April 23, 2026

Designed by Diamond Schmitt and MVRDV, in collaboration with Two Row Architect, the new Temerty Building—a 388,000-square-foot academic and research hub—brings together the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Arts & Science’s Department of Cell & Systems Biology within a shared environment designed to support collaborative, interdisciplinary research and discovery.

“The Temerty Building’s design is about bridging worlds,” says Diamond Schmitt Principal Don Schmitt. “It prioritizes functionality and durability, but also ensures the building will be warm and inviting. Its lower floors form a crossroads for the wider university community and opens to the surrounding landscape for the first time in 50 years. The building will support deep focus, as well as foster greater connection, with an emphasis on spatial clarity and natural light, while fitting seamlessly into the iconic context of King’s College Circle.”

The design is informed by Indigenous design principles, guided by Two Row Architect, which are woven throughout the building’s form and function. Grounded in Mino-bimaadiziwin and shaped through Talking Circles with the Indigenous Advisory Circle, the building responds to its location, history, and place. “We are designing with the land, not on it, guided by the original laws and teachings that shape how we live and care for one another,” notes Two Row Architect’s Erik Skouris.

At grade, the building extends the campus landscape to create an immediate sense of invitation. The primary west entrance opens into a double-height atrium—the building’s social heart—where extensive glazing and wood-clad surfaces define a transparent, warm and tactile interior. Designed as a crossroads for gathering for the entire university, the space supports both daily interaction and large-scale events—creating an active and porous ground floor that animates King’s College Circle and Road. 

“Not only does the design provide excellent research and learning facilities, it offers generous and stimulating communal spaces for people to forge connections and exchange ideas—creating the productive friction that characterises many of the best research institutes” says MVRDV founding partner Nathalie de Vries.

Above the first two teaching floors, seven floors of laboratory and research space are organized with open-plan wet labs and adaptable infrastructure designed to foster flexibility and collaboration while evolving with changing research needs.

The new Temerty Building is a highly sustainable facility that aligns with the University of Toronto’s Climate Positive plan, supported by a new district energy Nodal Plant. The building establishes a new campus landmark, creating a synergy between research, learning, and public life for the university and the city’s greater biomedical community for generations to come.

Read the full media release here.