Renni is a wellness centre providing therapy services from clinical psychologists, social workers, body and movement practitioners. The clinic is located within a renovated semi-detached Victorian era house in Toronto’s Little Italy neighbourhood. The design reimagines the constrained condition of the existing house and property into a light filled and expansive set of experiences as a container for the inner work occurring within.
The project initiated with a design mandate to provide each individual treatment room with access to direct natural light, and to attempt to breakdown the inherent cellular condition of necessarily small individual spaces to meet the program requirements. Inventive measures were required to achieve this on a site limited to an allowable footprint of 5m x 17.5m with no potential of openings on either of the long elevations and limited means of egress. A new volume at the rear doubled the area of the remaining building replacing a demolished set of additions that were in poor condition.
A strategy of successive voids across the width of the building provides the organizing structure of the project; providing for legibility, light, layered views and suggestions of expansiveness. Narrow gaps are located directly behind the existing front and new rear facades. A third, central void is place at the centre of the building between the existing and new volumes. Each of these is lined with natural wood wool to soften sound, light and visually mark their presence. Openings open into the voids in both the exterior envelope and the interior partitions.
As a result of the voids and the corresponding sectional variations, each space has a fully individual spatial condition, with varied lighting conditions and access to views. Treatment rooms at the front and the rear have direct access to view or vegetation. While the interior treatment rooms and circulation spaces open to the voids and through into opposite spaces while retaining privacy through strategic placement of openings. These layered views provide for spatial expansion and allow for one’s gaze to travel beyond the confines of the small individual spaces.
The exterior of the project introduces the new volume and the new entry porch in bright red metal relating the brick of the original structure unifying the volumes in one tonal mass. This red subtly appears on the interior at the entrance, the central void and the garden opening registering the distances along the building and marking the thresholds of the old and new constructions. The interior palate is muted in contrast to allow for a calming environment and inner work.
