WoodGreen Donlands Housing

Toronto, Ontario

WoodGreen Donlands Housing is a new 8-storey, 44-unit residential building containing two- and three-bedroom apartments. WoodGreen Community Housing, a community-based not-for-profit organization, built the development in order to provide transitional housing for young mothers and their children who are coming out of the City’s shelter program. Part of the program is to provide continuing support for teenage mothers so they can continue their education.

This project was designed to work in conjunction with an existing WoodGreen complex that incorporates housing, a Child Care Centre and a Learning/Training Centre where the residents can participate in a job skills program.

The design, which features a large community/event space and an outdoor area on the main floor, promotes social engagement between mothers and between families. As well, the entrance acts as an interactive threshold where residents can engage with the community.

We are privileged to live, work, and create in the meeting place of Toronto (from the Haudenosaunee word Tkaronto), the traditional homeland of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples. As settlers, we acknowledge our role in the ongoing process of mending and nurturing relationships with Indigenous people, and the inherent subjectivities of building on these lands. We orient our practice to engage in reciprocal consultation and authentic relationship building with Indigenous communities, to work within each nation’s culture and ways of knowing and seeing the world; and to peaceably share, respect and care for the lands sustaining us all.

WoodGreen Donlands Housing

Toronto, Ontario

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