The Mississauga Central Library | Mississauga, Ontario, Canada | 2023

Architects: RDH Architects, Inc. (RDHA)
Design Team: Tyler Sharp, Bob Goyeche, Sanjoy Pal, Tori Hamatini, and Patrick Liu 
General Contractor: Aquicon Construction Co., Ltd.
Client: The City of Mississauga and the Mississauga Library
Photographers: Tom Arban

The Mississauga Central Library is a major renovation and addition project located in the city’s downtown core area adjacent to the City Hall. Mississauga is a large bedroom city located immediately west of Toronto, Canada, with a population of 713,000. The Central Library is used not only for library services, but also houses the central administration and logistic support to all 17 branch libraries throughout the city. The scope of the project is to provide design services for a complete interior renovation to all five floors of the existing building and the construction of a 5000 square foot glazed addition at the highest level. The aspiration was to transform this tired central library facility into a vibrant and contemporary public institution.

The new facility features a new technology-focused digital hub at the lowest level that includes facilities for events, lectures and seminars. The other levels of the library will feature public-facing collections; a library cafe; flexible event space; bookable classrooms and meeting areas; an automatic book sortation system; quiet study rooms for different sized groups; teen area; children and family areas; a municipal business enterprise center; gallery exhibition space; the refurbished Noel Ryan auditorium; bookable community classrooms; and flexible areas for open study, as well as the administrative spaces needed to run the other libraries within the city; and collaborative, multi generational digital and manual maker spaces.

The design concept for this project began with an understanding the context, specifically, the existing post-modern architecture that houses the collection. The first part of the design process involved drawing, analyzing, and understanding this rather heavy handed example of post-modernism. This process helped us to develop a respect and appreciation for the found condition but also an understanding of its limitations as a public building.

This lead to an aspiration to radically alter the interior environments, and, to affect change to the exterior by way of a series of contemporary, light, glazed and glowing interventions that help to project a new vision and user experience for this important civic institution. The resulting design implements a new geometric language and material vocabulary throughout, and opens up floor plates to perceptually unify two formerly separated atrium spaces so that they function as one, bringing light, experience and legible connection to all levels of the building. The exterior interventions utilize a “parts to the whole” conceptual strategy whereby three small “glowing orb” additions create a new reading of the exterior architectural condition. The process and resolution felt like a design dialogue between an aging post-modern language and a new minimal, contemporary, and modern dialect.