Eastview Public School
Scarborough
Children excel at thinking up inventive and foolhardy ways to interact with their surroundings. In east-end Toronto, generations of grade schoolers have walked – and yes, probably sometimes run – up and down the three-storey, late-1960s fire staircase at Eastview Public School. One day, one kid discovered it was possible to climb the railings at the stairway’s core. Other kids agreed that this was fun. What had long been a route from one classroom to another suddenly became a significant hazard.
The challenge here was to resolve the safety issue without making the stairwell look like prison infrastructure. We also saw this retrofit as a placemaking opportunity for an Indigenous education hub. Many First Nations families live in the area, and within a wider catchment, students seeking Ojibwe language instruction are bused to this school. Our design references the Medicine Wheel, a symbol many Indigenous cultures use for teachings on the cycle of life, holistic wellbeing, and other subjects. The colours of the wheel’s quadrants now animate Eastview’s fire stair.
Robust, powder-coated metal mesh panels in angle-iron frames are bolted onto the existing railings and new hollow structural section steel columns. Moiré effects between overlapping mesh patterns appear, disappear, and rematerialize as the viewer moves up or down the stairs. The retrofit looks playful, while making it impossible for even the most adventurous child to scale the railing.
Credits
Photography: David Whittaker
