Half Dose #86: Pan Am Games Award Pavilion

On display at next week's AIA Convention in New Orleans will be the winning entries in the student design competition for the 2015 Pan American Games Award Pavilion for the games to be held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The competition -- presented by AIAS, the Vinyl Institute, and the Canadian Plastics Industry Association -- asked students to design a pavilion utilizing vinyl that "should showcase the athletes’ accomplishments and Toronto’s pride in hosting the Pan Am Games." The winning entry, "Tkaronto I gs2v," is by Manuel Gross, Yannick Vorberg, Patrik Staub, and Stefan Vetsch, recent graduates of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland.


[Image courtesy winning team | click for larger view]

The Awards Pavilion is located on the site of the Pan American Village near the waterfront and downtown Toronto. The Village and Pavilion are designed for use beyond the games; the former as housing and parkland, and the latter as a theater, stage, and social spot.The winning design was inspired by the name Toronto, which means alternatively "place where trees stand at the water" and "meeting place" in the native Iroquois language. The trees are abstracted as a roof that hovers over much of the site; cloud-like, vinyl is incorporated in the form of standard weather balloons.


[Image courtesy winning team | click for larger view]

As these renderings attest, the presence of these helium-filled orbs is striking from afar and underneath.


[Image courtesy winning team | click for larger view]

Another part of the design is the Bar, which is situated above the Victory Soya Mills Silo. The winning team calls this an icon of Toronto, something they further by making it taller. A steel and glass structure sits atop the concrete silo, and a roof of PVC membrane floats above, reiterating the cylindrical forms from below.


[Image courtesy winning team]

This space brings people above the tethered trees/clouds below, letting people imbibe the Toronto skyline along with their drinks.


[Image courtesy winning team | click for larger view]

Overall the design effectively uses the given material of choice in a simple yet powerful manner. Exploiting the lightweight nature of PVC and other plastics, the pavilion and bar are literally uplifting parts of the Pan Am Games and Toronto's growth towards its waterfront.