East Point Bird Sanctuary

This Toronto project is part of a citywide initiative to enhance and protect bird habitat and increase birding activity through public education programming. East Point Park is the first of six key sites to be developed and improved over the next several years.

The pavilions at East Point Park Bird Sanctuary use architecture as a means of framing one of Toronto’s most beautiful parks, while enhancing the pleasures of birding. Folded into angular shapes evocative of flight, sheets of weathering steel form the pavilions for this wooded park on the Scarborough Bluffs, high above Lake Ontario. Providing shelter from the elements and places for groups to gather, the pavilions offer spectacular long-range views of birds in flight over the lake and close-up views of the shorebirds and waterfowl that a nearby pond attracts. Waterjet-cut through the pavilion’s walls are clouds of birds in flight above the names of species that frequent this significant migratory flyway stopover site. The structures’ weathering steel walls and roofs form distinctive profiles against the sky. The Viewing Pavilion, Bird Blind, and a future Sound Pavilion have tiny footprints, but the strategic positioning of these structures within a walking circuit promotes the exploration of a large park.