IAKS Canada, in collaboration with the City of Mississauga, organized a study tour of two recently completed community recreation centres on 5 June 2025. This tour provided participants an opportunity to visit the facilities and hear from each projects design team, and client group.
27 Canadian participants had the opportunity to explore inspiring community recreation facilities in Mississauga. They were welcomed by representatives of the City of Mississauga’s recreation department who, with assistance from the project’s architecture teams, presented its comprehensive design strategies for each facility and how the promote recreation for the communities that each project serves.
The tour began at the Churchill Meadows Community Centre. Opened in 2021, the Centre and its surrounding park offer a wide range of amenities, including a community pool, gymnasium, multipurpose rooms, and various support spaces. The facility is situated within a 50-acre park that features three FIFA-sized soccer pitches, a splash pad, a natural playground, a skate spot, an outdoor basketball court, and a soon-to-be-completed cricket pitch. In addition to the recreational programming, the tour highlighted the facility’s distinctive mass timber structure and its thoughtful integration of public space as social infrastructure – these generous ‘porch’ areas serve as transitional zones, seamlessly connecting the interior spaces with the surrounding outdoor sports facilities.
The study tour then visited the Burnhamthorpe Community Centre, which was recently completed in 2024 and features an addition and renovation to an existing facility. The new program spaces include a 6-lane lap pool, leisure pool, universal change rooms, fitness area, studio, and multipurpose rooms. The project integrates itself into the existing building, completing a cohesive whole, and a new community hub for its neighbourhood. The project is complemented by ambitious sustainability, and accessibility strategies.
