Alliance Francaise North York - Main Space Design

Michelle Zhou, Di En Kim, Scott Goe, Ekaterina Popova

The client for this service-learning project is Alliance Francaise Toronto, a non-profit organization that offers varying levels of French classes to the public of all ages. Alliance Francaise is seeking to renew a portion of their North York campus. The design scope at the North York branch is focused on their main space that includes the lobby, reception area, waiting area and a small library space. A required kick-off meeting was conducted between the design team and the principal of Alliance Francaise to discuss design needs and direction. The goal for this design is to utilize the existing footprint and expand the functions within the space. To highlight the flexibility and multi-use capabilities of the new design, it will offer a renewed reception area, waiting area, art gallery space, library space, an additional study/classroom area and a semi-private printing area. In all of the following spaces, the client would like for it to feel refreshing, open and flows into one another. Our design team has noted additional design issues in the existing space to consider, such as adding more storage to the general space, improving the lighting conditions, decreasing acoustic sound travelling and to develop spatial zoning. In the pre-design process, our team site measured, took photographs and notes for documentation. From then, we moved on to schematic design to refine our ideas, and design development package for detailed annotations of our design plan.