Branksome Hall is an independent K-12 all-girls school located in a residential South Rosedale Heritage Conservation District in the urban heart of Toronto. The new Athletics & Wellness Centre includes an aquatic center with teaching and training pools, a dryland rowing center, a gymnasium, a fitness center, yoga and dance studios, and a dining hall with ravine and rooftop terraces.
The aquatic hall is designed as the feature activity space of the new facility. A major challenge was to fit the large program volumes into the limited building footprint and adhere to a 12-meter residential height restriction. The aquatic hall is set one level below grade with the gymnasium above. The aquatic hall is visible through a floating viewing gallery and surrounding concourse social spaces. These popular glazed viewing areas serve as campus-wide meeting and gathering places, encouraging students to view athletics and inspiring involvement in the campus aquatic and athletic community.
The teaching pool is a shallow-water basin with a stepped entry along the full width and a hydrotherapy bench opposite the entry. The interchangeable four- and five-lane training pool has a 2.7-meter-deep end for rescue training and features an underwater speaker system for lap training and synchronized swimming, a scoreboard, touch pads and a timing system. The aquatic center is designed with a saline chlorination system.