Clayton Community Centre is North America’s first Passive House certified community centre, and the largest non-residential certified project in Canada.
Designed around people, the facility combines four aspects of the City of Surrey’s community services —recreation, library, arts and parks— in a seamlessly integrated facility. The social fabric of the culturally diverse and rapidly growing Clayton Heights neighbourhood led to a design that focuses on providing gathering spaces to support community connections. The unique mix of spaces, imagined and developed in close engagement with the community, combine arts and culture programming including performing and visual arts spaces with recreational activities including a gymnasium and fitness centre, and a branch library. These services are supported by shared social spaces, as well spaces for community-led programming, including a community kitchen and garden, a workshop, a café, and child-minding, preschool, and childcare spaces.
Previously operating through different funding and staffing models, the four key services now work collaboratively in the new centre under a new governance structure, facilitated as part of the design process.