Wellesley Community Centre Pool Addition 

The Wellesley Pool Addition constitutes the second phase of an initial project completed in 2005 — the Wellesley Community Centre. This addition builds off the existing eastern elevation into a previously unprogrammed lawn area to mediate a connection between the city’s urban core and St. Jamestown, one of Canada’s densest and most ethnically diverse communities. 

Clad in glass and custom-profile zinc, the addition houses a light-filled aquatics hall with a five-lane, 25-meter lap pool, a leisure and hydrotherapy pool, and a steam room. Following consultation with the community, a planned waterslide was replaced with a diving platform that has an integrated waterfall feature. The original changeroom programming has been expanded and updated into a pair of universally accessible changerooms separated from the staff areas and pool deck by tiled partitions that are punctured by glazed slots to maintain a discreet visual connection between these spaces. New spaces also include two multipurpose rooms, a staff office and an interior bridge that marries the addition to the existing structure. A green roof divides the volumes housing the aquatics hall and multipurpose rooms, forming a rooftop “meadow” visible from the interior public corridor. 

Despite its restricted budget and the ambition of its program, the existing center has been lauded as a success story for the St. James Town neighborhood, both as a highly functional hybrid civic building and as an example of “beauty on a budget.” Two decades after the aquatics programming was removed from the original plan due to budgetary restrictions, the pool addition will complete the city’s vision for a “full community center program” to serve this vibrant high-needs neighborhood. The addition will continue the center’s legacy by providing previously lacking programming within a well-proportioned volume that respects the context of the neighborhood.

ARCHITECT OF RECORD

MJMA Architecture & Design

Toronto, Ont.

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