Vaughan City Hall – Omni Service Counter by Baron Nelson Architects Inc.

BNA were asked to reimagine and renovate the central atrium space and adjacent meeting areas at Vaughan City Hall, responding to the city’s commitment to enhancing customer service in a rapidly evolving post-COVID landscape. Our mission was clear: to craft a welcoming, accessible, and secure environment that prioritized the well-being of both the public and the diligent staff who serve them.

Central Atrium: A Gateway to Service

At the heart of this transformation stands the new customer service counter, an architectural pivot point where all public interactions with the city hall begin. The gracefully curved structural glass enclosure not only guards against viral threats but also shields staff from the harsh winter winds that gust through the lobby when both east and west entrance doors are ajar. The circular design elegantly facilitates unimpeded circulation around it and visually reference the concrete column capitals that are an important part of the existing building’s architectural narrative.

Meeting Rooms: Balancing Privacy and Transparency

The renovation project includes a suite of semi-private and private meeting rooms. Strategically positioned acoustic panels and thoughtfully designed glazing provide acoustic privacy while allowing for the transparency required for staff safety when dealing with potentially challenging interactions with the public.

A Seamless Integration

The success of this renovation lies in its seamless integration with the existing architecture. The renovation is indistinguishable from the original award-winning building completed in 2011. We felt as designers that it was more important to respect the original building than it was to express our own individuality.

The DIAC Design Impact Framework centers around five key themes:

1. VISION: design embodies the vision

  • What was the core vision?

  • How did the design embody this vision?

The vision is to transform the central atrium space at the Vaughan’s city hall into a gateway to service for the public with a design that seamlessly blends in with the rest of the existing building. BNA’s design embodied the vision by paying particular attention to form, scale, and palette, ensuring that the design was respectful of the original award-winning architecture and felt like it had always been there.

2. FUNCTIONALITY: design enhances functionality

  • What was the fundamental function of the project?

  • How did the design/design process enhance this functionality?

The Vaughan Omni Service Counter is a renovation of the main atrium space of Vaughan City Hall that provides a new customer service counter, a self-serve digital kiosk, and a suite of semi-private and private meeting rooms, all designed to achieve the highest level of accessibility. Together, these three elements improve the City’s customer service experience and provide a single primary point of contact for citizens to access the multitude of offices and services provided by the city. BNA and our consultant team worked closely with the City’s stakeholders to ensure that the design met their functional requirements both for providing customer service and also as safe, comfortable and efficient workspaces for staff. We also had a mock-up of the service counter and a workstation built out of plywood to be tested by the city staff to ensure that every dimension was perfect to maximize functionality. Further, the meeting rooms are for staff to meet with members of the public on the ground floor so the city can restrict the public from entering the office areas of the building. That creates the possibility of staff being alone in a meeting with an irate individual upset with the city. Openness and transparency are required for security so that security cameras and other staff could see if there is trouble, but privacy is also needed because some conversations would be very sensitive. A strategy using a combination of acoustic treatments, careful space planning, and glass screens maximized transparency and security while providing just enough acoustic privacy. 

3. BRAND: design creates brand

  • Did the project have an established brand to integrate into, or was a new brand developed?

  • How did the design contribute to the development, sustenance, or enhancement of this brand?

The service counter including the kiosk and meeting rooms are designed to seamlessly integrate into the existing building to elevate and enhance the city hall’s on-going commitment to excellent customer service for the public. The design and materials are high-quality and modern and highly sympathetic to the original building. When designing for an existing condition, BNA believes that sometimes the best approach is to offer a quiet design that fits into its context and does not cry out for attention.

4. ENVIRONMENT: design embeds environmental benefits

  • What is/are the environmental benefit(s) of the project?

  • How did the design embed this/these environmental benefit(s)?

Our focus on environment and sustainability was to minimize energy use. We used displacement ventilation in the meeting rooms and service counter which minimizes fan energy by supplying air at the floor and exhausting at the ceiling. This allows us to condition only the occupied space - the space within 2 m of the floor - rather than the entire volume of the space. The meeting rooms were built in an existing space with unshaded floor-to-ceiling glass facing east. We pulled the meetings away from the exterior wall and located a corridor along the glass so that individual meeting rooms were not overheated. We felt that someone spending only a few seconds walking down a corridor could tolerate a higher temperature than someone sitting in a meeting, saving on cooling energy.

5. HEALTH & WELLBEING: design promotes health and wellbeing

  • How does the project support health and wellbeing?

  • How did the design promote this perspective on health and wellbeing?

The project supports health and wellbeing from an accessibility and inclusivity standpoint. The project exceeds the requirements of the City of Vaughan’s Accessibility Guidelines which exceed the minimum requirements of the Ontario Building Code. We provided accommodation for both the public and staff such as multi-height work-surfaces, power operated doors, and hearing assistance technology. We provided a variety of options for people without labeling one option as being barrier-free. Individuals could choose the service counter or work-surface that suited them with no label attached. The accessible counter height and spatial clearance requirements were meticulously crafted into the design to ensure they contribute to the beautiful design and not an add-on or after thought. This project was the result of a radical change in how customer service was delivered in the city, in part as a response to COVID, and staff were reticent about the significant changes to their way of working. In particular, staff were not happy about working in the middle of the building’s atrium. This prejudiced the users’ opinions of the project and made user-engagement essential though challenging. A full-sized plywood mock-up of a customer service counter workstation let staff verify that the dimensions were all correct for them, that the workstation layout was logical and ergonomic, that they would not be too crowded together in the service counter work area, and that their concerns had been listened to and addressed in the design.   

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