The Indigenous Hub in Toronto, Canada, is a mixed-use urban development located in the Canary District, an emerging neighbourhood in the city’s downtown east. Occupying an entire block, the 440,000 square feet project brings together health, housing, education, and civic space within a single framework. Conceived as a cultural landmark and a space shaped around reconciliation and inclusiveness, the Indigenous Hub balances urban revitalisation with ancestral continuity.
At the heart of the development, a 4,000-square-metre Community Health Centre sits alongside two adjoining mid-rise residential buildings, Canary House and Birch House, rising 13 and 11 storeys respectively — connected by a continuous eight-storey podium, they contain approximately 400 housing units, the Miziwe Biik Training Institute, a civic plaza, and the central Indigenous Peoples Landscape.
Design team and collaboration
The Indigenous Hub began as a master plan developed by Two Row Architect and Stantec Architecture. As the project evolved to include residential uses, BDP Quadrangle (the Toronto-based studio of BDP) joined the team, working alongside the original architects, with Urban Strategies Inc. providing urban design and planning input. The Community Health Centre was designed by Stantec Architecture in collaboration with Two Row Architect, while the residential buildings and the Miziwe Biik Training Centre were designed by BDP Quadrangle with Two Row Architect. In parallel, ERA Architects led the restoration of the historic 1859 Canary Building, retained and adapted as part of the Indigenous Hub.
Block planning and architectural differentiation
Working with all project stakeholders, Two Row Architect, Stantec Architecture, and BDP Quadrangle, together with Urban Strategies Inc., developed a framework for the full block that balances overall coherence with distinct architectural identities.
For the Training, Education and Employment Centre operated by Miziwe Biik, precast concrete panels are textured to echo the bark of birch trees historically found along the Don River. The panels are staggered across floors and interspersed with vertical windows of varying widths, introducing rhythm and variation across the facade.
Institutional framework, land, and origins
The project was initiated and shaped through Indigenous leadership, led by Anishnawbe Health Toronto (AHT), with Miziwe Biik contributing its Training, Education and Employment Centre as part of the wider Indigenous Hub.
The Indigenous Hub is the outcome of more than two decades of work, led in large part by the late Joe Hester, long-time executive director of AHT. It responds to the needs of approximately 70,000 Indigenous people living in Toronto, providing access to culturally grounded health care, education, child care, training, commercial space, and housing within a single, integrated environment.
The site occupies ancestral lands and historic hunting grounds used by Indigenous peoples since the retreat of the glaciers. The transfer of the 2.4-acre property from the Province of Ontario to AHT — considered by Joe Hester as a “return” — created the conditions for a purpose-built centre for urban Indigenous life.
“We wanted to bring an architecture to the Toronto landscape that represents us culturally, which then, of course, our community would see as something they could be proud of,” said Hester. “The interior spaces had to be able to facilitate our cultural approaches to health and healing because our ceremonies are very important to the healing process.”
Two-Eyed Seeing and architectural approach
The architectural approach draws on the principle of Two-Eyed Seeing, in which Indigenous and Western ways of knowing are held in balance. This framework informed decisions around form, materiality, and orientation, developed through sustained co-design with Indigenous voices and organisations serving Toronto’s urban Indigenous community.
“Our role was to guide the translation between Indigenous knowledge and architectural form,” said Matthew Hickey, partner at Two Row Architect. A Mohawk architect from the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation, Hickey was involved in all stages of the design process. A commitment to the symbolism of directionality played a key role. “The atrium of the Health Centre faces east,” said Hickey. “That’s the direction of birth, the direction where the sun rises.”
This approach informed a set of design guidelines, used to reflect Indigenous knowledge and history to residents, users, and the public through architecture and art. At the ground plane, up to the first datum, materials associated with the Anishnawbe Health Centre are used, including stone-coloured precast concrete and Corten steel. The design of this level reflects the idea of “pebbles in the stream”, expressed through rounded forms and elements positioned at and near entry points.
At the scale of the full block, the development acknowledges directionality and references Indigenous presence across Canada, from coast to coast. Above the first major datum line, the architecture allows for a lightening of expression within the residential blocks.
The buildings acknowledge the movement of the sun and its relationship to the project and are designed to register as clearly at night as during the day. Green roofs and gardens are planted with Indigenous species.
Throughout the project, attention to detail is evident through craft and the careful use of simple materials, articulated in a deliberate and highly considered manner.
The Community Health Centre: ground, form, and expression
Establishing a direct relationship between the Health Centre and the land posed both architectural and landscape challenges. Alongside an emphasis on curved forms and the avoidance of rigid right angles, Joe Hester was clear that the building should sit directly on the land, “with its feet on the ground”.
In response, the design team reworked the block to remove the parking garage from beneath the Health Centre entirely. This decision allowed the building to sit directly on the land, maintaining physical contact with the ground.
At the heart of the Hub, the Community Health Centre is shaped by symbolic and spatial gestures developed through the project’s Indigenous design guidelines. Its form draws inspiration from the act of wrapping a shawl around a loved one.
“The shawl, also used traditionally for carrying medicine, wraps around the body but opens at the heart,” said Brian Porter, principal at Two Row Architect. This idea is expressed through the building’s facade and three-storey atrium, which opens to the east. The atrium aligns with the sunrise and creates a transparent entrance that connects ground, sky, and landscape through the centre of the building.
The curved facade of the Health Centre introduces another key architectural gesture. At ground level, cast-in-place concrete is paired with metal panels above, creating a continuous surface that wraps closely around the structure. Brick was deliberately avoided for the Health Centre, having been identified during the design process as carrying associations with residential school architecture.
Instead, non-glazed ground-floor areas are finished in earth-related materials, including cast-in-place concrete, lightweight aluminium, and weathered steel. A wood soffit extends across thresholds, visually linking interior and exterior spaces.
By contrast, the podium levels of the adjacent residential buildings do incorporate brick. Developed in close collaboration with Two Row Architect, the brickwork is detailed in a woven pattern that references textile traditions and reads as a continuous layer wrapping the site on three sides.
Landscape and outdoor space
The architectural approach is complemented by a landscape strategy shaped around bioswales, pedestrian paths, and an Indigenous Garden to the rear of the site. Health care staff and clients are able to cultivate medicinal plants such as sage, tobacco, and sweetgrass, while pebble-like forms reference the site’s relationship to the historic Don River delta.
A raised central courtyard, “The Indigenous Peoples Landscape”, forms a shared outdoor space linking the various programme elements of the Hub. Accessible from the first and second floors of the Health Centre, the landscape sits approximately 6.5 metres above street level.
Adjacent to this space are an outdoor children’s play area associated with the Miziwe Biik Training Centre and a civic plaza at the south-west corner of the site, incorporating boulders and Ludovic Boney’s sculptural work In Equilibrium.
Urban presence and reflection
Across macro, intermediate, and close-up scales, the Indigenous Hub both aligns with and stands apart from its surroundings. Its distinct architectural language invites attention and inquiry, prompting reflection on Indigenous design values and how they inform the basis for reconciliation.
“It was apparent that the Indigenous Hub needed to be different, and that it needed to speak a completely different language — one with which I was not familiar,” said Les Klein, co-founder of BDP Quadrangle. Reflecting on the design process, he added, “As we got deeper into the work, I realised that what we had was more than a project — it was a calling.”
