Indigenous Hub
- Location
- Toronto, Canada
- Client
- Dream Kilmer Tricon, Anishnawbe Health Toronto
- Expertise
- Architecture
- Interior Design
- Completion
- 2025
Located in Toronto’s Canary District, the Indigenous Hub is a precedent-setting, 440,000-square-foot mixed-use development that embodies reconciliation through design. The Hub integrates housing, education, child care, employment training, cultural programming and commercial space within a unified, culturally grounded campus.
Developed through a landmark collaboration between Dream, Kilmer, Tricon Residential, Anishnawbe Health Toronto, Miziwe Biik, Two Row Architect, Stantec, ERA Architects, EllisDon, Joseph Sagaj and BDP Quadrangle, the Indigenous Hub reclaims a long-vacant site to create a place of healing, ceremony and community. Its design process was guided by Indigenous knowledge systems, symbolism and ceremony, embedding cultural resilience at every scale - from site planning to material expression.
BDP Quadrangle served as master planner and architect for the entire site plan and the residential buildings, as well as architect and interior designer of the Training, Education and Employment Centre (TEEC). Operated by Miziwe Biik, the TEEC houses carpentry workshops, classrooms, Indigenous cultural offices and a municipally-operated child care centre. Each floor is tied to natural elements - water, delta, earth and sky - reflecting Indigenous teachings and expressed through custom finishes, lighting and symbolic motifs.
The Indigenous Hub’s architectural language reinterprets traditional materials: woven brickwork wraps podium levels like a blanket; precast concrete panels reference birch bark; and curved balcony rails evoke clouds. Landscaped courtyards, native plantings and public art ground the campus in ecological and cultural narratives, while reconfiguring underground parking garage ensures that the health centre connects directly to the earth to support ceremony.
“Our goal was to create a community of inclusiveness. This project is not symbolic, it is structural; not a gesture, but a grounded return. It is a space of healing, a platform for community-led growth and a new urban typology born of Indigenous values.”
Scheduled to be complete in late 2025, the Indigenous Hub stands as a landmark of Indigenous self-determination and inclusive urbanism. More than a collection of buildings, it is a powerful blueprint for how architecture can foster reconciliation, restore presence and build futures rooted in cultural pride and belonging.
