Light House, an organization focused on advancing circular practices in the built environment, has announced the launch of the Building Material Exchange program (BMEx).

BMEx was created with an aim to help reduce waste management costs as well as the amount of construction materials that end up in landfills.

Through the BMEx program, businesses in and around Nanaimo, Victoria, Cowichan Valley, Duncan and the surrounding islands with excess, unused, or salvaged building and/or design-related materials, are matched with others in need of resources to begin or complete projects.

“BMEx is for any business in South or Central Vancouver Island that has a surplus of building or design-related materials they don’t need,” said Gil Yaron, managing director, Circular Innovation, Light House. “Their perfect match is out there – a local business or organization that is seeking more affordable materials. Through BMEx, we’re making these connections possible while reducing landfill costs and creating an opportunity for paired businesses to get their hands on high-quality, raw materials for a fraction of virgin material costs. We are excited for the connections that will be made and the positive environmental impact we expect BMEx will have.”

Materials accepted through the BMEx program include concrete, aggregates, asphalt, metal, wood, glass, carpet, doors, flooring, drywall, and fixtures.

The program is free to sign up and participate in and is funded by the Regional District of Nanaimo’s Zero Waste Recycling Fund, the Capital Regional District, and the Cowichan Valley Regional District.

South and Central Vancouver Island businesses that are interested in learning more about BMEx or who would like to get involved, are encouraged to attend or participate in BMEx Challenge events in Victoria and Nanaimo next month. Both BMEx Challenge events are free to attend and are presented by Coast Capital Savings.

Additionally, there will be an opportunity for eight businesses to pitch to an audience of local community members, investors, and innovators about a challenge they are facing related to incorporating circular economic principles into their operations or products.

“The BMEx Challenge events will be similar to Dragon’s Den or Shark Tank, but with a focus on circularity,” said Yaron. “The audience can offer up possible solutions to unwanted materials, and they are also invited to meet one-on-one with the pitching companies to establish partnerships.”

At the Nanaimo Challenge, Habitat for Humanity Mid Vancouver Island Executive Director Jeff Krafta will share his idea to establish a physical hub for the receiving and resale of excess and salvaged building materials. The Material Exchange Hub will expand Habitat’s offerings to include a full range of building materials, including wood, siding, roofing and gutters.

This physical hub will also aim to help fill a gap in the exchange community for those who have occasional and inconsistent amounts of materials to offload. At the Challenge, Habitat aims to connect with local contractors interested in using the Exchange Hub as well those interested in donating extra materials from job sites.

Later this fall, BMEx participants will also have access to BMEx Marketplace, an online platform designed to exchange, donate, or acquire excess, unused, or salvaged building and/or design-related materials.

“The BMEx Marketplace will include a custom interface for those involved with building materials so they can list materials they have and find what they need fast,” said Yaron. “The online community will be vetted to ensure confidence in the exchange materials and partners, with detailed product profiles so users have access to more information about materials they are sourcing. A resource hub will also be included that will include educational content like articles, guides, and best practices on sustainable construction, material reuse, and waste reduction tips.”

To learn more about BMEx, click here.

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What are the boundaries of architectural practice? For three firms in Western Canada, they lie far beyond buildings. Patkau Architects, designer Omer Arbel, and Sputnik Architecture have developed branches of their work dedicated to the fabrication of products, furniture, lighting and artwork. All three of them deploy these parallel practices as forms of research, with a significant impact on their architectural thinking.

Patkau Architects began their fabrication practice over 30 years ago, with what John Patkau refers to as “analytical models” of their own built work—not intended as representations, but as tools for working through the formal characteristics of their buildings. As John puts it (with considerable modesty and a touch of irony) “our firm was never ‘successful’,” which led to slow periods when they had to generate their own activity. During these fallow periods, their “well-provisioned” workshop became the site for the analytical models, and eventually, at the instigation of Patricia Patkau, for bolder experiments with materials. A cluster of bent plywood shelters was one of the first full-scale prototypes to emerge from this work, developed as a contribution to Winnipeg’s Warming Huts project, then dispatched to London’s V&A Museum. That project’s experimentation morphed into the steel Cocoons for the Tokyo flagship store of fashion house Comme des Garçons. This was only possible because alongside the Patkau’s research into origami—the elusive quest for a sheet structure generated by a single fold and a single bend—they had developed original breakform processes, with new machines of their own invention. Their fabrication work has since expanded into furniture, lighting design, and production, most of it carried out in-house. 

While it’s clear that their formal discoveries are often made during hands-on testing of materials, the Patkaus don’t shy away from digital tools. Their competition entry for Daegu Gosan Public Library in Korea deployed parametric modelling software Grasshopper to translate sheet-inspired research into a reciprocal structural frame made of timber components. They took a similar approach for the Temple of Light in Kootenay Bay, British Columbia. Completed in 2017, this project evidences collaboration with other skilled makers: they worked with local, internationally experienced timber fabrication firm Spearhead. The Temple applies discoveries about form and material assemblies made on the library and other unbuilt projects, perching eight petal-like shells on existing foundations to enclose a sanctuary. While they are currently developing a products division distinct from their architectural practice, the Patkaus fundamentally see their fabrication work as research into the design and construction of architecture.

One of the many talented individuals who have spent time working in the Patkaus’ office is Vancouver-based designer Omer Arbel. Besides the Patkaus, Arbel has worked for architects including Enric Miralles and Peter Busby. From each of them, he took away a different experience of practice—from what he describes as the “operatic” mode of Miralles’ office to the “quiet prayer” of the Patkaus. But while Arbel came “within a hair” of getting licensed, he grew disillusioned with what he saw as the dominant role played by the architect in North America: as a service provider. 

A unique opportunity led him down a different path. While still at Busby’s office, Arbel independently produced four prototype furniture designs for display at New York Design Week in 2005. Uncomfortable with the number four (stemming from a personal sense of numerology), he felt he needed a fifth element, more as a compositional anchor than as a design for production—but his furniture fabricator had gone bankrupt. In the few weeks left before the event, he worked with friends to put together a hand-cast glass luminaire to be that anchor piece. It was a hit, and that piece—the first Bocci light—remains in production today. The success of this product eventually led him to launch the lighting firm Bocci with friend and client Randy Bishop. 

Since then, Omer Arbel Office has produced, besides an array of lighting products, glassware, furniture, set designs, sculptures, a book and—yes—architecture.  Rather than a name, each design bears an accession number—as though each is a distinct realization of an essentially undifferentiable and potentially infinite font of creativity. All of the work comes from direct and daring experimentation with materials. Arbel, perhaps drawing on his early experience with Miralles, seeks a “celebratory” approach to making, rather than what he sees as the overly critical culture nurtured in schools. In contrast to work born of an author’s imagination—including the products of parametric design—he finds it much more exciting to “let the form occur.” He reflects, “If you explore what materials themselves want to do, you can discover a much more radical form, with a fraction of the resources.” 

The result is a dizzying array of over 100 material and formal experiments, and counting. Arbel says of these experiments: “They fail all the time, they’re a total failure!” Yet it’s impossible to look at this body of work and not see success. From the extremely slow accretion of nickel to copper wire in the jewelry of 71.2, to the sandblasting of pine to produce chair 68.3, Arbel embraces growth and decay, creation and destruction, in equal measure. Seemingly uncomfortable juxtapositions of material—the blown glass and copper wire of vase 84.0, or the hay-cast, saw-cut concrete of Bocci’s headquarters 86.3—result in a strange, even excruciating beauty. In his clifftop house (94.2), he salvages cedar burls as concrete formwork and then, audaciously, repurposes them as cladding. Such works are testimony to Arbel’s willingness to risk everything: perhaps a glassblower’s attitude, applied to architecture.

Grains seem to be having a moment in maker culture. Hay—or in this case, flax straw—was also the focus of a recent project by Anvil Tree, the fabrication satellite of Winnipeg’s Sputnik Architecture. Peter Hargraves, founder of Sputnik, created Anvil Tree as a sister company that could help realize Sputnik’s designs, and a home base for his life-long interest in sculpture. Flax straw is the key material in Lantern, a project inspired by conversations about the European tradition of straw structures between Anvil Tree creative director Chris Pancoe and visual anthropologist and artist Vytautus Musteikis. Pancoe and Hargraves met Musteikis while building a room for Sweden’s ice hotel in 2022; they brought him to Canada to work with them on Lantern and continue the dialogue. 

Lantern was woven from agricultural waste and salvaged wood last fall as part of Holiday Alley, a Selkirk event celebrating creativity.
Left on display over the winter, it was set ablaze for this year’s spring equinox. The intention is to make the burning of a straw sculpture an annual community event in Selkirk, as it is in agronomy-based cultures around the world. 

Such social—even ritual—events are a forte of Anvil Tree. The firm is responsible for the fabrication of most of Winnipeg’s Warming Huts—an annual event for which Sputnik was a founding organizer, and for which the Patkaus built their bent plywood shelters in 2011. Anvil Tree carries out ice harvesting and installation for ice carving competitions in Winnipeg, as well as for rural events like the Trappers’ Festival in the Pas, northern Manitoba. Their grove of glowing bicycles, suspended from trees, has become a prominent part of Winnipeg’s Culture Days celebrations. 

While Lantern was assembled by hand, Anvil Tree is also dextrous with parametric modelling and plasma cutters. Lean In is the first of a number of anticipated artistic/urbanistic interventions for Sputnik’s masterplan in Fort Francis, Ontario, where they are working with Rainy River First Nation. A new box office for Winnipeg’s Dave Barber Cinematheque used plasma-cut perforated steel to solve several tricky service and security problems for Winnipeg’s main art-house cinema. They’ve also built a restaurant in remote Churchill, Manitoba—a tricky logistical challenge. In such work, the company demonstrates a tight symbiosis with the architects and interior designers of Sputnik Architecture. 

But Anvil Tree’s first love remains art. For artist Wayne and Jordan Stranger’s monument to Indigenous leader Chief Peguis at the Manitoba Legislature, the Strangers are casting the bronze for the 14-foot statue in Peguis First Nation. The steel interior armature was fabricated by Anvil Tree in their workshop in Winnipeg. 

It’s in this facility—a former welding workshop that now includes a woodworking studio, a metal shop, a finish shop and ancillary buildings for materials and equipment—that Hargraves plans to see the full realization of Anvil Tree’s mission. “The goal is to have this constant collaboration with artists that are here; and now, if they want to do something big, they have access to a workshop,” says Hargraves. The second-floor workshop spaces will be used to train visiting artists in fabrication techniques, as well as to host design-build studios for architecture students.

As they carry their architectural practices into new realms, Patkau Architects, Omer Arbel, and Anvil Tree manifest a broader definition of the Greek architektōn—master maker—than is encompassed by professional practice alone. From “quiet prayer” to operatic ambition, their fabrication practices provide a wealth of lessons in the artistic, technical and social potential of architecture.

Lawrence Bird, MRAIC, is an architect, city planner and visual artist based in Winnipeg. 

As appeared in the September 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazine

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WINNER OF THE 2024 RAIC RESEARCH AND INNOVATION AWARD

Patkau Design Lab is the research and fabrication wing of Patkau Architects. More than simply a workshop, it engages in speculative experiments that test the potential of new ways of working with common materials. Through iterative development, attention to detail, and a refined aesthetic, this experimental work has evolved into fully realized furniture pieces, pavilions, and building elements.

The lab believes that understanding material, force, and form at a deep level is essential for architectural innovation. ​Its inaugural project, Winnipeg Skating Shelters, was inspired by the way a small plastic satchel, made of two flat sheets, expands when gently squeezed into an appealing volumetric form. The lab simulated this deformation with sheets of plywood, then expanded the exercise with multiple sheets to create larger volumes and more sophisticated compound curving surfaces.

Turning to more robust materials, the lab began applying the same techniques to thin sheets of stainless steel, eventually developing the OneFold sculptures (winner of the RAIC Innovation Award, 2015). These self-structuring vaults were derived from a bending process that the lab had to invent, because no available steel worker believed it could be done. The technique was evolved to create Cocoons, a series of steel pavilions for the Comme des Garçons store in Tokyo’s Ginza district.

The challenge of shipping the Cocoons led to the insight that a single straight seam-line could be found in what was otherwise a compound curving surface. This led the team to study warped surfaces composed of rule lines, similar to the curves formed by straight lines in DNA’s double-helix structure. They found that these rule lines could be rendered in standard timber units to create exceptional forms. These materialized in the design proposal for Daegu Gosan Public Library, the petal-like walls of the Temple of Light in Kootenay Bay, BC (2018), and the tree canopy-inspired ceiling of Arbour House, in Victoria, BC (2024).

Further experimentation stemming from the Winnipeg Skating Shelters resulted in Twist Chair, which appears as a single bent piece of plywood, but is in fact two nested pieces to give the construction hidden structural depth. Attempts to hybridize Twist Chair with Onefold resulted in the Spingfold Chair, whose sweeping curves result from the spring-like elastic deformation of the steel. The discovery that this chair was difficult to manufacture led to the idea to surround the steel with leather, and then to the embedding of metal anchors within formed and laminated leather—the basis for the Joey Stool.

While pursuing its research, Patkau Design Lab has made numerous efforts to open its methodologies and perspectives to the public, students, and practitioners. This outreach has included articles, lectures, presentations, workshops, and the book Material Operations (Princeton Architectural Press, 2017), which chronicle their thinking and processes. The intent is for this outreach to be generative, providing tools and inspiration for others to find their own innovations. 

Jury Comment :: Patkau Design Lab is a Canadian architectural practice that has developed a system of enquiry over years of research, affirming the value of curiosity, close observation of materials, and imagination. They articulate their principles and position relative to the profession, situating themselves within the discipline with rigour and a critical awareness of the development of current types and methods of innovation and their implications. Their work challenges Canadian architecture and modernism through material explorations and formal innovations.

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A Brock researcher is aiming to shape the future of sustainable construction through the use of engineered bamboo, a material that’s considered “unconventional.”

With funding from a Government of Canada Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council’s (NSERC) Discovery Grant, Amir Mofidi, associate professor of engineering, is using advanced techniques to fabricate new forms of engineered bamboo as both an economical and practical alternative for construction purposes.

“When thinking about construction materials, the industry predominantly relies on steel and concrete, which are high in carbon emissions, and faster growing soft wood timber, which requires 30 to 40 years to grow,” said Mofidi.

Mofidi, who is internationally recognized for rehabilitating existing concrete structures, noted that a common sustainability approach in the construction industry is to prolong the lifetime of existing buildings, bridges and other structures.

“The construction industry moves quickly, so it’s important to innovate the supply chain with alternatives for fabrication with highly renewable resources,” said Mofidi.

Giant bamboo is a fast growing, strong and durable material that comes in the form of hollow cross sections that can be as wide as 250 millimetres. They can grow to minimum heights of three to four metres and some species can even grow as fast as one metre a day and may only need four to five years before they are mature enough to harvest.

Mofidi noted that bamboo’s hollow shape limits its use in construction. As a result Mofidi is pursuing the possibility of growing non-invasive bamboo species in a laboratory that can survive in -20C to -30C weather with the goal of finding a species strong enough for construction that can be grown locally outdoors.

“We are mindful of the need to protect surrounding agriculture and have selected varieties that have their own root structures,” said Mofidi. “Ultimately, we want to develop partnerships with the Niagara farming community and provide an economically justifiable crop.”

It’s important to note, however, that these crops are not to be confused with bamboo species commonly planted in residential yards, that have a reputation for invading neighbouring properties. Mofidi highlighted that in many countries, farmers will plant a row of non-invasive bamboo around their fields to protect against insects and flooding.

“The giant bamboo is an impressive plant with potential that is not fully recognized yet,” said Mofidi. “There are even varieties with roots that can purify contaminated water.”

While modern kitchens and bathrooms often use engineered bamboo for cabinetry in the form of tiny strips shaped together, bamboo has been used in traditional architecture in China and East Asia for thousands of years.

“The realization that giant bamboo has the potential to become the construction material of the future came to me a few years ago while in discussion with two undergraduate students,” said Mofidi.

The students approached Mofidi because they wanted to do research relevant to their backgrounds in Hong Kong and Central Africa, which are both areas known for the use of bamboo in construction.

“I knew concrete and timber, but bamboo was a new field of research for me,” said Mofidi. “Sustainability in construction is something that fascinates me, and I quickly realized there is huge potential here.”

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The federal government intends to resurrect a post-war effort to ramp up housing construction across Canada, but with a 21st-century twist.

A consultation process will begin next month on developing a catalogue of pre-approved home designs to accelerate the home-building process for developers, Housing Minister Sean Fraser said on December 12.

It’s a reboot of a federal policy from the post-Second World War era, when the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. developed straightforward blueprints to help speed up the construction of badly needed homes, Fraser said.

“When many thousands of soldiers were returning home to be reunited with their families at once, Canada faced enormous housing crunches,” he said.

“We intend to take these lessons from our history books and bring them into the 21st century.”

Many of the post-war home designs including those for modest detached homes known as strawberry box houses are still scattered in neighbourhoods across the country to this day.

The modern-day version of the catalogue will instead focus on low-rise builds, such as small multiplexes, student housing and seniors’ residences, then explore a potential catalogue for higher-density construction.

The goal is to better ensure housing builds can be fast-tracked for approval from the CMHC and others, while also promoting larger-scale production through factory-based construction.

“I have seen estimates from experts in the field indicating this could cut up to one year off the time for construction on a project,” Fraser said.

The government isaiming to have the catalogue ready sometime next year.

Fraser said it will go hand-in-hand with the national building code. The code, which the minister said the government is planning to update, offers guidelines that are only enforceable if a province or territory chooses to adopt them.

The idea of a catalogue of pre-approved blueprints was also one of several recommendations in a report co-authored by housing expert Mike Moffatt that was released earlier this year called the National Housing Accord.

“This is potentially very transformative,” Moffatt said in an interview.

Creating a catalogue will help get shovels into the ground faster by speeding up the process of approval for everything from financing to municipal permitting, he said.

Moffatt, who is a senior director of policy and innovation at the Smart Prosperity Institute, has become an influential figure on housing policy in the country. After publishing his report this summer, Moffatt attend the Liberals’ cabinet retreat to talk about housing.

On the catalogue, Moffatt added the blueprints also have the potential to boost productivity.

“One of the big challenges we’re going to have building enough homes is having enough skilled labour. And certainly we need to increase the number of tradespeople we have. But we also need to find ways to be more productive. And this would help get us there,” Moffatt said.

The federal government has so far moved forward with several recommendations in the accord that Moffatt and other stakeholders put together.

“We made sure that we brought together builders and developers in the real-estate industry, along with academics, but also with the not-for-profit side,” Moffatt said.

“Because we essentially (locked) everyone into a room for a day and tried to figure out what we can all agree on, that, I think, gives these recommendations credibility.”

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Over the past decade, engineered mass timber has evolved from a new and innovative choice of structural material to becoming almost mainstream. Canadian architects have played a major role in the material’s acceptance in the North American building industry, with British Columbia architects at the vanguard of harnessing Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) around 10 years ago. 

As the three in-construction projects featured on the following pages demonstrate, Canadian mass timber expertise continues to advance—and in Michael Green’s case, it is garnering international projects. Moreover, architects including MTA with Acton Ostry are looking beyond the material’s vaunted renewability and carbon-sink aspects to make their mass-timber buildings even more environmentally sound. And lastly, architects like Intelligent City are integrating and overhauling the very process of designing and building with mass timber. 

The material choice still requires something of a helping hand in terms of subsidies and investment. Though few architects speak freely about it, choosing an engineered wood structure is usually a more expensive way to build—at least for the moment. But that could change quickly as the immense carbon costs of construction become reflected in pricing and in regulations. And as more innovative and impressive projects near completion and prove their mettle, Canadian architects will continue to show that they remain at the forefront of mass timber innovation.

Limberlost Place

An innovative structural system and pre-fabricated envelope set new standards for mass timber public buildings.

LOCATION George Brown College, Toronto, Ontario

ARCHITECTS Moriyama Teshima Architects + Acton Ostry Architects

Even while still under construction, Limberlost Place is hauling in acclaim. Part of George Brown College’s waterfront campus in Toronto, the building has pulled in over a dozen awards, including the RAIC’s 2023 Research & Innovation in Architecture Award, and a Canadian Architect Award of Excellence. Expect more accolades upon its projected completion in January of 2025. 

At 10 storeys high, Limberlost Place is one of the world’s tallest mass-timber institutional buildings. Buildings of this typology must meet onerous construction codes and design considerations; this one will serve 3,400 students and staff. Teaching and gathering spaces occupy the full structure, including a tall-wood research institute, childcare centre, classrooms, and areas for lounging and study. MTA’s Vancouver-based joint-venture partner, Acton Ostry Architects, has already established a benchmark in designing the 18-storey Brock Commons Tower at the University of British Columbia, at the time the tallest mass-timber project in the world. 

Like Brock Commons, Limberlost Place is a hybrid structure of CLT, concrete, and steel. But where Brock Commons’ CLT was mostly hidden under drywall, roughly 50 per cent of Limberlost’s is exposed to view, including its nine-metre-span beams and every column in the building. Its 10-storey height clocks in four storeys above the conventional pre-CLT code, “so we had to be meticulous about every element,” says MTA principal Phil Silverstein, who is the construction administration lead on the project. 

While many North American mass-timber structures are still sourced from overseas suppliers, Limberlost has taken a made-in-Canada approach. Its prefabricated envelope system arrived in two-storey panels assembled in Windsor, Ontario, and delivered just-in-time to eliminate on-site storage needs. The prefab wall panels have been manufactured up to 11.7 metres high and are quickly assembled on site and supported by jack posts.  The CLT for Limberlost Place—manufactured largely from fast-growing black spruce—comes from Quebec-based Nordic Structures. 

As we walked through Limberlost mid-construction, we could already sense the dramatical verticality of its interior, dominated by a three-storey-high glazed foyer connected to smaller common spaces—“breathing rooms,” as design partner Carol Phillips calls them—on the second and third levels. The open volume of the foyer is anchored by a 16-metre-high glulam column, the heaviest member of the entire project, weighing in at 22,000 pounds. “Timber doesn’t like to transfer loads very well,” notes Silverstein. “Timber likes to work vertically.” 

In horizontal terms, a major innovation is the ultra-generous 9.2-metre span of the teaching spaces. It’s essentially a “beamless” construction system: its main structural member is a timber-concrete slab band, composed mostly of CLT, topped by a layer of reinforced concrete. “It’s an extremely shallow system,” notes Phillips, allowing for greater floor-to-ceiling heights as well as column-free spaces ideal for large-group instruction. 

The building has environmental attributes well beyond its use of mass timber. Solar chimneys on the east and west façades will draw air up and through the building from operable windows, to harness the stack effect and establish a natural convection system for temperature regulation. The building informally meets Passive House standards and meets the energy targets for LEED Platinum status, according to the architects, although they will apply for LEED Gold. 

The most salient value of the project is that it will provide a paradigm for many more sustainable mass-timber public buildings in the future. “This isn’t a one-off,” says Silverstein. “It’s a starting point.”

Flora

Canadian mass timber expertise is being tapped for this project in Europe.

LOCATION Nanterre, France

ARCHITECTS MGA | Michael Green Architecture + CALQ Agence d’Architecture

The first thing you notice about Flora is the sensuality of its form. Even in mid-construction, its rounded corners, jogged massing, and prow-like base distinguish it from the other rectilinear buildings around it. Its principal designer, Michael Green, avers that the building’s voluptuous shape is entirely logic-based, following the irregularities of the site and the material economy of avoiding 90-degree corners that often end up as wasteful underused space. 

Flora is a nine-storey mixed-use complex, with offices and retail slated for the lower floors, and a mix of market and non-market housing above. Here in Nanterre, a fast-growing suburb of Paris, Green has teamed up with local architecture firm CALQ Agence d’Architecture to bring his knowledge, design, and powers of persuasion to France. CALQ’s website states that the firm’s main reason for using mass timber is to combat “le réchauffement climatique.” Green concurs. And Woodeum, the Paris-based real-estate developer and the project’s client, promotes itself as a specialist in low-carbon wood architecture—making Canada’s best-known mass-timber advocate a natural choice for a partnership. 

This summer, as Green surveyed the busy construction site in person for the first time, he noted some of the distinctions between building in France versus in his homeland. For instance, the interior of Flora is enlivened by a spiral staircase—a charming, fun, and space-saving element. In Canada, the building codes disallow spiral staircases, because they are allegedly dangerous—although, as with so much in life, risk calibration is partly a subjective matter.

Although the French remain détendu about risks that furrow the brows of Canadian code-writers, they are rigorous about certain other requirements that enhance sustainability and quality of life, notes Green. Their national building code includes the stipulation for cross-ventilation, for instance, while our national building code has nothing of the sort for residential construction.

In Green’s most recent TED Talk, he unpacked his bid for the next big transition in mass-timber engineering and design: a system based on biomimicry. He foresees a future of plant-based materials whose lignified tissues and cellulose are reinforced in a way that will allow the architecture to carry loads in the same way as tree branches, with an aesthetically pleasing curvilinearity that would have an inherent structural logic. And instead of the standard spruce-fir-pine now used for most Canadian mass timber, the choice of plant will be based on what’s local and ecologically appropriate. “It might be bamboo in one region, and then grass, or salal, or hemp in another,” he says. His concept “is going to be a big thing. It’s not happening yet, but it will in ten, twenty years,” he avows. “As humans, we’re very resistant to the idea of starting over. But we need to rethink all aspects of the built environment.”

Back to the here and now: French authorities, like their North American counterparts, are still nervous about transitioning the entire structural framework of buildings to mass timber. That’s not the way Green would have it. The ground floor of Flora is concrete, and so it’s essentially a hybrid structure.  All over the world, including here in Canada, notes Green, “concrete use is driven largely by code. So, you have different trades, you have two different structural materials, you have finger-pointing.” It’s not the cheapest or the most efficient way of building, but it will change, he expects, or at least hopes. “We’re still stuck in a version of the old system. It’s time to move on.”

Intelligent City

An integrated system of design and manufacturing is the project.

LOCATION Delta, British Columbia

In some ways, the Intelligent City factory in Delta, B.C., seems like some sort of sci-fi film set. A giant robot lumbers around in a caged space, looking oddly like a Meccano dinosaur. And yet this metallic creature may well be the future master builder of the region. Controlled by a petite woman holding what looks like a PlayStation remote-control device, the robot is building mass timber components for the firm’s first real-world project. 

“We saw that the delivery of infill urban housing—multi-housing in particular—was difficult to develop,” says Cindy Wilson, the company’s co-founder with architect Oliver Lang. “Every time you have a new person come to a team, they have their own way of thinking how things should be done. So how could we curate a system that is more integrated and could be repeated at scale?” 

By unifying and distilling the messy process of construction into software-controlled prefabrication, the firm essentially smooths over the schism between design and manufacturing, and streamlines the custom design work that is usually dedicated to discrete buildings. Since the Intelligent City team has more control of the overall process, they can also ensure more price stability. This was evidenced in one of their current projects. “During Covid, the price of construction almost doubled,” notes Wilson. “But importantly, about 60% to 80% of a building’s superstructure is our components, so those prices remained stable. We’ve also developed an ecosystem of a supply chain.”  

As previously reported in Canadian Architect, Intelligent City—the sister firm of Lang Wilson Practice in Architecture Culture (LWPAC)—opened its manufacturing facility in Delta, B.C., two years ago. Now the factory is thrumming as its staff and ultra-high-tech software produce the largely pre-assembled components for the “product proof,” a kind of miniature sample building that staff work on to determine where and how the components will later be assembled on-site. 

The firm’s first “real-world” building will be the Vancouver Native Housing Society’s Khupkhahpay’ay Building, a nine-storey housing project to be built in East Vancouver by GBL Architects and Ventura Construction Corporation. Intelligent City is producing the building’s Passive-House façade system. 

The two-year period from factory inception to the launch of actual construction reflects the typical process of testing, commissioning and certification of the building systems and the robotics, but this first real-world project will smooth the way for more projects, built faster, says Wilson. To create a system that would not only be repeatable and scalable but also customizable, the Intelligent City team has streamlined the entire process of building, from preliminary design to construction, so that design and manufacturing are integrated from the start. The fruits of this work are most impressive at the end stages: remote-controlled with proprietary software, the factory’s giant robot lifts, positions, and custom-cuts oversized panels of mass-timber walls, floors, and ceilings. The cuts are unique to each product and can vary in size and shape, allowing electrical channels and ventilation ducts to be embedded in the components before they even leave the factory. Crucially, the customization is instantly and economically adjusted for each component and each project by altering the instructions to the robot. 

The result is a convergence of two processes—architecture and construction—that are normally sequential, separate, and rarely align as well as we’d like them to. There is usually no downtime from delays in material delivery or labour shortages. Once on-site, the components will be assembled much more rapidly than in conventional on-site construction, with much of the electrical and ventilation elements already embedded in the structural framework.

Wilson and Lang believe that Intelligent City’s approach will have an impact not only on the take-up of climate-friendly mass timber, but also in addressing the housing affordability crisis. “The more control we have over the building, the more we can control costs,” says Wilson. “This is where we can really make a difference in affordable housing. It’s not just time, materials, or labour. It’s how we can roll out the creation of housing at scale, in a systematic, predictable way.”

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PROJECT Park by Sidewalk Citizen, Central Memorial Park, Calgary, Alberta

DESIGNER Studio North

PHOTOS Hayden Pattullo

At the edge of Central Memorial Park, just south of downtown Calgary, an unassuming one-storey pavilion opens into a slice of paradise. A lemon bush reaches skyward to meet a cascade of wooden ribs, pyramiding up to two large skylights. Surrounding trees cast their shadows on the translucent walls, creating a dance of leaf silhouettes framed by tall, pointed arch window frames. Glass garage doors open to the park beyond, bringing verdant views and a flood of daylight into the room, the main dining space for Park by Sidewalk Citizen.

The park is Calgary’s oldest, founded in 1911, and Victorian-era glass-and-iron conservatories were an inspiration. “How else can you do something like that? There’s a nice feeling in here,” says Matthew Kennedy, co-founder of Studio North and the project’s lead designer. The designers also uncovered historic images of garden rooms—semi-enclosed, trellis-lined spaces for picnicking—that ringed the park 100 years ago. “That was a strong reference for the structure and aesthetic,” explains Damon Hayes Couture, Creative Director at Studio North. In the entryway of the pavilion, X-shaped motifs CNC-cut into plywood walls are patterned after the ornate window screens of Alberta’s first public library, a neoclassical building located at the heart of Central Memorial Park. 

Park by Sidewalk Citizen results from a can-do approach by client, designer, and the City of Calgary. Several operators had cycled through the park’s existing 30-seat restaurant, which sits adjacent to the new pavilion. Attracting Sidewalk Citizen—a local bakery and restaurant with a civic-minded reputation—was seen as a win for bringing a friendly, culture-minded presence to a tough part of the city. 

To make the restaurant viable, a renovation and larger space were needed that would deliver a wow factor on a tight budget. Studio North’s design-build approach was perfectly suited for the task. “We’re able to be really nimble, and to carry through a vision from start to finish, especially when it’s something this unique,” says Studio North co-founder Mark Erickson. “With the prefabrication and digital fabrication aspects, it leads to more design involvement in construction,” adds Hayes Couture. “It’s much harder to separate those two disciplines.” 

The integrated roof and wall structure in the dining room is made from 160 sheets of plywood, which were CNC-cut in Matthew Kennedy’s garage over 150 hours. Because of the size constraints of the plywood panels and CNC cutting bed, the lattice is composed of multiple layers of plywood, staggered to avoid intersecting seams and structural weak points. The nail-less structure was slotted together on-site, using 137 linear metres of dowel connections. 

Polycarbonate was chosen for the outer walls as an impact-resistant material that would let light in, and transform the restaurant into a glowing box at night. 

The City facilitated the project by permitting it as an enclosed patio space, which could be dismantled without affecting the existing restaurant or the heritage park. The total cost of the construction, including renovations to the existing restaurant, was just $550,000. “We pushed the budget really hard on this,” says Kennedy.

Extending the use of the space into all four seasons, a central fireplace and HRV system provide heating in the winter. Passive solar gain into the space also contributes to keeping it cozy. In the warmest days of summer, the skylights and garage door open up to encourage breezes.

While the solarium operates day-to-day as a restaurant, its stunning design makes it a natural as an event space. In its first years of operation, Sidewalk Citizen has hosted salon dinners and over a dozen weddings, with the solarium morphing from ceremony space, to dining room, to dance floor.

Thoughtful design flourishes pepper the space. A mirror rings the lower edge of the east wall, adding to a sense of spaciousness. A single clear-glass, operating window at the southwest corner offers a leafy view. 

And there’s a personal touch in the dining room’s subtropical plant collection: the fig tree at the room’s west end was grown from a cutting of a specimen in designer Damon Hayes Couture’s own solarium. Hayes Couture’s house addition was an early design by Studio North, from a decade ago, and following the construction he joined the Studio North team. Hayes Couture currently has a few more seedlings taking root, so the offspring of his tree—along with the ever-evolving creativity and design talents of the group—are sure to grace Studio North’s future work.

CLIENT Sidewalk Citizen | DESIGN TEAM Design—Matthew Kennedy, Damon Hayes Couture; Parametric Design—Nicolas Hamel; General Contracting—Matthew Kennedy; Fabrication and Assembly—Dan Vanderhoorst; Site Carpentry—Ryan Peters, Matthew Peters, Jeremy Adams | INTERIORS Field Kit | STRUCTURAL RJC | MECHANICAL Remedy | AREA 116 m2 | CONSTRUCTION BUDGET $550 K | COMPLETION October 2019

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PROJECT Focal on Third, Vancouver, BC

ARCHITECT ph5 architecture inc.

TEXT Bruce Haden

PHOTOS Graham Handford

It can feel oddly refreshing when a good architecture practice is not focused on slick marketing. PH5 is one such firm. The work and life partnership of Peeroj Thakre and Henning Knoetzele has been quietly producing thoughtful work in Vancouver for many years. Their care and attention to detail for the type of projects that often don’t have ambitious design agendas (or plump budgets) is a consequential contribution to the city. 

This is especially evident in PH5’s most recently completed building, an office block named Focal on Third. My previous office was a close neighbour to this project, and I watched its construction with curiosity and appreciation. The building is at the southern edge of the developing North Mount Pleasant tech area, a zone anchored by Hootsuite’s offices, with many smaller-scale technology and design firms located nearby. In this neighbourhood of new corporate builds deploying multiple up-to-the-minute architectural strategies—some good, some not so good—the craft and confidence of Focal on Third stands out.

The strong presence of this small building was hard-won by PH5 on a site with many limitations. Architecture can be thought of as created in the tension between external massing strategies and internal program needs. In this context, Focal on Third is an especially difficult challenge. First, the massing strategies were dictated to the centimetre by City requirements for setbacks and height limits on a constrained site. Accordingly, the massing of Focal on Third is a result of external proscription, not creativity. And the as-yet unoccupied program of speculative office shell space creates no real pressures for internal forms that are distinctive or special in a way that can set the stage for moments of architectural identity.

This means that for this particular building type, on this particular site, the range of possible expressions was very narrow. Once massing and program are excised, all that is left is the design of the shell to produce identity and character. 

Fortunately, in the hands of PH5, the shell is masterful, giving the neighbourhood a textured icon. The material palette is limited but expressive: in addition to the necessary glass, two earth tones of terracotta cladding panels are crisply bracketed by sharp chocolate-brown mullions, with the vertical mullions dominant. This colour combination creates a richness that is exceptional for Vancouver, where new towers are often cloaked in a nearly monotone dark blue-and-grey—a too-dull palette in a climate where the sky is often dull. In contrast, the warmth of Focal on Third’s terracotta creates a sense of solidity and permanence, while avoiding the trap of using splashes of bright colour as an appliqué to lend life to an otherwise drab building. The extended verticals provide a pleasing shadow play, further enhancing the texture and movement of the façade.

The framed blocks of terracotta are oriented vertically, allowing the building to further stand out: the concrete residential towers that dominate Vancouver’s skylines have a ubiquitous horizontal expression. This choice of orientation, combined with the pixelation of the panels, creates a rich proportion and rhythm on the façade. And although pixelated facades are becoming more common, the strategy also provides variety in the interior, and a contrast to the rigid five-feet-on-centre grid that dominates the design of office façades.

Focal on Third is a bit like PH5 itself: neither the building nor the practice seek out attention, but both deserve it.

Vancouver-based architect Bruce Haden, MRAIC, is principal of FLUID Architecture. 

CLIENT Tradeglobe Consulting Ltd. | ARCHITECT TEAM Henning Knoetzele, Peeroj Thakre, Aitziber Altuna Iztueta, Mike Knauer | STRUCTURAL Wicke Herfst Maver | MECHANICAL Yoneda & Associates | ELECTRICAL Nemetz & Associates | LANDSCAPE Durante Kreuk Ltd. | CODE Celerity Engineering | ENVELOPE Aqua-Coast Engineering | GEOTECH GeoPacific Consultants | TRANSPORTATION Bunt & Associates Engineering | ENVIRONMENTAL Keystone Engineering | CONTRACTOR Ventana Construction | PREFAB FAÇADE Phoenix Glass Inc. | AREA 2,787 m2 | BUDGET $15.3 M | COMPLETION summer 2022

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A new report on the use of wood in the design and construction of kindergarten to grade 12 schools has just been released. The report, titled Wood Use in British Columbia Schools, has been co-authored by BC- based Thinkspace Architecture Planning Interior Design and Fast + Epp, structural engineers, and provides a practical guide to the use of wood in K-12 schools. 

Commissioned by Forestry Innovation Investment, a Crown agency responsible for promoting the BC forest industry, the report is intended to be a resource for school districts, administrators, design professionals or anyone working in the education sector who is curious about the use of wood in school design and construction – but doesn’t want to get mired down in a highly technical research paper.  

All three companies are based in British Columbia, and the report focuses on local case studies as well as local building code requirements. There are, however, are a number of broader applications and lessons that can be learned and applied to design and construction opportunities in schools across Canada, particularly as they relate to alternative solutions for three- and four-storey wood construction. 

The report, which was compiled with input from structural engineers, code consultants, and sustainability experts, takes a fact-based approach to the topic. It also seeks to dispel some of the myths surrounding the use of wood in large-scale construction projects, including the notion that wood structures are inherently unsafe in the event of a fire.  

An excerpt from the Executive Summary lays out the report’s approach: 

Wood, particularly in British Columbia, is an inherently valuable resource for the design and construction community, with a huge opportunity to increase its use in both new construction and renovations and upgrades. Wood is an amazingly useful and resilient material. Thanks in part to advances in the industry, wood can now be used in applications that were traditionally reserved for concrete and steel – and it should be a regular part of our architectural, engineering, and construction vernacular.

One sector that deserves special attention when it comes to an increased use of wood in design and construction is the education sector, with a focus on K-12 schools. 

Each school project, regardless of whether it is new construction, an addition / expansion, or a retrofit, represents an opportunity to further the provincial and federal governments’ desire to reduce carbon emissions and footprints, work towards net-zero, and support local forest-based economies. Additionally, school districts have ready access to homegrown technology that is leading edge, globally. In other words, there are many reasons to use wood in schools. 

When asked about the goals for the report, lead author Ray Wolfe, Architect AIBC, noted, “We wanted to produce something that was useful for a wide audience. We’re strong proponents of the use of wood in schools, and want to make the subject – as well as the ideas around using wood – accessible to as many people as possible. We think we’ve done that here. We hope it will spark useful discussions, and ultimately lead to more K-12 schools being designed and built with wood.” 

The report explores a broad range of topics, in particular:  

• the various potential use of wood for structural and non-structural applications, including the current trend towards mass timber structures 
• highly relevant case studies on recently completed schools / schools under construction / schools in design, including three- and four-storey mass timber schools, and notes on costing for these schools compared to traditional construction methods 
• key considerations and processes for using wood in schools, including sustainability, student health and well-being, and ease of construction  
• an overview of the sustainability implications of building with wood  

• the challenges to address with building codes, specifically the need for alternative solutions in municipalities that currently limit the height of combustible (wood) structures to two storeys 
• recent advances in wood use technology, including new structural capabilities of wood, the use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) when designing schools with wood, and the use of modular wood construction 

Each of those topics is explored in detail in separate chapters, and then summarized at the end of the report. Some of the key findings include:  

• wood is a highly viable option for school construction for a number of reasons, including its nature as a sustainable product, a reduced carbon footprint, health and well-being of students, and ease of construction 
• hybrid mass timber construction, which combines wood with limited steel and concrete use, is an alternative to mass timber-only or steel-and-concrete construction – particularly in jurisdictions that are still getting comfortable with the use of combustible construction for larger schools 

• wood use alone does not make a building inherently sustainable, and high-performance sustainable design is needed to ensure environmentally sound schools 
• mass timber, when it is adequately designed and fabricated, does not need to be encapsulated in order to meet fire resistance ratings as laid out by building codes, meaning that its natural beauty can shine through and provide biophilic benefits to students and staff  

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Eleven building projects across the United States and Canada recently received the prestigious North American Copper in Architecture (NACIA) award from the Copper Development Association (CDA) for their outstanding application of architectural copper and copper alloys.

Since its launch in 2008, the NACIA awards program has recognized 189 copper buildings in the United States and Canada, including notable buildings such as the Colorado State Capitol, Harvard Law School, The Plaza Hotel, and St. Patrick’s Basilica.

‎“‎The 2022 NACIA winners exhibit copper’s endless range of applications through innovation in new and historical restoration projects,” ‎said Larry Peters, Project Manager & Architectural Applications Specialist for CDA. “Answering the growing demand to meet environmental goals using sustainable building materials, the 2022 winners demonstrate a perfect balance of maximizing green materials and longevity, creating architecture masterpieces for generations to come.”

The 11 winning projects were selected by a panel of judges based on the presence and use of copper and the significance of the project at hand – whether historic, modern, or otherwise.

New Construction:

CHUM Auditorium

Architect-Design:
NEUF architect(e)s, Montreal, Quebec

Architect-Design:
CannonDesign, Chicago, Illinois

Revision of the design, execution and construction supervision:
Jodoin Lamarre Pratte architectes, Montreal, Quebec

Revision of the design, execution and construction supervision:
Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux architectes, Montreal, Quebec

Havergal College Upper School

Architect:
Diamond Schmitt, Toronto, Ontario

Lubber Run Community Center

Architect:
VMDO Architects, Charlottesville, Virginia

Joseph the Worker Catholic Church and Day Chapel

Architect:
Sparano + Mooney Architecture, Salt Lake City, Utah

Restoration:

3-D Copper Dome for Athens FUMC

Sheet Metal Contractor:
CopperWorks Corps, Decatur, Alabama

Ornamental Manufacturer for the Cupola:
Ornamentals, Cullman, Alabama

Adler Planetarium Dome

Designer:
Hutchinson Design Group, Barrington, Illinois

Architect:
Wight & Company, Chicago, Illinois

Lupton Hall Roof Replacement

Architect:
Hoffman Architects, New York, New York

Mississippi County Courthouse Dome Replacement

Architect:
Revival Architecture, Inc., Scott, Arkansas

DC Court of Appeals Roof Replacement

Architect:
Building Conservation Associates, Inc., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Summit On the Park Aquatic Center

Roof Consultant, Specification Writer:
Roofing Technology Associates, Livonia, Michigan

Utah Governor’s Mansion

Roofing:
CMR Construction & Roofing, Haltom City, Texas

Further details on each project, including participants and photos can be viewed at copper.org.

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The construction phase of the Coronation Park Sports and Recreation Centre is underway following the City of Edmonton’s approval of the $153 million budget in late 2021.

The project is an architectural partnership between hcma and Dub Architects, in association with FaulknerBrowns Architects. New renderings of the facility include the International Cycling Union-sanctioned velodrome that is expected to attract large, international sporting events, according to developers. 

With plans for completion in 2026, Coronation Park Sports and Recreation Centre will connect to the award-winning Peter Hemingway Fitness and Leisure Centre, providing a wide range of complementary programming. 

hcma Principal Michael Henderson says: “We are thrilled that Coronation Park Sports and Recreation Centre is moving ahead, adding a striking form to a much-loved landscape and providing an innovative blend high-performance cycling and triathlon sports alongside forward-thinking community recreation – blurring the lines between competitive and recreational sport for people of all ages and abilities.”

“This building type will be unique in the world – a public place where you can participate in a triathlon on a -30° winter day next to casual users of the fitness and play spaces. The juxtaposition of recreational activities will be electrifying. We look forward to seeing this new facility in an established part of the city contribute towards the social life of the sport community and surrounding neighbourhoods,” says Dub Architects Principal, Michael Dub.

The improvements to the Coronation Park Sports and Recreation Centre were funded in part by a Government of Alberta Community Facility Enhancement Program grant of $850,000 provided by Alberta Culture and Status of Women. Argyll Velodrome Association and World Triathlon Edmonton provided additional funding.  

“It’s great to see our community grants being used in such an innovative way. The improvements to this facility will benefit thousands of residents and high-class athletes alike, and this exciting and groundbreaking design will help revitalize the community. I look forward to seeing – and using – the facility when it is complete,” says Minister of Culture, Ron Orr.

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DIALOG has officially filed for the patent of its Hybrid Timber Floor System (HTFS), a zero carbon prototype that received an award for Fast Company’s “2021 World Changing Ideas” in architecture earlier this year. Once approved, the system could lead to the introduction of mass timber structural solutions into the supertall tower category. 

The Hybrid Timber Floor System (HTFS) combines cross-laminated timber panels with steel, and concrete to build high rise towers with a significantly reduced carbon footprint. When incorporated with other smart building technologies, such as photovoltaic panels, algae bioreactors, or other renewable energy solutions, towers as tall as 105-stories could achieve carbon neutrality.   

“Floor plates typically comprise approximately 70 percent of building material utilized in high-rise towers. By focusing our talents and resources on creating more innovative floor plate solutions like this one, we believe that we can make a major dent in the environmental footprint of the built environment in the not-so-distant future,” said Craig Applegath, AIA, a founding Partner at DIALOG and one of the project’s key leaders. 

The patents have been filed by the international design firm in Canada, the United States, the European Union, Australia and China.    

With post-tensioned steel cables encased in concrete bands and embedded into Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) panels, DIALOG’s HTFS will allow for a 40-foot (or 12-metre) column-free span, where standard CLT design systems currently span just three-quarters of that distance.

“This HTFS will maximize the use of sustainably harvested wood in high-rise construction in the most cost efficient, energy efficient, and elegant manner. In doing so, the design will also give occupants access to sustainable, beautiful, exposed natural wood in their spaces,” said Thomas Wu, a structural engineer and Partner with DIALOG.   

Once the patents are approved, the structural system will then require localized approvals to coincide with area code requirements around fire, health, and life safety. While awaiting patent approval, DIALOG is working in partnership with EllisDon to develop scaled panels for thorough structural testing.  

“The hybrid panel presents a unique value proposition allowing for carbon sustainability, the ability for offsite prefabrication, and long-span exposed ceilings desired by many commercial tenants,” said Mark Gaglione, P.E. the Director of Building and Material Sciences with EllisDon, “We are excited to be working with DIALOG to help make this concept idea a reality as soon as possible,” 

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Intelligent City, the sister company to Vancouver architecture firm LWPAC, has begun building net-zero, mass timber urban housing projects in a newly opened factory on River Road in North Delta, British Columbia.

Intelligent City’s factory combines several technologies to design, manufacture, and deliver buildings as customizable one-stop solutions. An adaptable building platform made from large mass timber assemblies forms the foundation. Its co-founders Cindy Wilson and Oliver Lang, who have worked in architecture for 25 years, have led the company since its foundation in 2008.

The setup for the factory involved developing and commissioning robotic technology to facilitate manufacturing, with the goal of producing affordable, high-performance turn-key homes. This marks the completion of an extensive testing agenda to verify the performance of the company’s Platforms for Life (P4L) building system in accordance with the Encapsulated Mass Timber Construction (EMTC) building code.

“Today marks a very important milestone for Intelligent City. We are leading the housing industry through a product- and platform-based approach to address affordability, livability and climate change issues. We are now the first in the world to use advanced robotics to automatically assemble mass timber building systems that have been tested to meet the latest building code and net-zero standards,”  said Oliver Lang.

Recently, Intelligent City won the Breakthrough Energy Solutions Canada competition, and the company has also received financial support from a variety of funding programs in Canada. The BC Government supported Intelligent City’s business with $460,000 in funding from the CleanBC Building Innovation Fund.

“When it comes to tackling the issues of climate change and housing, we know we need to be at the leading edge of innovation,” said Minister Ravi Kahlon. “This type of tech and ingenuity are the type of solutions that advances B.C.’s building sector in a sustainable way. Using mass timber is key to creating a more resilient forest sector. It’s the construction material of the future and it allows us to rethink what’s possible. We are happy to support these types of projects through our CleanBC building innovation fund.”

Intelligent City is focused on the construction of mid-to-high-rise urban housing as well as commercial buildings through the convergence of mass timber, design engineering, automated manufacturing, and proprietary software. The company is currently working on projects totaling 2,880 homes in Canada and 1,400 homes in the U.S., many of which are supported by BC Wood.

To offer flexibility, the company has integrated its building platform in a proprietary automated software and manufacturing workflow. Both allow for a high level of customization without creating additional complexities or cost. The company is expected to deliver its first projects in early 2022 in Vancouver, BC.

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PROJECT Bamboo Bamboo, Yangshuo, Guilin, China

DESIGNER llLab

PHOTOS arch-exist photography

As frequent concertgoers know, you’ve scored a double bang for your buck when your show’s opening act turns out to be stellar. If you’re lucky, you could be rocking out even before the headliner enters the stage.

But what happens if the supporting act is a sequence of architectural moves, rather than a band? Can a display of design agility heighten an audience’s pre-show mood and anticipation? If a recent bamboo pavilion designed by part-Canadian design group llLab (pronounced “el el lab”) is any indication, the answer is a standing ovation.

Located on an island bifurcating the Li River in Guilin, China, the project is impossible to ignore. It’s the new grand entry to Impression Sanjie Liu, a huge open-air theatre set in a singular karst landscape with cliffhanging bamboo and river-etched valleys. Composed of a sequence of woven-bamboo canopies and walk-through lanterns, llLab’s pavilion is the first thing you see when you arrive on the island to take in Impression Sanjie Liu’s signature nighttime dance-theatre show. (The group and its show are inspired by the ballads of Sanjie Liu, a songstress from Chinese legends.) llLab’s arrangement draws you in, literally and figuratively, and whether you focus on its details or zoom out to its placement in nature, it doesn’t take long to realize why the pavilion won the ArchDaily award for Small Project of the Year in 2021.

llLab is a truly global practice: partners David Correa, Hanxiao Liu, Luís Ricardo and Taichi Kuma are based respectively in Toronto, Shanghai, Porto and Tokyo. The client brief, Correa says, called for an intervention that would open the imagination of theatregoers as soon as they got to the island. When audiences arrived before, they disembarked at a bus stop that did nothing to enhance the theatrical experience. So llLab proposed a transition zone with a performative dimension—a pathway that surprises and delights even before the show gets underway.

The outcome is an installation that invites engagement. It’s made up of four undulating canopies, each seemingly propped up by clusters of bamboo, and four lanterns large enough to stand inside and walk through. These elements—as well as smaller lanterns placed along the pathway for illumination—are made by encasing (and concealing) slender metal structural supports in an ethereal layer of woven bamboo strips, like draping canvas over and around tent poles. The bamboo for the project was harvested in the immediate surroundings, while the engineering behind the design stems from the team’s interdisciplinary background. Correa teaches bio-inspired design, digital manufacturing, and robotic wood fabrication at the University of Waterloo; he and Kuma studied computational design and construction at the University of Stuttgart. (Ricardo, Liu and Correa met while working at haascookzemmrich Studio 2050, a local architecture practice.) Ultimately, the design relies as much on a meeting of nature and artifice as it does on old ideas meshing with new concepts.

“In China, there’s an appetite for finding new expressions that draw on Chinese culture rather than on Western sensibilities,” says Correa. “Cities, towns and corporations want structures, spaces and visual identities that tell a story of who they are. They want something that feels new, but that is not foreign.” Impression Sanjie Liu was no exception. The bamboo pavilion draws heavily from regional bamboo weaving techniques that have been perfected over centuries, giving it a decidedly local feel. And while the shapes of the canopies and lanterns may be a novel addition to the landscape, they sit comfortably in their geographical context. As such, the pavilion offers a direct link to the region’s history and dramatic topography. More to the point, it creates a tangible path to its rich cultural tradition in narrative theatre.

When it comes to ways of doing things in China, Correa says design and fabrication are not far apart. It’s not unusual for a firm getting a commission for a chair to also manufacture it. “It’s a very dynamic design process,” he adds. “The timeline between acceptance of a design to completion is very short, and once a project starts, [clients] want it ready tomorrow.”

At one point, llLab sent a rendering of the bamboo pavilion to the client for review, and a week later, it was already in construction—even though the design was not yet final. But this fits in with Correa’s penchant for “happy accidents”: a lack of complete control that mimics nature. “This was the first time we worked with bamboo,” he says. “There are many species of bamboo, and unlike working with dimensional lumber, every piece is different. It is critical to find ways to manage some of its unpredictable behaviour on a project.” After much modelling and prototyping, llLab came up with the idea of using a minimal steel structure as a skeleton for the canopies and lanterns. This also allowed each component to be slightly different, lending the project an organic feel.

The result is a succession of lightweight structures that neither competes with nor outshines the stunning landscape. Rather, it forms a sheltered geography that serves as a place to look out and wonder at the surroundings—and to build excitement for the main act at the end of the pathway. Still, the bamboo pavilion in Guilin has also become an attraction in its own right, and to the delight of people coming to see a show of spectacular proportions, they’ve scored a surprise opening act. Talk about making an entrance.

Susan Nerberg is a writer and editor based in Montreal.

CLIENT Impression Sanjie Liu | DESIGN TEAM Hanxiao Liu, Henry D’Ath, Lexian Hu, Alyssa Tang, Chaoran Fan, Luis Ricardo, David Correa | CONTRACTOR GCPS Interior Decoration Finishing Ltd. | PROJECT MANAGEMENT Lihua Mi, Dalin Chai, Hao Zhang, Guoyang Wan | STRUCTURAL Lalu Partners Structure Consulting | BAMBOO LANTERN, BAMBOO WEAVING TECHNIQUE, STRUCTURAL RESEARCH MANAGEMENT Shanghai Tan Tan Props Ltd. | RESEARCH TEAM Qimin Cui, Geng Meng | BAMBOO LANTERN, BAMBOO WEAVING AND STRUCTURAL INSTALLATION Shanghai JD Bamboo Architectural Design & Engineering Ltd. | GROUND PAVING EXECUTION Haiming Liu, Jing Liu, Changfa Cai, Hequan Yu, Huofeng Liang, Daizhong Yu, Xiuping Tao, Baoxing Li, Ruoque An | AREA 1,900 m2 | BUDGET  ¥8 M | COMPLETION July 2020

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As a child, Anishinaabe/French artist Caroline Monnet watched her parents renovate old cottages into homes. The powerful act of transforming raw construction materials into life-affirming shelters has been behind much of her artwork, including early films about people mobilizing to build houses.

In her current work, these ideas are expressed through large-scale ornamented construction materials: Monnet carves Indigenous-inspired patterns into Styrofoam insulation boards and plywood panels, and folds Tyvek into elaborate wall hangings, or embroiders it with Anishnabek motifs.

The work draws attention to the housing crisis in Indigenous communities, and the lack of a federal vision to address the problem. “First and foremost, it’s about having a dialogue around the terrible conditions in Canada’s backyard,” says Monnet, noting how many reserves fail to meet basic provisions for clean water and shelter.

The work also aims to counter misinformed perceptions that the dilapidated housing of reserves, as shown in many media images, represents the character of its inhabitants. “We imagine people reflecting the houses they live in,” she says. “How can we make these places with more pride?” One of her pieces embeds a Winston Churchill quote onto pink Styrofoam: “We shape our homes, and then our homes shape us.”

Monnet points out how the housing provided to Indigenous communities is both scarce and expensive, but also sterile and generic. In counterpoint, her elaborately decorated artwork signals how homes have the potential to be crafted with care, and for their every surface to carry cultural significance. 

The patterning of her current pieces is inspired by traditional Anishnabek beadwork and birchbark basket designs. “Those baskets are created using an origami process of folding and biting the bark with your teeth,” explains Monnet, whose mother is Algonquin from the Maniwaki region of Quebec.

The symmetrical designs in her art also resemble city maps, or QR codes. “They talk about the marks left on ancestral land in the face of progress,” says Monnet. “They also act almost as microchips to transfer knowledge across generations.”

Resilient to the Bones is part of Monnet’s current solo exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, titled Ninga Minèh—Anishinaabemowin for “promise, I give it to you.” At the centre of the exhibition is a two-part installation, Pikogan (meaning “shelter”). In one half of the installation, a wigwam-inspired dome is made of PVC tubing, evoking utopian models of architecture and pointing to the lack of clean water in many Indigenous communities. A second, compartmentalized structure called “It Cracks with Light” is hung with Monnet’s artwork. “Every surface is a place for ornament,” says Monnet. “It’s about bringing hope into homes.”

Ninga Minèh is on display at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts until August 1, 2021.

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Over the past year, DIALOG have been designing a prototype for a supertall zero-carbon hybrid timber tower; we’re calling it the Beacon of Hope. At 105 stories, the Hybrid Timber Tower (HTT) would be the tallest building in Canada; it would also be one of the most sustainable.

The HTT features façade-integrated photovoltaics (PV) and a natural gas-fired district energy system combined with an innovative algae bioreactor to reduce operational carbon to zero. A patent-pending, prefabricated, composite Hybrid Timber Floor System (HTFS) combined with a diagrid steel structure and concrete core slashes embodied carbon almost in half compared with an all-steel-and-concrete system. The HTT would contain 14 times as much mass timber as the current world record-holding tall wood building. For a structure of this scale, we consider it a huge design achievement.

Rendering by Tango Visual Studio

We believe that we need big statements like this. DIALOG has joined many other Canadian architecture firms in signing the AIA’s 2030 Challenge pledge to make all our buildings carbon neutral by the end of this decade. It’s an ambitious target and, if we’re being totally honest, a daunting one. Accounting for around 40% of total global carbon emissions, the building industry is a big part of the problem. It can feel like a heavy weight to carry. That’s why this project has been a beacon of hope for our integrated practice—it has invigorated and energized us.

One simple question started the entire journey: How can you build a clear span of 40 feet for a Class A office building using mass timber? Architect Craig Applegath and structural engineers Thomas Wu and Daria Khachi sat down at opposite ends of the country to try and find the answer.

“I was in Vancouver, and Daria and Craig were in Toronto, and during the meeting, I kept hand-sketching this and showing it to them,” Thomas told me, holding up the original sketch.

“We came up with this Hybrid Timber Floor System, and proved it by calculations and computer modeling,” Daria added. “We had it peer-reviewed by other engineers, including Jim Montgomery in our Edmonton studio. So that set the tone – that yes, we can do this. We can go long-span, 40 feet.”

Rendering by Tango Visual Studio

Mass timber is currently constrained because it can only economically span about 26 feet, suitable for residential structures but not for Class A office space. The HTFS encases post-tensioned cables in steel cages, in a concrete trough that is then recessed into a CLT wood panel to achieve those longer spans.

The team recognized early on that this innovation could help wrest mass timber out of its small-span niche, but they needed to make sure it could be constructed and be cost-competitive. That’s where a chance meeting comes in.

At a trade show booth in Portland, Craig Applegath met Mark Gaglione, manager of building and material sciences with EllisDon.“We were at a big mass timber conference,” says Mark, recalling how he first heard about our project. “Our R&D team got pulled in for their mass timber expertise, and our Toronto buildings group also got involved, because they’re the ones with the pricing information for the supply chain.”

Rendering by Tango Visual Studio

Mark and the team at EllisDon were able to demonstrate that not only was the system viable from a constructability standpoint, but the cost premium for the system was in line with other structural innovations.

Once the team had a proven concept, they wanted to demonstrate that it could work in any building type. That’s what spurred the idea of a supertall structure.

“It’s six buildings that are just stacked on top of each other,” says project architect Cam Veres. “You could make this into six towers and still apply all the same principles.” (In fact, DIALOG is currently working on a 40-story version of this prototype with a major Canadian developer.)

“A supertall also proves that these technologies can be done at scale,” Craig noted. “And, frankly, a supertall building attracts attention. We want attention to be attracted to the potential of these technologies to solve a huge problem. We have a huge climate change problem. We need an equally huge solution.”

Rendering by Tango Visual Studio

The core technologies that comprise this “huge solution” and help the building achieve net-zero operating carbon are the façade-integrated PV and the algae bioreactor.

Photovoltaics deliver nearly 25 percent of the building’s electricity demand, an amount that Morgan Solar’s Samuel Buckstein describes as “significant.” “Even getting more than single digits on a building like that is above and beyond right now.”

The remaining energy for electricity, heating, and cooling is delivered by a natural gas-fired district energy co-gen plant, paired with an algae bioreactor by Pond Technologies to remove CO2e emissions. Emissions from the plant are injected into a tank of water that is illuminated by high-intensity LED lights, and are entirely captured by the growing algae. What got the team even more excited was the possibility of using the algae to restore land, potentially capturing even more carbon. According to Peter Howard at Pond: “We have been able to identify algae that are actually nitrogen fixers in the soil. You can bring something as barren as a desert—or contaminated or over-tilled land—back into grassland or forest.”

In fact, algae from the bioreactor could be used to remediate old oil and gas sites—which brings us to the topic of natural gas. In the future, we could look at alternative fuel sources for the tower’s district energy system, but for now, we need to find ways to work with this fossil fuel.

“With natural gas, we’re meeting Canada where it is,” DIALOG sustainability lead Charles Marshall explained. “We recognize the challenges with fugitive emissions; natural gas extraction and distribution are both problematic in their own ways. No one has a solution for that other than to stop using natural gas entirely, which is 30 years away. Our system can flex the fuel in the future; this could become the zero-carbon hydrogen tower.”

The district energy system and bioreactor combination allow the HTT to be entirely off-grid. But because we have generously sized the power plant to account for peak demand, there will be excess energy.

“There will be surplus capacity of zero-carbon, zero-greenhouse-gas energy that we will be able to export to our neighbours,” says electrical engineer Naresh Arora. “And we can always oversize on day one, or add more capacity later on as we see more demand.” In this way, the building becomes a utility: the team refers to this as “net(work)-zero”.

Rendering by Tango Visual Studio

But it’s clear from speaking to everyone that this project is about much more than just energy and carbon: it has been an exercise to reconnect with our core values and our inspirations as designers. Cam summed it up nicely in this story he told me: “My son came in and asked me, ‘what’s that?’ I started showing him, and he was just like, ‘That is so cool!’ I thought, ‘It really is!’ When I wanted to be an architect when I was his age, I was playing with LEGO; this was the sort of thing that I wanted to aspire to.”

This HTT project represents our firm’s beacon of hope. Personally, my greatest hope is that this project—and others like it—inspire practices across Canada to search for their own solutions. We’re going to need as many great ideas as we can get if we’re going to meet our obligations to the planet and avert climate disaster.

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