Celebrating sport through design at Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame

Submitted by Enzo Vicenzino, Senior Principal (Calgary, AB)

Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame opens tomorrow, appropriately making it part of our nation’s Canada Day celebrations. Being a part of the design process for this amazing facility has been an inspiring and rewarding experience. The project kicked off with a two-day visioning session in Toronto, where we brushed shoulders with some of the most influential athletes and sportscasters in Canadian sports – past, present and future. Personalities like Scott Russell, who holds the Canadian record for javelin throw; sports announcer Dave Hodge; Ron Ellis, who played hockey for the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Canadian Olympic team in the famous 1972 Summit Series; Olympic cyclist Curt Harnett; and many others. To get a sense of the future of Canadian sport, some high school students involved in amateur sports were also invited to participate in the discussion.

The idea was to get a feel for what Canadian sports means to the type of people who really shape sports in this country and on the world stage. For an architect who wants to make sure that this design pays proper tribute to Canada’s athletes, what better inspiration than to hear from the athletes themselves about their passion and drive? Our challenge was to capture this energy and translate it into a design that effectively tells these stories and evokes a sense of national pride in the people who enjoy the museum. It was important to ensure that guests not only learn about the achievements of our athletes, but actually experience and appreciate what it takes to be a successful member of Canada’s athletic showcase.



A rendering of the building's striking exterior

Obviously, then, the most important component of the building is the exhibit hall, which is unmistakably the focal point of the architectural design, being a large box wrapped in the red of our Canadian flag. The box is tilted on an angle, which allowed the exhibits to be tiered, eventually leading up the ultimate goal for athletes: the Olympics. Once in the Olympic exhibit, guests get a glimpse through two slender windows of the ski jumps atop Canada Olympic Park to remind them that this is the site of the 1988 Olympic Winter Games.





The light-filled entryway

The hall’s location in Canada Olympic Park, while an appropriate backdrop for this athletic tribute, created a challenge in creating some competition with the attractions that already exist on the site, such as the ski jumps and the bobsled track. We realized that the correct approach was not to try to compete with these elements, but to design the Hall of Fame as an “object in space.” The building emanates its own significance through its contents: the exhibits and artifacts within. The architectural features, such as the tilted red box with a dramatic cantilever over a smaller, glass support structure, as well as the striking entrance into an atrium filled with natural light, all help to define the impact of the facility. The building exterior is accentuated with red and white light boxes interspersed around its sides, and is topped with the red Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame logo on a white roof, which is visible from the top of Canada Olympic Park, or even from the air. All of these details were carefully selected to design a building that is worthy of its contents, without attempting to overshadow them.

What topped off this already thrilling experience was the truly collaborative process we had with our exhibit designers, C7A, our engineering consultants, including Stantec’s structural engineering team, and our client and the project manager and design builder, CANA Construction. We are so proud of the result, and know that it really reflects that each and every member of our talented team takes pride in achievement, which is really what this museum is all about.