NYE MANUFACTURING PLANT – EXPANSION
Within an industrial park in Mississauga, Ontario, just west of the Square One Shopping Centre, is Nye Manufacturing, a company that specializes in fabricating custom attachments for excavators (buckets, shovels and claws). Their products are beautifully designed industrial tools, painted in a variety of bright colours (yellow, orange, black and red) used primarily for digging into the earth or grabbing fallen trees. Looking at these products in isolation (i.e. not attached to the excavator), it is easy to imagine them as the hands or feet of a “transformer” – the very same “transformers” seen in the Hollywood blockbuster movie series.
The task we were given required us to expand the company’s concrete block industrial warehouse, to include new administration space, additional manufacturing space, along with a larger boardroom, CEO’s office and a staff lunchroom.
From this request emerged the two ideas, which informed our design: (1) That the child-like playfulness of Nye’s products, including the colours, would become the inspiration behind the playfulness and colours we would ultimately use for the new architecture; (2) The theme of “the machine and nature, nature and the machine” would become extended to all aspects of this addition.
As such, we expanded the warehouse by abutting a series of buildings side by side, with each building having a specific program, starting at the warehouse and moving west towards Mavis Road. Each building was clad in a different industrial material, providing a distinct texture and colour, and each building was given an identifiable form, this becoming a parallel to their products. (warehouse = rectangle/yellow precast concrete panels; entrance = narrow rectangle/glass; administration = parallelogram/red corrugated metal).
Fronting onto Mavis Road is a red corrugated metal parallelogram building containing all the administration space, with its fully glazed facades revealing stepped floor plates and desks, setting the tone for the buildings to follow.
On the roof of the warehouse we placed the CEO’s office, boardroom and lunchroom inside a courtyard of tall yellow precast concrete walls, filled with grasses and trees; a nature-filled oasis in the midst of an industrial park. Capping the CEO’s office and boardroom is an oddly sloped roof (orange rectangle), complete with the company’s red-coloured sign mounted to it, this adding to the project’s colourful sculptural shapes.
The theme of “nature and the machine” is further enhanced, as the front lawn running from the red administrative building to Mavis Road is covered in tall ornamental grasses. Set within this grassy foreground are square polished stainless-steel pedestals used for displaying the colourful custom attachments made by Nye Manufacturing.
The completed project, when viewed from Mavis Road, is a highly sculptural, multi-coloured building immersed in nature. Its uniqueness is surprising in this rather bland context of neighbouring industrial buildings, yet perfectly suited to a company that makes such beautiful, large-scale industrial toy-like products, in a rainbow of colours.
LOCATION: Mississauga, Ontario
ARCHITECT: LINEVISION Architects
DESIGN LEADERSHIP: Michael Poitras,
Principal-in-Charge
CLIENT: Nye Manufacturing Ltd.
STATISTICS:
- No. of storeys: 2
- Floor area (existing warehouse):
13,041 ft2 (1,212 m2) - Floor area (addition):
8,335 ft2 (774 m2) - Parking: 37 stalls (including 1 barrier-free)
MATERIALS:
- Silver curtain wall windows & doors
- Vertical precast concrete panels (grey)
- Corrugated metal (red, yellow & orange)
- Poured-in-place concrete floors
- Rubber flooring (grey)
- Maple veneered cabinetry
- Polished stainless steel display pedestals
- Outdoor landscaping
GENERAL PROGRAM:
- Entrance/display space
- Reception
- Administration office
- CEO’s office
- Boardroom
- Lunch room
- Rooftop garden
- Washrooms
- Loading docks: 3
COST: Withheld
COMPLETION: Project