Two Niagara College spaces are in the design spotlight once again after taking home awards from the Interior Designers of Canada (IDC) on October 13.
Both the Aurora Armoury Canadian Food and Wine Institute (CFWI) and the Welland Campus Student Commons, designed by Valerie Gow of Toronto-based Gow Hastings Architects, were honoured with a 2021 Value of Design Award of Merit by the IDC in the Innovation in Institutional/Educational/Civic Design category.
Presented annually at the IDC’s Design Symposium since 2018, the Value of Design Awards are given to Canadian interior designers who push the boundaries of interior design, recognizing projects that highlight the benefits of design thinking as “an empathetic, inventive, and iterative process focused on the human experience within interior spaces.”
Since opening in 2019, the Aurora Armoury CFWI, which also won a Liv Hospitality Design Award earlier this year, has been impressing the design community with its innovative design elements and multifaceted space that mixes old with new.
Transforming from its original use as a military drill shed built in 1874, the current space includes a 40-seat classroom, which allows for short-term and part-time interactive wine, beer and cooking workshops, a state-of-the-art teaching kitchen, a community and event space inside and an outdoor patio that connects the building to Aurora’s Town Park and offers a walk-up window to order food and drinks, including college-made wine and beer.
The space, which came to fruition through a partnership between NC and the Town of Aurora, serves as an outpost for the CFWI, acting as both a recruitment hub for the college’s academic food and beverage programs and for NC as a whole.
NC’s Student Commons is featured on the cover of the 2021 ARIDO Awards publication.
In addition to the IDC award, the Welland Student Commons recently picked up a 2021 Association of Registered Interior Designers of Ontario (ARIDO) Award in the learn category.
The 35,000-square-foot, two-storey hub is the heart of the student community at NC’s Welland Campus. The space was completed in 2018 as part of a $15 million addition and renovation to the Welland Campus Simcoe building and features many striking design features including X- and O-shaped pendant lights, whimsical circular LED lights and super-graphics that give the space an instantly recognizable brand, including lettering, chevrons and dots on the glazed expanse of windows.
Other design awards for the Welland Student Commons include the top award for interior design from the 2020 Loop Design Awards and a 2020 Society of British and International Interior Design International Design Award in the public space design category.
Read the IDC’s 2021 awards announcement here. The announcement includes photos of the Aurora Armoury and the Welland Student Commons. The IDC’s media release was also shared by publications including Canadian Insider – view the release here.
