Sharp Centre for Design, Ontario College of Art and Design, Canada

For over three years, Alsop Design worked in collaboration designing the Sharp Centre for Design. The Sharp Centre is part of a 20,408m² renovation for the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, Canada.

Commencing on site in May 2002, the project was completed in phases and opened to the public in the spring of 2004.

TABLE-TOP SUPERSTRUCTURE

The remarkable 'table-top' superstructure, that takes the form of a parallelepiped (9m high, 31m wide and 84m long), with striking black and white pixellated skin, stands 26m above the ground.

The new addition accommodates two storeys of studio and teaching space and is connected to the existing facility below by an elevator and stair core that forms the central focus of the newly created entrance hall uniting the two halves of the existing college buildings at all levels.

The raising of the building above the ground allowed for the creation of a new outdoor public space to the south of the existing building, provides pedestrian access between the street and the existing park to the west and preserves the views for the condominium residents to the east of the college.

SUPPORT AND CONSTRUCTION

The table-top is supported by a combination of twelve, 900mm-diameter, 28m-long tapered steel columns and the central core that was designed as a ventricle reinforced concrete cantilevered structure. The entire structure is supported on a series of reinforced concrete drilled caissons.

The steel legs were fabricated off-site. Due to the oversized diameter of the steel sections used in the legs, it was necessary to use steel pipe commonly available to the oil industry, for the fabrication of the main columns.

The table-top was designed as a rigid steel box. A grid of steel vierendeel trusses run in the north-south direction and east-west direction, occupying the depth of he box itself.

EXTERIOR DESIGN

The table-top's exterior cladding, affixed on site, consists of a field of white aluminium and a random pattern of black squares and rectangles that create a pixellated effect.

The design and placement of the windows and arrangement of the black pixels intentionally blurs the distinction between floor plates and play with ideas of scale. The pixellation wraps round to the underside of the building, helping the box to read as one element balancing on long slender legs.