The Ismaili Centre, Toronto is situated within a 6.8-hectare landscaped park. Designed by Indian architect Charles Correa, The Ismaili Centre is one of three remarkable creations completed on the site. Joining it is the Aga Khan Museum designed by Japanese architect and Pritzker Prize winner Fumihiko Maki along with a garden of reflective pools by Lebanese-Serbian landscape architect Vladimir Djurovic. The Canadian firm Moriyama & Teshima are the architects for the entire project and responsible for integrating all aspects of the project.

The buildings are perched upon a small hillock that is visually prominent at the intersection of the Don Valley Parkway and Eglinton Avenue, two significant heavily travelled arteries north of downtown Toronto. From the site itself, panoramic distant views of the Toronto skyline unfold Maki and Associates carried out the Master Plan for the entire site organizing two buildings around a Formal Garden, 100 meter wide, inspired by a contemporary interpretation of the Islamic courtyard– the Charbaag. The Garden, an urban oasis, is positioned at the center of an irregular undulating site while creating an informal landscaped park around the periphery.

The Ismaili Centre, a religious, social and spiritual building for the Ismaili Community is oriented toward Mecca. The Museum, a cultural civic facility open to the general public establishes a strong dialogue with the Ismaili Centre on a central axis across the Formal Gardens. The two buildings, sacred and secular, are unified through the gardens
and landscape aimed at achieving a sense of harmony in a park setting throughout
the entire site

While the Ismaili Centre is less accessible to the public than the museum (during prayer times, the hall is reserved for followers of the faith) it was still designed with light and openness at its core. The Ismaili Centre, Toronto, was designed to respond to the traditions of Islamic architecture in a contemporary way using modern materials. The front doors are set within a sweeping limestone wall, and the plan of the prayer hall is a circle. For Correa, both are architectural metaphors of welcoming, all-embracing arms. Arriz Hassam, of Toronto’s Arriz+Co, and British firm Gotham Notting Hill collaborated on the interior finishes, which also express a sense of openness. The main lobby, meeting hall and offices are separated by transparent walls etched with a motif of Hassam’s own design, based on a fractal pattern inspired by the geometries of Correa’s prayer hall dome. The pattern is repeated on the stone floors, carpeting and screens; the composition of stars and circles alludes to both celestial divinity and earthly inclusivity.

A distinguishing feature of the building is the multi-faceted glass roof of the prayer hall (Jamatkhana), that can accommodate 1,500 people, which recalls the corbelling in many of the traditional domes in the Muslim world. The glass dome, which represented a difficult technical challenge, rises to a height of 65 feet above the roof and is made of two layers of high-performance glass and fritted to deflect the heat of the sun. A clear sliver glass facing east toward Mecca runs down the translucent roof. The orientation of the building is determined by its urban context, which provided a grid with which to work. Set against the grid is the circular prayer hall. The prayer hall is spanned by a double layer of glass sitting on elegant structural steel trusses of various depths and dimensions. The glass rises in the shape of a cone and is pieced together to form a fractal skin. The Ismaili Centre also includes spaces for institutional, social, educational and cultural activities.