Community Input Helps Guild Park's Clark Centre Win Design Award

Friends of Guild Park added a strong community voice to the Clark Centre of the Arts’ award-winning submission to the 2025 Toronto Urban Design Awards.

The Clark Centre, located at Guild Park & Gardens, 191 Guildwood Pkwy., Toronto, recently received the special jury award for community impact.

The notable prize recognizes the results achieved by this $5 million project funded by the City of Toronto. The design and development work was headed by Taylor Hazell Architects (THA), which submitted this project to the City’s biennial design awards program.

The three-level facility opened in April 2022. Today, it hosts public art programs, exhibitions and artists-in-residence, all operated by the City of Toronto.

The letter that Friends of Guild Park President, John Mason, sent in support of THA’s Clark Centre project helped the jury evaluate the impact of this new facility.

The not-for-profit organization explained the Clark Centre’s importance to Guild Park, to the community and to the city. The letter of support:

• Provided a comprehensive overview of the project’s goals, challenges and impact;

• Described the community’s involvement and positive reception to the project; and

• Emphasized how these factors reinforced the design awards’ key themes of community involvement, revitalization and sensitivity to history and environment.

In awarding its special design prize to the Clark Centre, jury members noted the importance of:

Architects, urban planners and academics served as jury members of the 2025 Toronto Urban Design Awards.

• Guild Park’s ongoing revitalization

• Sustained community advocacy and engagement

• Applying an innovative architectural approach

• Designing with sensitivity to local conditions and community benefits

The comments by the 5-member design jury aligned with the key points that Friends of Guild Park made about the Clark Centre project (read the original 2-page letter in the following images)

Friends of Guild Park is proud to be among the community/park organizations, dedicated volunteers and Guild Park supporters that worked for decades to ensure an arts facility reopened on the site.

The Clark Centre - including its name - is a reminder that today's park was formerly the historic Guild of All Arts, founded and operated by philanthropists, the late Rosa and Spencer Clark.

Spencer and Rosa Clark, August 1932. On their wedding day on the site of today's Guild Park

Congratulations to Taylor Hazell Architects, the entire Clark Centre design/construction team and the City of Toronto's Economic Development & Culture, Arts Services for this award.

Watch for news about when the award will be on public display at the Clark Centre.

The following text is from the 2025 Toronto Urban Design Awards Jury Report about Guild Park's Clark Centre for the Arts:

"This elegant and relatively modest project delivers an outsized impact. While it stands as a strong example of a public building carefully situated within its landscape context, what truly distinguishes the Clark Centre for the Arts is its deep sensitivity to local place, community needs, and aspirations.

"The Jury was particularly moved by the project’s story—born of sustained community advocacy and engagement for the revitalization of Guild Park and Gardens and the creation of arts spaces and programming on site.

Conceptual image created by Taylor Hazell Architects during the design phase of the Clark Centre for the Arts project

"In recognition of its social and cultural importance, the Jury is pleased to honour the project with a Special Jury’s Award in the Community Incubator category. The design takes a light-touch approach to the existing building, enhancing its presence through a graceful new foyer and a beautifully integrated forecourt garden that incorporates salvaged architectural fragments.

"We created two Special Jury Awards featuring projects for their intentionally “Integrated Approach” ... [and are] pleased to see projects that have been either community initiated or deeply informed by community engagement … such as accessible spaces for arts programming delivered by the Clark Centre for the Arts in Scarborough — a special Jury award winner in the “Community Incubator” category...

"The Jury hopes this project will inspire similarly sensitive, community-rooted arts and culture initiatives across Toronto’s diverse neighbourhoods."