Construction is slated to get underway this summer at Hamilton, Ont.’s McMaster University on a flagship, 150-000-square-foot humanities and social sciences building, the first new facility built for the two faculties in decades.
Designed by Toronto’s CS&P Architects, the five-storey L.R. Wilson Hall will incorporate new “active” learning classrooms while providing a host of formal and informal learning/studying environments for the faculties’ undergraduate and graduate student body.
Included in the building’s program mix will be a new 350-seat concert hall, 150-seat multi-purpose, black-box theatre and 400-seat tiered lecture theatre.
Paul Cravit, CS&P principal and director of design, said the new facility will provide “a unique mixture” of both active learning classrooms and informal spaces in which the students can hang out, interact and study.
Performance spaces such as the experimental black-box theatre that can be configured in many different ways, the concert hall and lecture theatre will serve the needs of student groups from both faculties, he said.
LEED Gold is being targeted. Construction costs are estimated at $50 million. A construction contract is expected to be awarded by early August.
CS&P said the building will also engage the community through its proposed research centres and institutes: The Wilson Institute for Canadian History, Gilbrea Centre for Health and Aging, Pathway Institute and the indigenous studies program.
The building will be located on a site bordered by a mature tree line along Forsyth Avenue and Sterling Street. CS&P said preservation of these “reinforcing” landscape features will be an important design consideration. Landscape architects are PMA Landscape Architects Ltd.
Consulting structural engineers are Halsall Associates; mechanical-electrical consultants are Crossey Engineering Ltd.
CS&P said the facility will act as a gateway entrance to the university for the greater Hamilton community.
“The project offers the potential to strengthen the relationship between the university and the surrounding community while bringing together the humanities and social sciences faculties in such a collaborative environment,” said Cravit, whose firm has designed projects at numerous college and university campuses in the province.
Construction is scheduled to be completed in September 2015.
The province is contributing $45.5 million in funding for the project which has a total cost of $65 million. Chancellor Lynton R. (Red) Wilson, a McMaster social sciences graduate, is donating $10 million. Other funding is being provided by the McMaster Association of Part-Time Students and the university itself.
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