Ryerson Image Centre wins architectural design award

The new Image Centre at Ryerson University in Toronto has won Architectural Lighting magazine’s 2012 Light & Architecture Design Award for best use of colour.

The innovative building design by Diamond Schmitt Architects transforms an almost windowless former brewery warehouse — home to Ryerson University’s School of Visual Arts — into “a dynamic beacon” that illuminates the campus and announces a new cultural destination in Toronto.

The renovated and expanded building’s exterior has a double-skin glass cladding that conceals a LED lighting system.  At night, illuminated glass panels across three facades glow separately or in unison with a possible 16.7 million different colour combinations.

By day, this opaque glass surface on the upper floors provides a seamless white backdrop to bustling campus life and contrasts the centre’s transparent glazing at ground level.

Active programming of the Ryerson Image Centre light installation will be commissioned to artists and students and even the public, who can create lighting sequences of their own using a Ryerson-designed app to interact and exert creative control over the building’s electronic canvas.  Donald Schmitt, principal with Diamond Schmitt Architects, said the lighting installation is a key feature of the building’s design and serves as an outward expression of the activity within the centre.

“The building’s envelope encourages experimentation and creation, which are fundamental to the pursuit of mastering the visual arts.”

Ryerson University president Sheldon Levy said this achievement “shines the light” on Toronto, Ontario and Canada in an exceptional way.

The Ryerson Image Centre, opens on Sept. 29., features state-of-the-art gallery, research and archive space dedicated to the photographic arts. It will also house the Black Star Collection of close to 300,000 images of 20th-century photojournalism. The project’s contractor was PCL.

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