Foster and Partners unveils new university building

Foster and Partners has completed a new campus building for Toronto University.

Sitting between two historic buildings - the Ontario Legislature and the Royal Ontario Museum - Foster and Partners’ Leslie L. Dan Pharmacy Building houses 1,300 students and covers 14 levels. The building features a resource centre, study spaces, offices and two underground lecture theatres.

Within the building’s atrium, two silver-skinned pods hang from steel bars. The larger pod houses a 60-person lecture theatre with a reading room above while the second pod contains a 24-person classroom and faculty lounge.

Nigel Dancey, senior partner at Foster and Partners, said: "The Leslie L. Dan Pharmacy Building takes functional logic to a new dimension - it is a highly efficient new home for the faculty that both relates to the historic context and establishes a bold presence on the campus."

The campus is named after a former Toronto University graduate, who later went on to found Novopharm Ltd, in recognition of his achievements as a scientist, entrepreneur and philanthropist.

The QS was Vermeulens Cost Consultant and the structural engineer Halcrow Yolles. Construction started in April 2003.