Snøhetta and Hariri Pontarini Selected to Design New Ontario Science Centre
View of the planned museum building and the nearby Ontario Place pods and Cinesphere, which will be refreshed as part of the larger redevelopment plan. Image courtesy Infrastructure Ontario
A team that includes Snøhetta and hometown firm Hariri Pontarini Architects has been awarded a roughly billion-dollar contract to realize the new Ontario Science Centre at Ontario Place. Spanning three large artificial islands, the currently shuttered lakefront entertainment complex in Toronto is undergoing an endlessly contentious, lawsuit-challenged revitalization scheme led by the provincial government. The relocated science museum is a major component of the 155-acre property’s redevelopment by Infrastructure Ontario.
The planned 220,000-square-foot museum building is envisioned as stacked, scalloped volumes clad in bright white tile. As stated by the design team, the program is expressed as a series of “connected molecules or modules attracted to each other to create meaningful experiences inside and out.” The new center will anchor a larger 400,000 square foot destination for “learning and innovation” on Lake Ontario with enhanced public realm features. Says the Snøhetta and Hariri Pontarini team: “We were inspired by the site’s power as a place of connection between the city and Lake Ontario, between sky and the water, and as a threshold for the imagination: a place to spark curiosity and wonder.”
Now operating in pop-up locations, Ontario Science Centre was previously located northeast of downtown Toronto near the Don Valley Parkway in a beloved late-1960s building designed by Raymond Moriyama. Famously spanning a wooded ravine, the concrete complex was permanently shuttered in June 2024 due to what the government said were structural safety concerns. The center’s abrupt closure ignited sharp public debate, and despite campaigns to save and rehab the building (a too-costly endeavor, per the government) Premier Doug Ford announced that the long-running science museum would be relocated to Ontario Place. The Don Valley location’s pending demolition has generated additional dissension. The Toronto Society of Architect’s referred to the museum in an open letter as a “significant architectural landmark” whose destruction would erase an “irreplaceable part of this province’s and country’s history.”
Interior atrium view. Image courtesy Infrastructure Ontario
Nighttime exterior view from the south. Image courtesy Infrastructure Ontario
Back at the also-controversial Ontario Place redevelopment site, where a large (but considerably scaled back) Therme spa complex designed by Diamond Schmitt is slated to begin construction soon, it appears that several emblematic structures dating back to the complex’s 1971 opening will evade demolition. Instead, these buildings will undergo a “rejuvenation” and be incorporated into the relocated Ontario Science Centre grounds. They include architect Eberhard Zeidler’s five interconnected, steel-and-aluminum pavilion pods built over the lake and the Cinesphere, also designed by Zeidler. Upon its early-70s debut, the Cinesphere, housed in a 115-foot-wide Triodetic dome structure, was the world’s first permanent IMAX movie theater; it remains the largest IMAX theater in Canada. Renderings of the new Ontario Science Centre show a series of long pedestrian bridges providing a direct connection from the planned museum building to the Cinesphere, which has been closed since 2022, and Ontario Place’s signature overwater pods, which once housed eateries and exhibition spaces.
As with the Therme wellness waterpark at Ontario Place’s West Island, construction on the new Ontario Science Center is slated to kick off later this spring. It is estimated to open in 2029.
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