Ryerson’s ServiceHub, which replaces a dingy Brutalist cafeteria, consolidates all the university’s administrative functions in a bright, airy and organized core.

When local firm Gow Hastings Architects was asked to update an underused cafeteria inside a building on Toronto’s Ryerson University campus, they knew they had to begin with a clean slate. The 1,210-square-metre space, like the 1970s Brutalist it occupied, was dark, heavy, and dated-looking – not to mention ill-equipped to handle the needs of the university’s ever-growing student body.

Today, the space is unrecognizable. The new ServiceHub combines all the administrative needs of student registration and financial services into a single “one-stop shopping” location, which is also the students’ first point of contact with the university. And while the function of the space has been transformed, so has the look: gone is the oppressive grey concrete, replaced with an airy, dynamic and welcoming space more on-brand with Ryerson’s position as a leading Canadian institution.