The Ontario Science Centre (OSC formerly the Centennial Museum of Science and Technology) is a science museum organization located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The original main site, located approximately 11 km northeast of downtown on Don Mills Road in the former city of North York, closed permanently on June 21, 2024. It was built on the side of a wooded valley formed by a tributary of the Don River in Flemingdon Park.
Image By Dennis Jarvis from Halifax, Canada – DSC00043 – Ontario Science Centre, CC BY-SA 2.0
On April 23rd 2023, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced the Ontario government’s comprehensive plan to replace the Ontario Science Centre with a facility at Ontario Place on Toronto’s waterfront. The facility is scheduled to again in 2028. The proposal has attracted strong opposition.
An engineering report released on June 21, 2024 found that 2-6% of the roof was at high risk of collapse in winter and recommended repairs, but the building was not closed. On the same day, the Ford government announced that it would be closed permanently and immediately due to a planned relocation, and that no repairs would be attempted. The centre would operate temporary locations and pop-up programs while the new site was under construction. The decision to close the Don Mills site rather than rehabilitate it was met with strong opposition.
History of Ontario Science Centre
Construction and Opening.
Plans for the Science Centre began in 1961, as Toronto underwent a major expansion in the late 1950s as 1960s. In August 1964, Ontario Premier John Roberts announced the creation of the Centennial Science Centre as a centennial project. Toronto architect Raymond Moriyama was hired to design. Construction began in 1966, with plans to open the Centennial Science Centre as part of country Canada’s 100th anniversary celebrations in 1967.
However, construction was not completed until 1967 and the Science Centre did not open to the public until two years later, on September 26th 1969. The opening ceremony was held on the morning of September 27th, with VIPs in attendance and 30,000 invited guests arriving in the early afternoon. It opened to the public on 28th Sept attracting 9,000 visitors. When Ontario Science Centreopened, Ontario Science Centre’s advertising slogan was “Come see what happens when Albert Einstein and Walt Disney come together.”
The building and design were part of a wider change in Canadian architecture and an example of the Brutalist style.
When it first opened, the Science Centre, along with the Exploratorium in San Francisco and the Michigan Science Center in Detroit, pioneered the hands-on approach to science. Unlike traditional museums where exhibits are just for viewing, most of the exhibits at the Science Centre are interactive, and many others are live demonstrations (such as metalworking). The Communications Room had many computer monitors, including the very popular Tic-Tac-Toe game running on a PDP-11 minicomputer.
By 1974, approximately 250,000 students were taking field trips each year.
Operations: 1990 to 2022
In 1990, the Ontario Science Centre announced a contract with Oman to design a children’s museum. The Ontario Science Centre agreed to boycott Israeli products and services for the duration of the agreement. The Ontario Science Centre later amended the contract to specify that all products sold to Oman would be manufactured in North America. The Centre’s Director General, Mark Abbott, was fired for knowingly signing the original contract.
In 2001, the Centre launched a capital project called Agents of Change. With a focus on innovation, approximately 85% of the Centre’s public spaces have been renovated and seven new experience areas have been created. The Centre received $47.5 million in contributions from the Ontario government, private industry, and individuals. The transformation of Agents of Change was completed in 2007 with the opening of the Weston Family Innovation Centre and Telscape Plaza.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario, the Science Centre received $500,000 from the Government of Canada to promote COVID-19 vaccinations for children and their families.
Aging facilities, replacement plans and closures
Due to the aging of the structure, the pedestrian bridge will be closed in 2023. Due to the aging structure, which necessitates the closure of the pedestrian bridge to the exhibits, a shuttle bus route will operate from the main entrance to the main exhibit area at the bottom of the canyon from 2023 until the Don Mills site closes. People will be relegated to Level 6. The detour route will use Mercedes and Ford custom-made minibuses. No plans have been announced to rebuild or replace the aging bridge when the site closes.
On April 18, 2023, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced the provincial government’s plan to replace the existing science centre with a new facility on the Toronto water-front. The site will be located on the site of the former Ontario Place theme park. This relocation plan has sparked widespread opposition from many community and professional groups. The proposed new site will be much smaller than the current site, which will require the science centre to be downsized and possibly remove some exhibits. In addition, the move will force the renaming of the Eglinton Science Centre station on Line 5, which has not yet opened.
The City of Toronto strongly opposes the Ontario Science Centre’s demolition plans and is considering alternative ways to continue operating the museum at its current location. The Architectural Conservation Society of Ontario – ACO and the Toronto Society of Architects – TSA have each issued statements opposing the demolition of the original building. A grassroots group called Save the Ontario Science Centre has held rallies and launched a letter-writing campaign calling on the Ontario government to reverse its decision.
In December 2023, the Ontario Auditor General found that the government’s decision to relocate was “ill-informed, based on preliminary and incomplete cost information, and without adequate consultation or negotiation with key stakeholders.”
On June 21, 2024, the Ministry of Infrastructure announced the immediate closure of the Don Mills Science Centre site. An engineering report released the same day concluded that between 2% and 6% of the building’s roof was damaged by water infiltration. The report recommended limiting access to occupied spaces under the damaged roof panels and reinforcing or replacing the roof panels by October 31.
In addition to the emergency repairs, the complete roof repair will require at least two years of additional repairs and a budget of at least $22 million. The roof material in question is reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC), which makes up 57% of the Science Centre’s roof and is expected to be temporarily or permanently removed from hundreds of buildings across the UK in 2023 due to safety concerns. The material is used in approximately 400 public buildings in Ontario. The OSC building is the only one in the state to be closed so far for such issues, and no other closures were expected at the time of the OSC announcement.
The Ford government said it would immediately close the Don Mills facility rather than conduct repairs to focus on the previously announced relocation of the centre to Ontario Place and The plan is to open the center in 2028. The state said it will look for a temporary site to house the center, with a current goal of January 2026. The decision to close the Don Mills facility rather than rehabilitate it has been met with strong opposition from community leaders, Moriyama & Teshima Architects (the architecture firm founded by the center’s designers), and Ford’s political opponents. At least three science and technology-related donors, including Jeffrey Hinton, have offered to donate up to $1 million to cover the cost of emergency repairs, and Moriyama & Teshima Architects, which is also involved in the repairs, has offered to provide consulting services at no charge. As of July 2, 2024, the state has not directly responded to the proposals.
Ontario Science Centre hours:
What is Ontario Science Centre Hours?
Now, The Ontario Science Centre building in Toronto is closed to the public. Important Announcement. You can check more details on the official site https://www.ontariosciencecentre.ca/
Location
Architecture
The original building was designed in the early 1960s and incorporates a Brutalist design. The complex consists of three main buildings connected by a series of bridges and escalators and sits on more than 40 hectares -100 acres) of parkland. The building was constructed to avoid cutting down or damaging the mature trees in the area so that “the building appears to blend naturally into the environment”. The building follows the natural contours of the Don River Valley, into which the center descends. Ontario’s only IMAX dome theatre opened in 1996.
The Great Hall is the event venue for the Ontario Science Centre and is home to a giant computer-controlled kinetic sculpture, Cloud, by Toronto installation artist David Rokeby. The sculpture consists of a series of blue and transparent cubes that rotate in different ways to simulate the three states of matter: solid, liquid and gas.
For most of its time since opening in 1969, the Science Centre has been home to an amateur radio demonstration station. The station was previously located in the Space Hall and has been relocated to the fourth floor of the centre next to the elevators. The station’s call sign is VE3OSC, and licensed amateur radio operators provide volunteer services daily from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Plaza
Teluscape, an outdoor plaza next to the main entrance, features interactive exhibits. The Lotic Meander, designed by Stacy Levy, is an outdoor installation made of polished and sandblasted granite and cast glass located on the Ontario Science Centre’s Solar Terrace. The work depicts the patterns of water flowing on a riverbed. In 2007, the Ontario Science Centre unveiled the Teluscape Discovery Plaza, which features several interactive exhibits next to the Science Centre’s exterior main entrance.
FUNtain Water Play
As originally constructed, the Science Centre entrance featured a large fountain area arranged as a traffic circle. The fountain effectively blocked the view of the building from the street and provided cooling air to the building. The original fountain was renovated to make the Science Centre’s entrance more welcoming and accessible. The new plaza, named “Teluscape” was designed by Reich + Petch Architects and EDA Collaborative. It opened to the public on September 20th 2006 and is open 24 hours a day.
The new fountain is also a hydrophone designed by installation artist Steve Mann. It is a hydraulic organ that can be played by anyone who enters the space. If you cut off one of the 57 streams of water in the fountain, water flows into the corresponding organ pipe and squeezes out of the sound-generating holes in the pipe, producing a huge sound. The lowest 12 notes in each section of the organ are displayed as pipes arranged in a circle. The North Canal consists of closed hydration tubes (similar to a tuning fork, but powered by water instead of air), while the South Canal is open at both ends (rather than producing sound from both ends like the North Canal does). The North organ console consists of 12 water jets, and the South console consists of 45 water jets.
The organ is fed by three Pentair pumps, each pumping 130 US gpm (8.2 l/s) through 3 in (7.6 cm) diameter water pipes. Air is provided by three Ingersoll Rand four-cylinder air compressors, each equipped with a 25 hp (19 kW) motor. Since the instrument can operate in both air and water, it can be considered a hybrid of a hydrophone and a pneumatic telephone, but it is essentially a hydrophone because it plays by cutting off the flow of water rather than an air hole.
The fountain should be closed and drained in cold weather to avoid ice damage. On November 21, 2007, the water ride was temporarily converted from water to air, becoming one of the first air-powered rides that allowed visitors to play in the jet fountain. In this mode, the fountain becomes a wind instrument. Suikoto may not be used during the winter.
As of 2023, the reservoir will be unusable due to algae buildup, leaks, and pump problems.
Exhibitions
The Science Center has hosted many traveling exhibitions since its opening. The 1982 China: 7000 Years of Discovery exhibition broke all visitor records, attracting more than 1.5 million visitors.
The Strange Matter exhibition opened in 2003 and the Body Worlds 2 exhibition came to the center in 2005, attracting about 500,000 visitors in five months. In 2008 year, the Facing Mars exhibition was held. In year 2010 the center hosted Harry Potter: The exhibition which collected props from the movie series.
Leonardo da Vinci’s studio in two thousand eleven displayed realistic models of Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions based on drawings in Leonardo da Vinci’s manuscripts. Also on display were interactive touchscreen digital replicas of Leonardo da Vinci’s manuscripts the Mona Lisa with The Last Supper. Circus – The Exhibition was held in 2012. The video game history exhibition Games on 2.0 was held from 9th March to 2nd September 2013.
In June 2014, the center opened the “Science of Rock” exhibit, which explored how advances in science and technology have revolutionized music. The exhibit featured eight zones with interactive elements, historical artifacts, information walls, documentary videos, and more. The exhibit was followed by “Knowledge We Trust” (October 4 to December 7, 2014), which explored the role of trust in motivating people to share and use the knowledge I was exploring.
- A Question of Truth
- AstraZeneca Human Edge
- Cohon Family Nature Escape
- Forest Lane
- KidSpark
- Living Earth
- Science Arcade
- Space Hall and the Planetarium
- Weston Family Innovation Centre