. Throughout our design we emphasized sustainability through a high thermal performance enclosure, limiting window-to-wall ratio, utilizing mass timber and recycled materials, green roof, photovoltaic panels, and community gardens.

Our design won 3rd place in the MTE pitch competition out of 22 teams.

The scope of this project included:

Architectural drawing sets

• elevations, floor plans, detailed site plans, 

Detailed structural design

• load table calculations, member sizing, lateral system design, connection design

Detailed enclosure design

• facade design and connection, wall assembly design, performance calculations

Sustainability analysis

• energy usage intensity calculations, operational carbon, embodied carbon accounting, daylighting study