2026 Civil, Environmental, Geological and Architectural Engineering Capstone Designs

Six Nations of the Grand River, the largest First Nations reserve in Canada, faces a severe opioid and alcohol addiction crisis. However, the reserve remains critically under-resourced in mental health and addiction services, with no dedicated on-reserve treatment facilities. The Six Nations of the Grand River Rehabilitation and Wellness Centre, designed by SGSC, aims to address the ongoing crisis by integrating Haudenosaunee traditions and values into its architecture and programming. The facility emphasizes holistic therapy, environmental connection and sustainable design as central guiding principles.

The Sudbury Community Arena, home to the Sudbury Wolves OHL team, is 75 years old, deteriorating, and no longer meets community needs. In response to the City's RFP, Form2 is designing a new facility to support international events and revitalize downtown. The design sets a precedent for deconstruction at a large scale by incorporating materials from the existing arena while ensuring minimal disruption to the hockey season through construction scheduling. This choice serves to honour a facility that has long served the community.

Victoria Meadows Village (VMV) proposes a 2-storey, 60-bed long-term care (LTC) facility in Collingwood, Ontario, on a historic site that includes a new-build and a retrofit of the 1890s Victoria Schoolhouse. It addresses Ontario’s LTC crisis of insufficient capacity, poor service quality and resident loneliness. Guided by the Living Building Challenge, the design is engineered to prioritize resident health, happiness and beauty while reducing energy/carbon and using responsible materials.

MYRMEX is a new model for local food production: an integrated complex featuring a hydroponic farm, a market and a café. This system is designed to address the environmental, spatial and social challenges surrounding existing agricultural supply chains. Located on underused surface parking, the project transforms a neglected urban void into a productive landscape, reconnecting communities with the origins of their food. MYRMEX grows, processes, and sells fresh produce, with additional output to food banks in the neighbourhood.

KIAK Consulting is designing the Chamerion Resort, a redesign of the original Lake Okanagan Resort that was burnt down in the 2023 McDougall Creek Wildfires. The new resort provides a family and business-oriented program designed to survive future wildfire events. Our design approach prioritizes the layout of the site for fire mitigation, the design of our enclosure against ignition, and the protection of our major utilities and structure during the event of a future wildfire.

Waterloo’s rapidly growing population has outpaced the availability of spaces where residents can gather, collaborate and participate in community life. HLST Consultants and Designers envision transforming the Waterloo Public Library’s Main Branch into a vibrant hub for innovation, cultural exchange and everyday connection through a retrofit and expansion. The design integrates an outdoor courtyard, a maker’s space, dedicated workspaces and a highly adaptable multipurpose space. Additionally, the implementation of solar panels, high-performance building envelopes and a structural system designed for two additional future floors ensures long-term sustainability, resilience and room for Waterloo’s community to grow.

Skyfield International Stadium is a proposed 50,000 seat capacity venue on the iconic Downsview Airport site, designed to meet Canada’s need for a larger event-ready facility in response to the upcoming FIFA World Cup. To avoid abandonment and ensure year-round use, parts of the build plate are dedicated to entertainment functions, such as an arcade, bowling, retail spaces, etc., with elevated parking. The stadium’s defining feature is its 100m cantilever steel roof truss, clad in ETFE foil cushions to align with the project’s contemporary design. 

The Sarita Bay Wildlife Centre is a 5,000 m2 building located north of the Pacific Rim National Park along the Sarita Bay waterfront. It integrates a marine centre dedicated to aquatic wildlife conservation and research with a visitor centre housing curated educational exhibits. By unifying fragmented efforts and expanding community outreach, the project serves as a hub for conservation, addressing the rapid decline of critical species including salmon, kelp and eelgrass – vital to the region’s delicate ecosystems.

The Municipal Emergency Government Headquarters (MEGHQ) Cultural Centre in Kitchener re-imagines a historic underground bunker as a vibrant community destination. Built as a Cold War fallout shelter, the bunker was decommissioned and left unused for decades, prompting the Region of Waterloo to consider its future. Desi9n’s solution transforms it into a space for learning, gathering and Cold War commemoration. Featuring an impressive cantilever overlooking the Grand River and net-zero energy performance, the project redefines the site as both a historical and forward-looking cultural landmark. 

Moss Park is a Toronto neighbourhood with some of the city’s largest visible encampments. To serve unhoused, at-risk communities, Pivot Design proposes a transitional housing complex at 32 Britain St. The project involves the adaptive reuse of an 1880s office building into a multi-use residential space. The design incorporates adaptability principles to respond to future demographic changes, low-carbon strategies, and the creation of a safe and supportive environment for residents. 

Amica Oasis is an adaptive reuse project that transforms an existing office building in Vancouver’s False Creek into an independent-living senior home. Located beside the rapidly evolving Sen̓áḵw development, the design responds to increasing urban density while emphasizing community and accessibility. The project focuses on sustainable enclosure strategies by overcladding the original brick-faced precast facade to improve thermal performance and renew the building’s identity. Timber canopies enhance accessibility across stepped-back patios and entrances, while a partial floor plate removal expands the atrium into a more open, socially connected core.

Through adaptive reuse of a long-abandoned landmark, Old is Gold re-imagines the First Methodist Church in Gary, Indiana, as a five-storey senior living centre addressing the city’s growing need for affordable housing for aging residents. The project preserves the historic sanctuary while introducing new residential and amenity spaces that aim to foster intergenerational connection within the surrounding neighbourhood. By combining heritage conservation with modern building systems, the design revitalizes a deteriorating site while creating safe, accessible housing that reconnects residents with community life.

KS Squared Consultants is designing a new Multi-Use Recreation Centre for the Town of Ingersoll, Ontario. The project supports the growth of the municipality and the need for a new arena, gymnasium and other community facilities. KS Squared Consultants is delivering structural design, building envelope, life cycle analysis, and recommended construction sequencing and scheduling. Design objectives of functionality and flexibility, biophilia, and sustainability strive to provide a recreation centre that supports net-zero-ready building goals and create a long-lasting community hub.

This townhouse development was designed to accommodate Saugeen First Nation’s growing population by developing higher density housing on the reservation, without encroaching into the surrounding wetlands.  With these factors, and the community’s need for low-cost, fast construction, the design of modular prefabricated townhouses was determined to be a strong solution.  These goals were incorporated throughout the entire design process of architecture, MEP, enclosure, structure, and the construction process. Overall, this practical design addresses the current housing crisis and promotes community well-being for generations to come.

Urban Eden is a research and innovation center in Winnipeg, Manitoba, for vertical farming, a practice where crops are grown indoors in a climate-regulated facility to increase yields per unit area. Despite its benefits, numerous vertical farms have failed across North America due to the high operational energy costs. The project aims to demystify a historically private practice and make vertical farming a more feasible operation in a location that is otherwise incapable of growing leafy greens year-round.

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, is experiencing an urgent affordable housing crisis. In response, Group 16 proposes a climate-resilient, culturally responsive social housing development in District 12. This 62-unit project serves low-income, multi-generational families through thoughtfully designed living spaces integrated with “Mom-and-Pop” shops and commercial areas. Featuring a central courtyard, playgrounds, and vibrant public spaces, the development fosters social connection, economic opportunity and a strong sense of community.

Sun Valley is growing so fast that residents are losing the spaces where they truly connect. They need a community based design that solves local isolation. MODeRa HUB uses a smart modular system to deliver fast and affordable housing that still feels high-quality. We go beyond just housing by building a 15-minute city where essentials are steps away. Centred around a lush courtyard, this project creates a walkable home where people can finally belong and thrive together.

In 2023, the Bush Creek East Wildfire destroyed a significant part of the Scotch Creek community in British Columbia. The proposed rebuild of the Scotch Creek-Lee Creek Fire & Community Hall aims to provide a post-disaster building that serves as a refuge and community recovery hub for first responders and community residents. In response to the increasing frequency of wildfires, the proposed fire & community hall is shaped by a ‘fire resilience line of action’ that utilizes landscaping, building form, enclosure, and system redundancy.

The Bawcutt Library project in Paris, Ontario, revitalizes the underutilized Bawcutt Centre (Old Paris Town Hall) through adaptive reuse and a contemporary mass timber addition. The design combines heritage conservation with modern performance standards using sustainable structural systems, a high-performance building envelope and effective program planning. By improving accessibility, long-term durability and reducing embodied carbon, the project demonstrates how aging civic buildings can be retrofitted to meet evolving community needs while preserving local architectural identity.

Remote fly-in Indigenous communities face persistent barriers to building due to geographic isolation, limited infrastructure and jurisdictional constraints. Following the loss of the only school in Fort Hope, Ontario (Eabametoong First Nation), this project proposes a rebuild. The design integrates modular prefabrication and fire-resilient strategies while enabling expressive, community-driven architecture. The rebuilding of John C. Yesno Education Centre demonstrates how modular construction can support expressive architecture and inspire northern communities to reclaim agency over the buildings they inhabit.

The 132km Guelph to Goderich (G2G) Trail, built on a former railway corridor, attracts over 800,000 users annually. However, a missing bridge over the Grand River in West Montrose forces a dangerous 3 km detour along high-speed rural roads, where seven cyclist fatalities have occurred since 2020. R2T2 Ltd. proposes constructing a modular steel truss bridge leveraging the existing concrete abutments and piers to restore safe, continuous trail access while minimizing project costs and environmental impacts.  

This project is a retrofit design of an existing four-storey office building located in the coastal capital city of Manila, the Philippines. This project focuses on the retrofit of the superstructure. The main goals of this project include updating the structural design to meet modern Canadian Design Code requirements, redesigning floor plans for a grocery store (bottom two floors) and residential usage (upper two floors), reinforcing the superstructure to withstand a large earthquake and hurricane wind loading and minimizing carbon emissions. 

Cape Cod’s seasonal housing market faces a growing imbalance between vacant off-season real estate and increasingly unaffordable year-round housing. This project proposes a scalable, net-zero retrofit strategy that transforms an underutilized seasonal condominium building into a high-performance, year-round housing complex. Using a whole-building systems approach, the design integrates envelope upgrades, cold-climate heat pumps and on-site renewable energy to reduce operating costs and eliminate operational carbon emissions. In doing so, ResideWise demonstrates how adaptive reuse can improve asset utilization while supporting long-term economic and community resilience.

Erb Street West in Waterloo is a four-lane arterial road that struggles to function as both a residential street and a high-capacity corridor, leading to equity and accessibility challenges for residents of Supportive Housing of Waterloo and Beechwood Manor Retirement Home, many of whom rely on mobility devices or non-car modes. SSS Ltd. proposes a complete streets redesign focused on accessibility, including protected bike lanes, wider sidewalks, wider pedestrian refuge islands and a side-running BRT segment to ensure safe, equitable and efficient multimodal access. 

Sea-Channel Solutions is rehabilitating the Morrison Wedgewood Diversion Channel in Oakville, Ontario, using a multidisciplinary approach that combines both water resources and structural disciplines. Built in 1967, the channel no longer has the capacity to protect against major storm events, with flooding expected to cause widespread havoc in the surrounding areas. This project explores the naturalization of the channel into a river and the redesign of an existing pedestrian bridge to transform the previously outdated channel into a green space for the community.

Waterloo’s University Avenue has become a dense mixed-use corridor as student enrollment has increased. However, the existing infrastructure provided for cyclists, pedestrians and transit users is insufficient to accommodate demand of active transportation and transit users. ModalMAX Consulting aims to transform University Avenue into a Light-Rail Transit corridor with state-of-the-art active transportation improvements, focusing on the section between Weber Street and Westmount Road, with the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and surface runoff, while improving transportation equity and safety.

Douglas & Fir is redesigning the superstructure of the Casano-Loutet Overpass, a pedestrian and cyclist bridge in North Vancouver, British Columbia. This project strives to replace the current steel girder and precast-concrete deck structure with a mass timber truss-arch and CLT deck panels to better align with provincial sustainability initiatives and local history. Emphasis was placed on serviceability, durability and sustainability, including detailed vibration analysis, the construction of a roof structure, and the optimized use of locally available materials.

Blast mitigating infrastructure to account for engine testing risks for the University of Waterloo's Rocketry team. In the event the engine explodes during testing, the design aims to mitigate blast overpressure and fragment projection. The selected solution features a modular gabion wall system, surrounded on the exterior by earth embankments, and topped with a steel roof. Opposite the opening, there is a similarly constructed retaining wall to ensure all possible projectile trajectories are captured. The design optimizes safety, ease of constructability and cost-effectiveness.

Ontario faces growing demand for long-term care (LTC) facilities due to an aging population. Traditional construction methods can be costly and slow, limiting the timely delivery of new beds. This project presents the structural design of a four-storey LTC facility in Waterloo using hollow-core precast slabs and GirderSlab’s D-Beam structural steel framing system. This system reduces construction time, floor-to-floor height, material usage and embodied carbon while maintaining structural performance. The final design includes gravity and lateral analysis in accordance with Canadian building codes.

The Ainslie Station ION Expansion is a proposed LRT station and Parking Garage located in downtown Cambridge, Ontario. The station will serve as the terminal station for the proposed ION Phase 2 LRT extension, providing a key transit connection to the Region of Waterloo network. The station features a multi-storey configuration with a central concourse accommodating ticketing services, commercial vendors and passenger amenities. The station is designed to sustainably and efficiently support the operations of the ION trains while enhancing public transit accessibility in Cambridge.

To address the high frequency of animal-vehicle collisions along Highway 3 in Crowsnest Pass, Alberta, Clover Consulting is designing a modular wildlife overhead crossing to provide safe passage for animals while minimizing construction impacts on drivers. The project prioritizes structural performance, constructability, and cost efficiency by incorporating innovative modular construction techniques. By reducing construction time by 30% and construction costs by 25% relative to traditional bridge designs, the crossing aims to provide a cost-effective and practical solution to improving roadway safety for animals and drivers. 

The City of Waterloo is facing an unprecedented student housing crisis, with students suffering from housing instability, financial pressure and increased stress. To address this, Pantheon Consulting is developing the Structural, Civil and Geotechnical design for a new mixed-use, student-oriented residence building on the University of Waterloo’s Lot A, adjacent to their currently under delivery student residence building. The design consists of an innovative concrete-timber composite superstructure built on a hybrid raft foundation and using Low Impact Development principles in the site design. 

The City of Toronto has adopted official policy to promote cycling. However, low winter cycling volume, non-continuous cycling routes, the danger to cyclists posed by vehicles, and the continued threat of Bill 212 (a provincial bill that prevents bicycle lanes from being built that remove an existing traffic lane) hinder the city’s pro-cycling objectives. With this information in mind, the DownTORide team is designing a weather-protected and continuous grade-separated cycleway that serves downtown Toronto and does not remove any existing traffic lanes.

Saint Thomas More Collegiate (STMC) is a high school located in Burnaby, British Columbia, originally constructed in 1960. With seismic hazard values increasing under the recent National Building Code, STMC is in great need of a seismic retrofit to ensure the school remains safe in the event of an earthquake. Additionally, STMC needs increased student capacity to combat the growing urban population of Burnaby. This project will deliver both a seismic retrofit to the vintage building and a 500-student-capacity upgrade via a new building attached to the existing structure.

Universal Steel Consultants (USC) is located in Waterloo, Ontario, dedicated to providing affordable housing within the Region to families. USC will retrofit an older industrial building into a multi-storey residential complex based on the original structure and additional expansion. The focus of the project is maintaining structural integrity with modifications to bracing and framing requirements due to code and occupancy changes. The building design is also expected to contain cost-effective units, optimal capacity and reduced carbon emissions through material reuse.  

Riverside Dam is an aging dam located along the Speed River in Cambridge, Ontario. The dam was originally constructed to control flows for a mill downstream, which has since closed. Due to the dams deteriorating condition, the City of Cambridge has requested a new replacement to be constructed. Dam Good Consulting takes on this challenge to design a replacement dam structure for the river. The dam design includes a combined structure with a fish ladder, sluice gates and weir. 

Mine-Craft Solutions has developed a structural restoration design for a collapsed emergency egress intersection in an active underground trona mine. The design integrates structural analysis, constructability planning and remote installation methods to restore safe emergency access while meeting performance, durability and operational requirements in a constrained underground.

Destination Wasaga is a revitalization initiative aimed at boosting tourism in the Wasaga Beach area. However, the region currently lacks the residential and commercial infrastructure needed to support increased tourism activity. In response, ModuLADRS proposes a modular, mixed-use residential and commercial development for Wasaga Beach’s B1 Zone. The design emphasizes modularity, constructability and sustainability to enable efficient mass production. The primary objective is to develop an accessible, structurally sound steel–timber building that is highly modular and readily constructible.

This project aims to redesign University Avenue West from Westmount Drive to Marsland Drive into a more efficient corridor with reduced delays and greenhouse gas emissions and improved safety. This is achieved through the introduction of permeable pavement multi-use paths, real-time adaptive signal controls with the help of smart traffic technologies and revised transit stops along the stretch. 

FreeFlow Consulting proudly presents an innovative high-speed water transit system connecting Toronto and the Niagara Region. The proposed hovercraft service is designed to ease congestion and reduce peak travel times from over two hours to approximately 45 minutes. The project applies transportation modelling to evaluate feasibility and ridership demand, while developing a preliminary design for the Port Weller terminal and its integrated transit connections. 

Due to climate change, temperatures are reaching new extremes. In Canada, air conditioning is not a requirement in new construction. Therefore, heat-related illnesses are a growing concern during the summer months in humid regions. The COOLective aims to provide an accessible, free cooling centre for the Waterloo community to mitigate heat-related illnesses during the summer. The net-zero cooling centre consists of an enclosed air-conditioned building and a pavilion. 

VertiStack Design Group’s capstone project investigates a modular transitional housing solution for refugee and immigrant families in Canadian cities, using Hamilton, Ontario, as a case study. The project proposes a stacked, prefabricated housing system designed for rapid deployment, affordability and family-oriented living on constrained urban sites. Phase 2 development focuses on structural feasibility, modular layout logic, constructability and sustainability considerations to support realistic municipal implementation.

Access to education in northern Ontario is inhibited by skilled labour shortages and the time required to construct schools. Whereas current solutions, such as portables, help to address these issues, they fall short of providing the same quality of structure expected in urban areas of the province. Since all Ontarians deserve access to quality institutions, ThinkModules Ltd. has designed a rapidly deployable, universal modular school system to improve access to this quality in all remote regions of the province. 

Our project develops a detailed replacement design for the aging Riverside Park Dam on the Speed River in Cambridge, Ontario. The existing low-head dam is structurally deficient, disrupts fish passage, and poses flood and safety risks to nearby park and rail infrastructure. We are designing a climate-resilient gravity dam with an integrated nature-like fishway, improved scour protection, and future-ready monitoring and micro-hydropower provisions that enhance public safety, ecological connectivity and long-term performance while aligning with municipal climate goals and contemporary dam safety design guidance standards.

Vaughan Mills, a major regional shopping destination, is experiencing significant traffic congestion, inefficient internal circulation, and limited multimodal accessibility. Gridlocked N Loaded is advancing a refined internal roadway redesign through detailed geometric layout development, signal optimization, and traffic modeling. The project aims to deliver a feasible and cost-effective solution that improves traffic operations, enhances safety for pedestrians and cyclists, and supports the City of Vaughan’s long-term mobility, accessibility, and multimodal transportation objectives.

E.T. Seton Area 3, a reach of the West Don River in Toronto, requires restoration of channel bedforms to improve ecological function and increase resilience to rapidly fluctuating flows in a highly urbanized watershed. Our proposed solution is sediment augmentation, which involves feeding sediment of a specified grain-size distribution into a river and allowing the natural river processes to move and place the sediment to restore channel bedforms and morphologies. Unlike conventional engineered solutions, sediment augmentation restores degraded geomorphic processes while improving ecological function.

Greenhouse gas emissions and adverse climate change impacts continue to rise, contributing to dangerous effects to human health. Increasing carbon dioxide concentrations are especially a concern in indoor conditions, causing decreases in cognitive function and the ability to focus. GHG Ltd. aims to develop a system that utilizes microalgae to decrease indoor carbon concentrations. Specifically, a photobioreactor that can be adjusted to most building conditions while maximizing efficiency and aesthetics will be built.

Pond 88 is a dry stormwater pond located in Town of Newmarket, which is not meeting current water quality standards for the Lake Simcoe Watershed. Stormwater Shrimps (SWS) is designing a constructed wetland pond with Low Impact Development (LIDs) to improve climate change resiliency, water treatment and pond storage. Hydrological modelling is conducted through PCSWMM to assess the pond’s flood resiliency and water quality levels.  

Invasive northern pike threaten muskellunge populations in the Kawartha Lakes by migrating downstream through navigational locks on the Trent-Severn Waterway. To address this, Kawartha Hydraulics Consulting is designing an innovative submerged high-velocity jet barrier that creates a velocity field above deterrence thresholds while preserving navigability and Parks Canada operating water levels. The scope includes sizing of pumps and nozzles, computer-aided design models, computational fluid dynamics analysis, constructability and safety review, implementation phasing, and capital and operations cost estimates.

This capstone project supports the Vuntut Gwitchin Government’s goal of reducing diesel reliance in Old Crow, Yukon, through hybrid microgrid expansion. Phase I evaluated renewable generation, energy storage, and surplus energy use alternatives using data analysis and modelling to identify an optimal system. Phase II develops a detailed engineering design for the selected configuration, including wind turbines, community-scale greenhouses and battery energy storage. The project addresses technical feasibility, Arctic logistics, operational planning and future readiness for implementation.

The City of Collingwood was asked to pay nearly $270 million CAD to increase the treatment system capacity of the Raymond A. Barker Ultrafiltration Plant from 32,000 m3/day to 59,000 m3/day. This treatment plant services several communities in Simcoe County along the 57 km water supply pipeline running from Collingwood to New Tecumseth. Liquid Assets Ltd. has been retained to explore groundwater solutions for communities facing water supply issues, which rivals the treatment plant upgrade in capacity and cost.

The District Municipality of Muskoka has established a goal of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050. Three closed landfills within the District currently contribute approximately 62% of the waste sector’s GHG emissions due to methane generation from decomposing waste. Cottage Consulting has proposed the implementation of a bio-cover system that utilizes passive methane oxidation to treat landfill gas prior to its release into the atmosphere, providing a low-maintenance, cost effective solution that aligns with the District's goals.

Ontario’s landfills are nearing capacity, prompting municipalities to explore more sustainable waste-to-energy pathways. Beyond the Bin Consulting is assessing whether hydrogen production from landfill gas can replace a Region in Southwestern Ontario’s current landfill gas to electricity system. The team is developing a proof-of-concept that models hydrogen production pathways, integrates carbon capture, and evaluates economic performance, system design and implementation constraints. The project also examines local end-use opportunities to determine how hydrogen could generate revenue, reduce emissions and strengthen long-term regional sustainability. 

Erosion along Lake Erie’s shoreline is widespread, with severe localized erosion occurring where historical anthropogenic manipulation exists. In the study area, an unnamed watercourse was realigned and channelized through a concrete culvert to accommodate roadway and residential development. This infrastructure was inadequately designed to withstand coastal and channel erosion and has failed, destabilizing adjacent slopes, damaging property and exporting large volumes of sediment into Lake Erie, negatively impacting terrestrial and aquatic habitats. The proposed solution focuses on restoring a geomorphically stable outlet, improving public safety, maintaining hydraulic conveyance and enhancing habitat conditions.

The City of Toronto is facing a major infrastructure crisis as aging trunk sewers exceed their service life, risking environmental damage and costly collapses. To address degradation and additional strain from significant wastewater increases due to population growth, this project focuses on evaluating a portion of the city's trunk sewer network located along Highland Creek. NextWave will select and design the optimal rehabilitation technologies for each segment of the trunk sewer network with an emphasis on sustainable and cost-effective solutions.

Following severe wildfires in 2016, the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo has faced ongoing challenges associated with increased sediment loads at the Fort McMurray water treatment plant. HSRAM Consulting was retained to design the implementation of a coagulation-based pre-treatment system for the plant’s reservoirs, with an emphasis on adaptability and ease of maintenance. The reservoir retrofit is intended to reduce nutrient loading by providing a controlled settling zone that promotes gravity-driven removal of nutrient-bearing fines. 

St. Adolphe is a flood prone agricultural community located 30km south of Winnipeg, Manitoba. The St. Adolphe Ring Dike Expansion Project focuses on improving flood protection for the community. Fortis Solutions completed a detailed site characterization and hydraulic modelling to assess existing conditions and flood risks. Using these findings, the team developed a comprehensive ring dike expansion design that enhances resilience while considering geotechnical constructability, environmental factors, and long-term performance to support sustainable, community-focused flood protection infrastructure.