Toronto-based firm Maclennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects have designed the Commonwealth Community Recreation Centre. The project is a joint-use partnership between the City of Edmonton and the Edmonton Eskimos Football Club; combining football operations, stadium programming, and a recreation centre.
The facility adaptively reuses the 1978 stadium fitness centre and connects these usergroups over 4 stories through a cascading promenade and an innovative approach to materials and transparency. The project has revitalized a vacant stadium ground into a 24/7 urban park and community destination. The LEED-silver development includes a 60,000 sf 3-basin aquatic hall, 80,00 sf field house, 30,000 sf fitness centre, running track, gymnasium, and 30,000 sf of community space and new Eskimo Administration and Operations.
Three primary masses – Field House, Aquatics and Gymnasium – respond to the dynamic triangulated geometries of the site and frame a central lobby space – ‘the Social Heart’.
The building responds to the scale of the stadium and its dynamic nature. The pool massing creates a prow-like gesture, suggesting speed and movement. A southern canopy shields direct light and unifies with the taller field house mass.
The cost effective silver metallic cladding is deeply carved to reveal a tessellated phenolic wood panel system. This rationalizes envelope geometries and frames large openings. Walls of variegated ceramic frit glazing modulates heat buildup, solar glare and user privacy.
Richelle Sibolboro 