The good folks at Gow Hastings Architects and the Indigenous-owned Two Row Architect have ensured that there are no traces of grey, institutional blandness
Let’s say, for fun, that you are visiting Seneca College’s Newnham campus at Finch Avenue East and Highway 404 in North York. And let’s further say that you agree to be led around this assemblage of buildings – built from the late-1960s to the present day – with only your senses of touch, smell and hearing as your information-gathering tools.
And that’s the point, says Two Row’s Matt Hickey: “Conceptually, from a narrative point of view, the idea was about pulling up to a safe harbour; you turn your canoe over and you can store your stuff underneath it.” The wooden ribs, he continues, number 28 to correspond with the moon cycle, and the general curved shape with doors on both ends references the longhouse, which the Seneca people and other Haudenosaunee built. The two-toned, triangular roof cladding has a dual meaning: it resembles reptilian scutes or scales, and it also calls to mind the Evergrowing Tree wampum .
“Nine times out of 10 there’s a pot of soup on,” says Mark Solomon, senior adviser to the president on Reconciliation and Inclusion. “Food insecurity is big for our students. … Many come from First Nations that, in fact, don’t understand the realities of living in Toronto and the expense … so we’re trying to give them at least one hot meal a day.”
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