OKANAGAN FALLS, B.C. – The height limit for wood buildings in British Columbia is rising to 12 from six storeys in a move that Premier John Horgan expects to spur development using timber and give the province a headstart on other parts of the country.

B.C. is changing its building code to allow the construction of taller wood buildings as a safe, economic and environmental alternative to concrete apartments and office buildings, Horgan said Wednesday.

B.C.’s building code changes come one year ahead of expected changes in the national building code, which are also expected to increase height limits for wood buildings to 12 storeys, Horgan said.

“We’re not waiting for the rest of the country to get here,” said Horgan. “We already know that the product we’re building, that we’re creating here, is fire resistant. We know that we can build faster and we know it’s better for the environment.”

He said he expects local governments and First Nations to approve more wood buildings for family apartments, student residences and business locations.

Horgan made the announcement at Structurlam, a timber production company in Okanagan Falls near Penticton that has been a North American leader in wood products used in buildings.

“We need to get more value out of every log,” he said. “It’s cost effective. It’s environmentally sensitive and it’s putting British Columbians to work with a B.C. product.”

A mass timber building is one where the primary load-bearing structure is made of either solid or engineered wood. Encapsulated mass timber is where the timber components are surrounded by fire-resistant materials like drywall.

Hardy Wentzel, chief executive officer of Structurlam, said the height change allows the company to continue being an innovator on mass timber products and building designs.

He said the company uses B.C. wood, including spruce, pine and fir.

Canada is a leader in wood technology, using different forms of timber and lumber to create products that can be formed into pre-fabricated wood used as beams, columns, walls, arches, floors and roofs, says the Canadian Wood Council.

Wentzel said mass timber buildings are safe and faster to build, but the long-standing tradition of concrete buildings holds strong.

“The builders may be set in their ways, but when they actually do the economics of building 12-storey wood buildings versus a 12-storey concrete building, and they do a full cradle to grave analysis, they’re going to find this is the better way to build,” he said.

Eric Andreasen, vice-president of sales and marketing at Vancouver building company Adera, welcomed the change, which he said will likely convince more developers to consider wood buildings.

“I do believe a lot of people are going to start having an awareness and that’s going to lead to more tall wood construction,” he said. “It’s got some natural characteristics and it just looks better.”

A Housing Ministry news release says mass timber buildings meet or exceed performance standards for safety, structural resilience and fire protection. It says the 17-storey Brock Commons student residence at the University of British Columbia was the world’s tallest mass-timber building when it opened in 2017.

By Dirk Meissner in Victoria

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Photos Martin Tessler

The childcare project was sustainable community building in microcosm, a reminder, from consultation to implementation, of the need to apply best practices at every step. We began with a series of workshops, first with internal stakeholders and then with our governmental and regulatory partners. Then we sat down with the clients, a clutch of three- to five-year-olds, and invited them to submit their best ideas. This was the most fun. In the usual design charrette (that is, one involving adults), you’re often encouraging people to “think outside the box.” Well, preschoolers have no conception that there ever was a box. They were entirely unrestrained in their creativity. That said, I hope they weren’t too disappointed that we didn’t wind up with a structure of white tree houses on crooked sticks.

Blue-sky dreaming notwithstanding, we needed to honour the rules of space and scale, access and safety. We were striving to meet the principles of the Reggio Emilia approach to childcare that had been identified from the outset by our partners at the SFU Childcare Society. Parents and professionals in the Reggio Emilia region of Italy designed this preschool philosophy after the Second World War, in the sobering light of the war’s devastation and in recognition of the importance of early childhood development. They created a program founded on principles of respect, responsibility, community and a self-guided curriculum, and based on exploration and discovery in a supportive and enriching environment. It was a perfect fit with our goals of sustainable community building.

But we had another challenge—one that I imposed myself when [Dale] Mikkelsen [Director of Development, SFU Community Trust] first raised the childcare alternative. I said, “Sure! We can attempt a Living Building, on condition that it not cost a dime more than a conventional project. No green premium.” That’s where the innovations and accommodations from HCMA, Ledcor, and our other partners became so crucial.

As we had seen with Verdant [the surrounding residential neighbourhood], buildings that are well designed and well equipped from the outset can run more efficiently and more sustainably. If you begin with a structure that is well situated, well insulated and angled to take best advantage of radiant heat from the sun, you reduce the need for heating and lighting hardware, as well as the ongoing expense. We also made a deal with UniverCity’s new District Energy Utility to share energy from a rooftop solar-thermal array. This installation generates more thermal energy than the building can use, allowing us to sell the remainder back to the utility, offsetting both costs and the carbon footprint of the electricity that we still need for nighttime lighting.

This example of “scale jumping” illustrates one of the biggest obstacles to positive change. Regulatory authorities and conventional utility partners are generally poorly equipped to deal with innovation. For
example, the provincial electrical utility, BC Hydro, has a whole division called Power Smart, dedicated to helping clients conserve energy, thereby reducing the need for the utility to fund expensive capital expansions of its own. The folks at Power Smart loved the childcare project, even offering a grant to help pay for the solar array. But when it came time to hook the new building into the grid, BC Hydro’s services division ruled that the centre’s energy requirements were insufficient to justify a conventional connection and assessed a connection charge that was larger than the Power Smart grant. Having encouraged us to build a “Power Smart” building, they proposed to penalize us as a poor prospective customer. For the record, it all turned out in the end. For that, I would like to repeat a personal thanks to then-BC Hydro Chair Bob Elton, who, on learning about the mixed messages coming from his organization, intervened to have our connection charge waived.

The regulatory resistance to change arose again when we began negotiating a water connection. The Living Building Challenge involves being water independent, to use and reuse only what falls from the sky and to treat any run-off to the satisfaction of the salmon downstream. The Living Building standard forbids the use of noxious chemicals, such as chlorine. Again, senior municipal and health officials expressed admiration for those goals. But the municipal officials, whose job is to enforce the law as written, were unable to approve the re-use of water for potable purposes.

Everyone in Burnaby is mandated by law to use municipally sourced, chlorinated water for drinking, with no exceptions for starry-eyed innovators. When we suggested that our toddler-oriented infrastructure would treat and recycle blackwater for use in toilet flushing and irrigation, the regulators declined the application. On that point, however, we ultimately found a compromise, with the regulator supporting water re-use for non-potable purposes, making it possible to link the child-care centre to the raingardens, the underground infiltration fields that are a big part of the award-winning UniverCity stormwater system.

Another obstacle came with the Living Building requirement that no part of the building or grounds include anything that is “red-listed”—that is, construction materials that are suspect for health or environmental reasons. The problem we ran into was suppliers who often couldn’t or wouldn’t guarantee or even disclose the contents of their products. Sometimes they said these details were proprietary information. Sometimes they admitted that they just didn’t know because they incorporated components from other vendors. We eventually sent out a complete Red List including substances prohibited by the Living Future Institute, and asked suppliers for a statement confirming that their products contained none of these materials.

All of the foregoing points to two problems for innovators in a fast-paced but heavily regulated world. First, the regulators who often attract so much criticism are the same people who help assure British Columbians the highest life expectancy in Canada (and among the highest in the world). Few public initiatives have saved more lives than the provision of chlorinated water. We seldom find ourselves faced with obtuse, unreasonable people, faceless bureaucrats who punch a clock and then sit at a desk ignoring anything that isn’t easy. We are dealing rather with people who have, themselves, fought to establish some of the best standards on the planet and who are justifiably wary about making exceptions.

Second, as our health and environmental understanding evolves, it’s hard to keep up. For example, the Living Building Responsible Industry prerequisite requires the use of wood that carries a Forest Stewardship Council certification. This is one of several good certification schemes that promote conscientious forestry practices. But the FSC stamp was not available for beetle-damaged Mountain Pine, which for availability and responsibility was the perfect product. The Mountain Pine beetle has been at home in British Columbia forests forever. It was a regional nuisance until climate change allowed a population explosion, as more beetles survived warmer winters only to kill so many trees that astronauts can now witness the damage from the window of the International Space Station. For several years, those trees, while dead, are still structurally sound. If the wood is harvested and used quickly, it serves to sequester carbon for the lifetime of the buildings in question. Left to rot or burn, the same trees will become another source of greenhouse gas emissions. So, we had a sustainable solution, but no permission. We finally won approval, but only after proving supply chain continuity in the same way a Crown prosecutor must prove that a critical piece of evidence has been tracked and protected, right up to its day in court.

There was one last hurdle to meet the Living Building Challenge standard, and this one could be crippling for people outside well-serviced manufacturing centres. The International Living Future Institute requires that all sustainable energy technology be obtained from within 15,000 kilometres, that consultants travel no farther than 2,500 kilometres, and that building materials and products must be sourced from within 500 kilometres for the heaviest materials, and 2,000 kilometres for the lightest. These were hard targets to meet, even in the urbanized Pacific Northwest. They would be easier to achieve around Ontario’s Golden Triangle. But for communities in the far north, or even the likes of Fort St. John, Fort McMurray, Flin Flon or Churchill, this restriction could block the chance of ever achieving a Living Building certification.

But bad news can have a good corollary. We had a wonderful time finding local suppliers—especially when it came to things like outdoor play spaces. The Reggio Emilia system honours three teachers: the literal teachers who work with students; the parents who support their education; and the environment in which they learn. Thanks to a number of local artists and artisans, our childcare environment is spectacular.

We also proved that lots of sustainable innovations are both doable and affordable in today’s market. Every consultant, every regulator, every contractor and every supplier who joined us on this journey
is now better prepared to implement the most advanced solutions wherever they are working. We might not have achieved the full goal of building a completely sustainable community yet, but we certainly have developed a model for sustainable practices.

As to the childcare centre itself, we are incredibly proud of the result. It’s been a hit with the client group and the International Living Future Institute had confirmed by press time that we had achieved five of the six petals on a performance basis. Of course, we still need to reach the sixth, but even the Institute’s founder and director [Jason] McLennan acknowledges that the Living Building Challenge is tough. By way of context, he is fond of saying that if the LEED Gold standard is analogous to ride-your-bike-to-work day, the Living Building Challenge is the Tour de France: it’s all about proving yourself over the long haul. We knew that when we started, and we are still in the race and still on track to celebrate the childcare centre as the first official Living Building in Canada.

Excerpted from Building Community: Defining, Designing, Developing UniverCity (Ecotone Publishing, 2018).

Gordon Harris is an urban planner and real estate market analyst who has been President and CEO of SFU Community Trust since 2007, leading the development of UniverCity. Richard Littlemore is an author and journalist who specializes in sustainable development and academic affairs.

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In the design industry, few materials can match the assets and adaptability of ceramic tile. In recent years, its remarkable shape-shifting capabilities have been industrialized to the point where ceramic tiling can seem to transform into any material imaginable. With ultra-high resolution scans of actual marble or stone slabs, combined with a manufacturing process that allows precisely calibrated surface textures, you can source uncannily realistic simulacra of marble, stone, wood and concrete, as well as a growing array of human-made materials like textiles and wallpaper. It is, for sure, impressive. Is it desirable?

The verisimilitude was on display in full force at the most recent Cersaie exhibition, held in Bologna last fall. Cersaie—the Italian acronym for the International Exhibition of Ceramic Tile and Bathroom Furnishings—presents architects, designers and journalists with a huge interactive encyclopedia cum yearbook of notable products and developments. And the show demonstrates the ever-increasing chameleon-like properties of ceramic tiling. Stall after stall displayed immersive dioramas of “marble look” panels so large and so intricately patterned that the lay eye is hard-pressed to differentiate it from the real thing.

Twenty-five years ago, during my first tour of the Italian ceramic-tile industry, the industry was more of an old-world affair, and ceramic-tile manufacturing was, if not quite artisanal, far more labour-intensive. The tile factory we toured back in the mid-1990s thrummed with workers. The tiles they baked and pulled out of industrial kilns looked like—well, tiles. They were generally no bigger than a metre square, and our ethical quandaries focused on which phenomenon disgusted us more: the folksy kitsch destined for export to Germany, or the replication of the Castello Borgia’s sixteenth-century foyer floor tile. There were few patterns that attempted to mimic natural materials; those that did looked ridiculously fake.

These days, the entire industry has been turned on its head. When our group toured the Fincibec Group factory in Sassuolo last fall, it was eerily quiet and empty, as ambulatory robots loaded, carted and processed the materials. In factories like these throughout the region, huge machinery spews out tiles that can now be as massive as two or three metres long, and as slight as three millimetres thick. Digital technology has been standard for a decade now, but has advanced in quantum leaps in recent years to enable unprecedented high-resolution patterns and imagery. Photocatalytic printing and “sinking inks” can create flow-through colour with a great sense of depth.

In our marauding band of designers and critics, all guests of the Italian ceramic industry, one could hear periodic groans (sotto voce of course) about the lack of authenticity in these faux-natural offerings, even though—especially though—the tiles more than ever look like the organic materials they’re impersonating. Yet we accept that architects will keep sourcing them because clients keep wanting them, especially newly rich clients in emerging global economies.

But is there a design argument in support of mimicry? To New York-based design historian Grace Jeffers, it’s a moot point: imitation is the only option left to us—if not now, then soon. “The bottom line is, we’re facing the extinction of various natural resources—and I do mean literal extinction,” she told me in a recent telephone interview. Now that we have such convincing simulacra of endangered natural resources, she says, “it is absolutely irresponsible to use the real.”

Jeffers, who also serves as consultant to material manufacturers, has thought and publicly argued long and hard about the concept of authenticity in materials. It’s not as simple as it used to be. Truth to materials—John Ruskin’s term from The Seven Lamps of Architecture—is one of the field’s sacred tenets, but Jeffers considers it an obsolete concept. She brings up the recent Art Gallery of Ontario and National Gallery of Canada exhibition Anthropocene, which includes artist Edward Burtynsky’s large-scale photographic images of natural-resource extraction. One of Burtynsky’s most memorable vistas is the Carrara mountain, largely eviscerated due to the endless human lust for its finely veined marble. “That mountain is half-gone now, so the big question is: Now what? Are we going to stop, or are we just going to use it until it’s all gone?”

It is difficult to reconcile one’s horror at the earth’s desecration with the vague nausea induced by contemplating an endless panoply of material imposters. Meanwhile, the forgeries are becoming more life-like than ever. Fine tendrils of colour vein through the faux-marble. The appearance and texture of “wood look” ceramic tiling is astonishing in verisimilitude. That is, until you actually touch it and feel the cold, hard surface of something that is emphatically not wood. Petrified wood, perhaps. But clearly a much more functional design solution for bathrooms. And clearly a more ethical solution than clearcutting the world’s rainforests. Alternatively, perhaps designers could advise, educate and encourage their clients to choose an alternative material to actual endangered wood—or an alternative ceramic pattern to a material imposter.

At Cersaie, the exhibitors’ stalls acknowledge the simulacra with the modifying word “look”: Marble Look, Stone Look, Wood Look, Concrete Look. Ceramic that looks like concrete is arguably less of an imposter than the first three, since concrete is already a man-made material. It does not pretend to be part of nature, but its characteristics—hard, cold, abstract—are close to those of ceramic tiling. Also included in the roster of replicas is a term that gives one pause: Colour Look. I never thought of colour as being the subject of imitation; the acceptable design standard is that plain colours or abstract patterns are critically acceptable, since they are not “faking” any other material. Or are they?

The colour in materials is technically “fake,” argues Jeffers, and hasn’t been “real” since an 18-year-old chemistry student named William Henry Perkin accidentally invented the first synthetic dye—a hue of deep purple—in 1856. From then on, organic dyes—mostly sourced from plants—were incrementally replaced with synthetic dyes. So, today’s purists who insist on never faking organic materials might theoretically have to forgo any kind of synthetically tinted paint, tile or other material—which basically means any material of colour.

I find it less complicated to embrace the overtly playful, not-trying-to-fool-you Domestic Jungle prints of Ornamenta or tire-tread textures of Serenissa; or the more expressionistic flooring for Papa Restaurant by Caesar, or the Diamond patterns by Mosaico. Even though Mosaic’s own press materials reference its evocation of leaded-glass windows, these are homages—an excuse for playing with geometric form.

These days, we have entire mansions, restaurants and corporate lobbies sheathed in what looks to the untrained eye like zebra wood or Carrara marble, minus the ecological devastation. But one-upmanship never sleeps, and some fake-marble slabs are inlaid with slender strips of real gold. It is as vulgar in concept as it is in appearance, but it’s clear what drives this niche market. As Carrara marble—faux or real, doesn’t really matter—floods the market, the emerging wealthy must find a new way to signal their new spending capability. It’s an obnoxious quirk of human nature, and an enduring client reality.

The designer’s job is to address their clients’ needs, crass as they may be. However, it is also the designer’s role to educate, persuade, enlighten, advise. The ceramic-tile industry itself is conscious of environmental Armageddon, and has embarked on systematic improvements in sustainability and material recycling in the past decade. As the rainforests vanish and the earth simmers, it’s hard to maintain a Ruskinian objection to what is essentially an aesthetic choice.

Research for this article was conducted in part during a tour sponsored by the Italian tile industry. The tour organizers did not review or approve the content of this article.

Adele Weder is an architectural curator and critic based in British Columbia.

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In 2013, McKinsey & Company declared that, “Simply to support projected economic growth between now and 2030, we estimate that global infrastructure investment would need to increase by nearly 60 percent from the $36 trillion spent on infrastructure over the past 18 years to $57 trillion over the next 18 years.” In 2016, Dominic Barton, Chair of the Finance Minister’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth, suggested that Canada alone has a $500-billion infrastructure gap.

There is no doubt that infrastructure plays an essential role in the Canadian and global economies. And because our infrastructure encompasses most of the built environment—from schools and parks to highways and bridges—its health is of critical interest to the profession of architecture.

The trouble is that we may be designing infrastructure for the last century rather than the next. Last year, I was one of the co-authors of a shortlisted submission to the Innovation Superclusters Initiative organized by the federal government that allocated $950 million in targeted investments to industry-led consortia. Our application focused on creating smart, sustainable and resilient infrastructure. It included some of the largest AEC firms in the country, major research universities and a wide range of forward-thinking architects, engineers and entrepreneurs. While ultimately unsuccessful, our investigation suggested totally new ways of looking at infrastructure—and by extension, at architecture.

Because we are one of the few truly multidisciplinary professions, we are well prepared to think about the built environment from different points of view and to find innovative solutions by integrating those perspectives. We can start by learning from what’s already happening across Canada.

The town of Innisfil in Ontario, for example, has inked a deal with Uber to subsidize rides for its citizens within municipal boundaries. The town estimates it is saving $8 million per year in comparison to buying and maintaining buses and operating a similar degree of service. Similarly, large, centralized water treatment plants can cost millions of dollars—but smaller filtration units such as those developed by Zenon Environmental (originally a Canadian company) can provide clean water at a neighbourhood level for far less. The founder of Zenon, Andrew Benedek, who won Singapore’s inaugural Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize in 2008, has compared our infrastructure to the evolution of computers. He notes that all computing was centralized and expensive in the era of mainframes and batch processing, but today we have cheap but more powerful machines on our desks and in our pockets. Similarly, our infrastructure now has the potential to become smaller, less expensive and more decentralized.

Water and public transportation aren’t the only areas where this could occur. Architects need to consider what will happen when our communities can generate more energy than they consume; purify more water than they pollute; recycle more waste than they produce; grow more food than they need; and sequester more carbon than they emit. It is possible we will be able to do all of these things by 2040. While none of this is written in stone, we do need to explore these possibilities, rather than fixate on massive megastructures that are based on outdated paradigms such as the fossil fuel economy.

To create this new kind of infrastructure, architects need to think outside the building. Many have suggested that our power grid needs to become more like the Internet in terms of flexibility, ubiquity, openness and modularity. To do so, however, requires an easy way to move packets of energy around, just as the Internet moves packets of information. In an idea called Vehicle to Grid, or V2G, the batteries of electric cars are used to move energy from one building to another. As electric, autonomous vehicles mature, the energy needs for neighbourhoods may well be met by a fleet of mobile batteries that constantly moves energy around from where it is created (such as the solar panels on roofs) to where it is needed. On-site storage of energy using stationary batteries may also become a key part of V2G. According to McKinsey, the costs of such storage may drop towards $100 USD per kilowatt-hour by 2020, making it cost-effective for commercial and industrial buildings.

These developments have led some to suggest that we need to re-imagine infrastructure as a “platform.” A platform is a fashionable term for a framework or a set of shared tools that allow different people to develop different applications with a reasonable assurance that they will be interoperable because they all share a common development environment. For example, a contemporary building needs applications for energy management, lighting control and performance benchmarking. If these are all developed on the same platform, then they can share information and work together. Moreover, if a new application is needed, such as security, then it can either be purchased from somewhere else or developed cheaply and easily by using the platform tools.

A powerful advantage of the platform approach is that it can be used to efficiently develop applications that we don’t even know we need yet. Re-imagining buildings as a platform technology of integrated products and services would transform the idea of architecture. Houses could become their own nano-infrastructure providers, potentially generating energy, information, clean water and even food to share with the micro-infrastructure of their neighbourhood.

This has implications right across the board. As Trevor Butler, principal of Archineers notes, “By designing buildings that are net positive or regenerative from a whole systems perspective, architects and engineers are redefining what it means to be a utility—because these kinds of buildings both give and receive energy, water and other resources. To do so effectively, we need to develop a new kind of infrastructure that can accommodate these bi-directional flows.”

If our communities and buildings migrate to localized energy generation and storage, it raises the question: Do we still need elaborate, expensive grids, dams, and the large, corporate utilities that operate them? No matter how this transformation plays out, architecture has an important role to play. As Guy Newsham, a Principal Research Officer at the National Research Council’s Construction Research Centre (NRC-CRC) in Ottawa notes, “The building is the natural building block in smart cities.”

This is where new technologies collide head-on with the ancient art of placing stone on stone. Just as the Internet revolutionized communications, so may IP (or the Internet Protocol) redefine architecture. This is more than the Internet of Things—but rather, the Internet of Buildings.

Trevor Nightingale, Leader, High Performance Buildings Program, also at the NRC, notes that, “It is now possible to converge all building systems onto a single IP network.” Far from being science fiction, such systems have already been implemented in buildings such as the WaterPark Place III building designed by WZMH in downtown Toronto. In this building, lighting, HVAC, fire and security systems are all integrated with PoE (or Power over Ethernet) which eliminates the need for electrical cables and produces significant cost savings. Moreover, these systems will also be able to share data in order to optimize their efficiency.

There are, however, numerous challenges to this work. A year ago, I attended a workshop organized by the NRC on the Future of Cities. There was impressive work being done in major cities across Canada that used data to make their operations more efficient and more economical. And yet, all of these initiatives were being done in isolation from one another. In each case, the wheel was being reinvented at tremendous cost to the economy. In addition, some participants complained that only large cities could afford these innovations, while the rest of the country was falling behind. Having a multitude of incompatible systems—that only serve the few—defeats the entire idea of a platform.

It is also not clear at this point who owns all of the data that buildings and infrastructure will generate, and who will protect it. Everyone needs to be aware that a smart city will be gathering information about individuals and their behaviour, and they may have no control over what is done with the data and who it might be sold to. The privacy concerns of social media and the abuses that have occurred recently are nothing compared to the problems that could result when the built environment can monitor one’s every move.

Financing is another critical issue. The federal government has established the Canadian Infrastructure Bank (CIB) as an arm’s length Crown Corporation with an initial investment of $35 billion. According to the CIB’s website, “The Bank model builds on Canada’s mature public-private partnership market. The public-private partnership model is used to transfer certain construction and operating risks to the private sector. The Bank will foster partnerships between the public and private sectors where infrastructure projects are funded primarily by revenue from infrastructure usage.”

While the public-private partnership (P3) model may be mature, it is not without its problems. In 2014, the OAA complained in a letter to Ontario’s Minister of Infrastructure that under the Alternative Finance and Procurement (AFP) method being used, “Any innovation in design which is presented is not rewarded by offering advantage in the competition, nor is it monetarily compensated, and therefore innovation is not encouraged. The psychology is therefore to trim and not innovate. Once a design scheme has met the requirements of the base program, the low price becomes the focus.”

But even low prices can be difficult to achieve in the P3 process, because of the enormous premiums included in the contracts to mitigate the transfer of risk to the private sector. Last June, the Columbia Institute released a report that states, “British Columbia will pay an additional $3.7 billion as a result of contracts signed between 2003 and 2016 to deliver 17 infrastructure projects through public-private partnerships (P3s) rather than traditional procurement.”

Alarmingly, the CIB is planning more than just a traditional P3 approach. According to Pierre Lavallée, the President of the CIB, “P3 arrangements typically include payments from the government when an asset becomes available—this model transfers construction and operating risk to private parties. The bank will use a co-investment model that takes the involvement of the private sector a step further to assume risks relating to usage or revenue. The bank’s co-investment can mitigate some of the usage and revenue risks for private-sector and institutional investors, or ‘inject’ capital at key points, making projects more attractive.”

The history of P3s in Canada is mixed, but the fact of the matter is that if the private sector invests in our infrastructure, then they will reasonably expect to make a profit. If the model is extended to usage and revenue, then they will continue to expect to generate revenue from that infrastructure long after construction is complete.  It is unclear what this means. Beyond road tolls, will it entail additional fees or taxes to send children to schools, or user fees every time someone visits a hospital? As Vivian Manasc, FRAIC, principal of Manasc Isaac Architects, has noted, “A systematic evaluation of all P3 projects in the world, completed in the past 25 years, has yet to be published. Before further large-scale P3 procurement experiments are undertaken, a rigorous analysis would seem to be in order. It would be helpful to identify the costs and benefits, and to whom each accrues.”

As architects, we need to understand these procurement issues and prepare intelligent positions regarding them. In other words, the idea of infrastructure as a platform isn’t just about a technical framework— it has financial implications as well. Again, this emphasizes the need to think in a holistic manner about the built environment. When we do, it’s easy to see that we haven’t even begun to plumb the depths of these new opportunities in design and infrastructure.

For instance, how can our buildings go beyond being “smart” to actively being able to learn? What could a skyscraper in Montreal learn from one in Toronto about how to withstand a wind storm? With the sensors of the Internet of Things, this becomes a real possibility. Similarly, our infrastructure needn’t just be sustainable; why can’t it be regenerative as well? And finally, our infrastructure needs to be more than resilient—it needs to be adaptive, because we cannot predict what new challenges we will face in the future.

To this end, some are proposing radically new perspectives on the built environment. Philip Beesley, of the University of Waterloo, is leading a visionary interdisciplinary team of researchers in the Living Architecture Systems Group (LASG). As he explains it, “Integral to the LASG is the idea that we can create empathic environments in order to establish mutual relationships between individuals and their environments. These environments interact and react to their inhabitants in ways that suggest emotional intelligence and empathy, and that invite emotional responses from those inhabitants.”

All of these ideas, from financing to empathic environments, have the potential to revolutionize the built environment—for better or worse. If we are not to be left behind, the profession of architecture needs to play a leadership role in exploiting the opportunities and addressing the challenges of our future infrastructure.

Dr. Douglas MacLeod, FRAIC, is a registered architect and the Chair of the RAIC Centre for Architecture at Athabasca University.

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A new report by the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) provides an action plan to close the low-carbon building skills gap in the Ontario construction industry. With buildings accounting for 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions, addressing the current gap in low-carbon building skills is critically important if Canada is to reduce its emissions by 30% below 2005 levels by 2030. In Ontario, the most populous province, the impact of the skills gap is estimated at $24.3 billion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in foregone company revenues, with an additional $3.7 billion lost in foregone taxation.

Entitled “Trading Up: Equipping Ontario Trades with the Skills of the Future,” the report puts forward recommendations for new types of training, incentives and construction processes that will help the trades workforce support the construction and mass retrofit of buildings that lower greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, tradespeople need to be trained on how to build efficient building envelopes, including framing, insulation, windows and glazing; install advanced mechanical systems, including heating, cooling, ventilation and air conditioning, as well as maintain energy efficient furnaces, boilers, water heaters, solar panels and geoexchange systems. Creating more efficient building envelopes is critical to reducing greenhouse gases from the built environment.

“Training the labour force with the skills necessary for designing, constructing and operating high-performing, low carbon buildings is critical in supporting a clean growth economy and meeting Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions targets,” says Thomas Mueller, President and Chief Executive Officer of CaGBC. “To date, not enough attention has been paid to building the skilled labour market that’s urgently needed to meet increasing activity in Canada’s growing green building industry and meet future demand that is imminent.”

CaGBC’s report also demonstrates that technical skills alone will not satisfy the requirements of low-carbon buildings. The report shows the threshold for mistakes in high-performing buildings is narrow and demands a higher level of sophistication, integration and precision for the entire project team. Adjustments to the construction approach and an overall increase in green literacy across the trades is necessary to deliver high-performing buildings.

“Technical skills are immensely important, but even technically proficient trades cannot do it alone,” says Aubrey LeBlanc, Chief Administrative Officer of the Ontario Building Officials Association. “The whole construction ecosystem needs to be trained to achieve a higher level of green literacy if zero carbon buildings are to become the industry standard. Education for building officials would improve communication and collaboration with the trades on construction sites.”

The report explores different delivery modes for training, ranging from full-time in-class courses to short online and on the job training as well as calling for a new certificate for low-carbon skills to help the construction industry identify and secure skilled trades for future projects. CaGBC’s report calls on governments to create supportive public policies and incentivize workforce education and training programs that industry should implement for workers at all career stages.

“Ontario’s highly skilled workforce can help drive the transition to a new era of low-carbon and energy efficient buildings,” says John Cartwright, President of the Toronto & York Region Labour Council who was part of the advisory group that developed the report. “Building on existing skills while taking a systems approach to embracing new techniques and technologies will be essential to meet the future needs of our province and world.”

The evolution to green buildings comes at a time of transition and rapid growth for Ontario’s construction industry. More than 87,000 retirements – almost 20% of the workforce – and up to 80,000 new jobs are forecast in the trades workforce over the coming decade. In the Toronto region alone, it is estimated that there will be 147,000 job openings in construction in the next 15 years. Filling these positions with people who are proficient in how to construct low-carbon buildings is of paramount importance as Canada moves towards a zero carbon economy.

“This report helps governments and industry identify where shortages in skills training exist, and offers an actionable plan to address those shortages, which will create an education and training market for low-carbon skills,” says Wayne Ostermaier, Dean of the Marshall School of Skilled Trades & Apprenticeship at Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario, who was also part of the advisory group that developed the report. “Retraining the trainers is critical too. Coaches and professors who teach the construction ecosystem need to be brought up to speed.”

Adrian Conrad, Chief Operating Officer at Cora Group Inc., adds: “Well-informed, integrated teams are essential for delivering projects that perform well and meet goals in line with Canada`s zero carbon design aspirations. Including tradespeople from a very early stage will ensure that good intentions transform into actual results.”

The full “Trading Up” report can be accessed here. It was compiled by CaGBC with Mohawk College, McCallumSather, The Cora Group, the City of Toronto and the Ontario Building Officials Association (OBOA). The project was funded, in part, by the Government of Ontario. The report examines the Ontario construction industry, but its recommendations can be applied throughout Canada.

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Six years ago architect Michael Green took the stage at a TED conference and called for an global era of wood-framed skyscrapers.

Some were skeptical.

“People really thought I was an idiot,” said Green in a recent interview.

“I got constant comments from my peers just saying this guy didn’t know what he was talking about, this will never happen, the construction industry doesn’t change. And look at it now, it’s made a massive amount of change.”

Almost non-existent a decade ago, tall wood buildings have defied skeptics and are sprouting up in cities across Canada as the wood industry sees opportunity, developers embrace new designs and momentum builds to reduce the heavy carbon footprint of concrete and steel in construction as the urgency of the battle to combat climate change grows.

“For me it all comes back to the carbon story. It all comes back to choosing renewables to build our cities,” said Green, principal at Vancouver-based Michael Green Architecture.

Wood offers the benefit of being made of captured carbon and of reducing the need for concrete, which the International Energy Agency estimates is responsible for seven per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

But it was the housing market collapse a decade ago that helped prompt B.C. to start promoting the use of new timber building techniques already being used in Europe in an effort to boost the forestry sector.

Standing Tall: Brock Commons Tallwood House

The results include the Brock Commons tower on the University of British Columbia campus, the world’s tallest wood building at 18 storeys. The hybrid building has two concrete core pillars, but is still estimated to have captured 1,753 tonnes of carbon in the timber and prevented 679 tonnes of emissions, equivalent to taking more than 500 cars off the road for a year.

Building tall with wood has been made possible thanks to the use of both new and old techniques. Brock Commons used the relatively recent innovation of cross-laminated timber, which involves gluing perpendicular layers of lumber together to create reinforced sheets for the walls and floors. For pillars, it used the much older technique of gluing parallel pieces of lumber together to make thick beams.

Growth in tall wood buildings has been hampered by code limitations, but one-off exemptions mean several others are in the works even as the codes themselves are expected to soon change.

The University of Toronto is embarking on a 14-storey tower and George Brown College plans for a 12-storey building on the city’s waterfront, while developers have already broken ground on the 19-storey Terrace House in Vancouver.

The Toronto Sidewalk Labs development, still in planning stages, claims it will build the “first-ever mass-timber district in the world” at a proposed 306,580 square metres (3.3 million sq. ft) across 12 buildings ranging from three to 30 storeys. There are also a range of mass timber buildings already complete or underway in major Canadian cities that fall under the six-story standard building code.

The building rules could change next year to allow 12-storey towers in the 2020 update of the national building code, which is revised every five years.

Fire chiefs have raised objections to the code changes, saying there still isn’t enough known about fire risks, but Natural Resources Canada senior research adviser Mohammed Mohammed said there has been quite a bit of research.

“In terms of safety, there has been extensive structural and fire-resistance testing that’s been conducted in Canada,” said Mohammed. “I think everything is aligned to target the 2020 edition.”

The thick timber beams act more like logs than kindling, so they resist burning and then char to create an insulating layer before burning at a predictable rate. But as extra precautions, the code updates will require wrapping much of the timber in drywall or cement, which act as both a fire and sound barrier.

‘Building Innovation’ with Sidewalk Labs’ Karim Khalifa

Those extra measures mean buildings won’t look quite like tree forts, with many areas of Brock Commons, for example, not showing any exposed wood at all. Proposed rules could allow somewhere in the range of 10 to 25 per cent wood exposed, said Mohammed.

The precautions added about seven per cent to Brock Common’s construction costs, but as techniques and knowledge improve it can be quite cost competitive, said Hardy Wentzel, CEO of Structurlam Mass Timber Corp.

“Because it’s a new product, we’re getting compared every time to what will concrete do, what will traditional wood frame do, what will steel do, and we’re able to compete. In the right building, we’re very cost competitive.”

Because many of the walls, pillars and floors are pre-assembled in mass timber it translates to a much faster build with less disruption to the neighbourhood. The light-weight construction, about a fifth the density of concrete, also creates more possibilities on site, said Hardy.

Builders are exploring the possibilities of mass timber and looking at how tall their ambitions will reach.

Japan’s Sumitomo Group has announced what looks to be the tallest building yet planned with a 70-storey, 350-metre tower, though it’s not planned to be completed until 2042 to commemorate the company’s 350-year history.

Mass timber buildings could theoretically go even higher. Green created a design mock-up of what a mass timber version of the 102-storey Empire State Building would look like to show it would be possible.

“Knowing that you could build 102 stories is an eye-opening thing. And that’s why we did that exercise, we wanted to kind of remind people that this is an incredibly strong material that has great capacity.”

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York University and the Schulich School of Business officially opened a new building today designed to bring industry into the classroom and to stimulate interdisciplinary research in fields ranging from business ethics and big data to global enterprise and real estate and infrastructure.

The Rob and Cheryl McEwen Graduate Study & Research Building will accommodate academic program growth, modern research facilities and space for study and socializing. Its distinctive design, by Baird Sampson Neuert Architects, makes it one of the most environmentally sustainable and socially responsible academic buildings in North America.

The new building stands near the main entrance of York’s Keele campus, next to the TTC’s York University Station. Attached to Schulich’s existing complex, it is named in honour of long-time Schulich supporters Rob and Cheryl McEwen, who have donated $8 million to the university toward this expansion of Schulich’s facilities.

The $50-million project received $15 million in funding from the Government of Canada through the Post-Secondary Institutions Strategic Investment Fund, which is dedicated to modernizing research and commercialization facilities, improving their environmental sustainability, and promoting economic activity. The project was also supported with $35 million from Schulich’s Leading Change fundraising campaign, including the McEwen donation, and York University.

The 67,000-square-foot building is one of the first to use the principles of Thermally Active Building Systems to achieve LEED Gold certification. A core feature of the environmentally responsible design is a dramatic glass solar chimney that rises 27 metres to provide passive natural ventilation for the entire building.

Schulich’s expanding academic and research agenda is reflected in the design of the project, which will house the Research Office for the internationally-recognized business school as well as four Centres of Excellence in areas of management education in which Schulich already excels. Three of these have been established: the Centre of Excellence in Responsible Business, the Schulich Centre for Global Enterprise, and the Brookfield Centre in Real Estate and Infrastructure. A newly developed Centre of Excellence in Business Analytics and Artificial Intelligence is envisioned as a leading hub for business and academic collaboration, experiential education, and research. The Centre incorporates the Deloitte Cognitive Analytics and Visualization Lab, which is already exploring advances in predictive analytics, natural language processing, machine learning, analytics design and visualization, and data-based storytelling.

At the core of the building is a three-storey atrium built to provide opportunities for meetings between students, professors, researchers, staff and visitors. Classrooms and seminar rooms on the main floor, and lounges and seminar rooms on upper floors, surround the atrium, allowing for greater interaction and the stimulating exchange of ideas.

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In December, Google affiliate Sidewalk Labs unveiled its draft master plan for the Quayside neighbourhood in Toronto. Their proposal includes a dozen mass timber towers—some up to 30 storeys high—connected by underground freight and waste tunnels, and flexible podium (or “stoa”) levels. Canadian Architect editor Elsa Lam spoke with Karim Khalifa, Director of Buildings Innovation at Sidewalk Labs, about the architectural details of the proposal. Here are highlights from their conversation:

Canadian Architect: I’d like to understand more about are what you’re proposing with mass timber, the concept of the “stoa” on the ground floors, and the underground innovations.

Karim Khalifa: From the beginning, the proposal that Sidewalk put together looked at how to create a really sustainable district. Tall timber was an obvious go-to. Before I joined Sidewalk, I had been doing six to eight storey mass timber buildings in Europe. Here we had the chance to stretch the limits of where tall timber could go.

We got to engage with Michael Green’s office, which had already been exploring taller buildings, and we were able to look at what hybrid elements to introduce to achieve such a height. We asked him to design a kit of parts—what I like to call the library of parts—to build tall timber buildings. And then we tried to make that as efficient as possible. We had two structural engineers on board—one to do it, one to peer review it—and ended up going to the manufacturers of the timber pieces and making sure they felt that all these pieces could be used efficiently. It was a full-industry look at how we could pull this all together.

CA: So what is the role of outside architects in this process? It sounds like you’ve been doing a lot of consulting about making this a real proposal, rather than a pie-in-the-sky idea.

KK: Any consultants that we brought in to create the masterplan do not necessarily go forward post-submission and approval of the masterplan. We were able to use some flexibility in who we hired to meet the timelines, to get input from different parties. This is just concept work, which [at] some level [got] quite technical. We would formally bid all this work out to move forward with the actual project.

[After Michael Green produced the kit of parts], we turned it over to other architects and said, “what would you do if we gave you a typical building briefing, but asked you to use this library?” We wanted to see how constraining it was for them, and what faults they might see in this library of parts. We ended up going to Snøhetta and Thomas Heatherwick, and we also asked Michael Green’s office to design one of the buildings. So we had three approaches of using this library of parts. And that’s where we got our submission. It’s been really very fruitful, and the architects gave critiques back to us, which just now we’re incorporating.

Then we also had three architects from Toronto tell us how they would design dwelling units and condos inside of these buildings. All three of them presented concepts, and we selected gh3* to go forward and integrate those concepts, to start doing more research with residents on how they would react to living in these spaces, which have this wonderful attribute of having exposed timber [surfaces].

CA: You’ve got some nice architects on your roster.

KK: It’s been a pleasure to work with everybody. We had Teeple, Heather Dubbeldam, and gh3* on the apartments, and Michael Green’s office. Structurally, we had Aspect and Equilibrium. So we’ve had some wonderful Canadian architects to work with.

CA: It sounds like you’ve been putting a priority on having Canadian consultants work with you on this.

KK: Look, there’s wonderful talent there. And it’s a Canadian project, so where else should we go? Especially with tall timber, we really want to grow the local talent, so this isn’t just a district, but expands as far as it can across the country.

CA: Are you looking at timber cores of the buildings as well, or more of a hybrid system with parts in concrete or steel?

KK: We [said to] Michael Green, let’s try to be purists and design a timber core. But then let’s also look at concrete and steel. We were able to pick up a master’s student who was studying the manufactured cores of all three materials, from Western University. So he is finishing his thesis, doing this evaluation of which way to go. We think that timber and steel are the most interesting, because their speed is more in rhythm with what we can do with a timber building.

Editorial: Sidewalk Toronto

One of the things we imagine is that we can end up with a building configurator, once we know the library of parts we’re going to use. So if we have a five-storey, 35,000-square-foot building and we know the lot lines and setbacks, we can put that data into a digital configurator, and it would tell us all the different types of buildings it can produce to optimize that space. This allows the architect or the developer to have a very quick view of “what could I build here?”, especially using this timber library of parts.

Of course, you would engage with an architect to really make the building beautiful and have meaning. But it’s a quick way to get through that feasibility stage, to understand with some certainty what’s this building is probably going to cost. Then you can make decisions with an architect of what types of customized spaces and components should be introduced. [Since the] architect works with a library of parts, [the configurator] immediately will give them inventory for the cost of those parts and time to produce those parts. So they automatically get a schedule out the back end.

The factory digitally produces those parts, in the exact cuts that were maybe even customized by the architect, and then can ship them to the site. I don’t know how much modular construction you’ve seen, but I’ve worked quite on a few projects, and one of the beautiful things is there’s fewer trucks—maybe a fifth the number of trucks show up at the site—and they don’t need any lay-down space. The crane picks right off the bed of the truck, and puts [the pieces] immediately in place. Digitally, it all started with that configurator—the crane even knows exactly where those pieces go on that day from this digital model. Often they’re able to complete almost a floor a day.

We talk about going beyond that: when that building gets commissioned, all those pieces have been identified and basically have serial numbers, which is so different than construction today. So if there was a problem with some element, you would know where those trees came from, what production line, and look to see if that impact was on any other piece in the building. Today, when you have an issue in a building, everything was custom made or put together on site, so you don’t know if that problem is going to be repeated elsewhere.

CA: That makes a lot of sense. Talk to me about the “stoa”—the strategy you’re proposing for the ground floors of the buildings.

KK: When we use this word “stoa,” of course, most people would use the term “podium.” [We are creating a] ground floor experience of having traditional retail, but also having very flexible spaces to complement that traditional retail. How do we open up those spaces to each other and to the outside, so that we have this very porous environment—with folding garage doors or sliding partitions?

I love old souks, you know, like the markets in Istanbul, where there’s variety [in the vendors]—some are very permanent, some are very temporary. That’s the idea we’re trying to promote. To do so, the first floor is about six metres high. So it allows for a full mezzanine in that space, or two-storey spaces, or someone who can use storage up above. We can have hallways that are quite high and impressive, and have beautiful ventilation.

But we also wanted to make sure that pop-ups could move in easily and be there for a short amount of time, at a very low price point of entry, so we could have more entrepreneurial [tenants] and local craftspeople. We ended up designing a flexible wall system—it’s still being designed—that lets you take partition walls up and down easily. And we enabled that by going to DC power and digital power, which is safe and doesn’t need to run through conduit in the walls. And we [chose] a sprinkler system that runs on tubing versus piping. Although it’s a little more expensive, it also runs on the exterior surfaces of ceilings and walls and can be moved around much more easily. By getting rid of the utilities from within the walls, now the walls can be moved around from place to place to create new environments, especially for that really flexible retail that we’re anticipating attracting.

CA: So the innovations are in how you run the infrastructure to encourage flexibility of use.

KK: We found getting all those utilities [set up] is becoming a barrier to entry. You get the electricians in, and the sprinkler guys in, and before you know it, those walls that really need to pretty simple suddenly got very expensive, and not so flexible. So part of the big push was to simplify [how] infrastructure needs to moved around, to accommodate all these different retail tenants.

CA: You’ll have to help me to understand the digital power.

KK: Power over Ethernet (PoE) gives us about 90 watts on an ethernet cable. But we’ve also looked at digital power which lets us run up to 2,000 watts. This is a new technology – there are tens of buildings out there trying to deploy this. We are trying to deploy it in a very big way. The nice thing about these types of power systems is that they’re non-hazardous – that’s why they’re allowed to run without conduit. One of the side benefits is that we take away a shock source that starts fires. We’ve presented already to the fire department in Toronto, showing them what we’re trying to do to also create a safer space.

It’s a simple wire that looks like a telephone wire. We’re coming up with a system that maybe looks like a baseboard. It can run in the void behind a baseboard along the walls. It can be installed by anybody, by the tenant themselves, and removed when they want to change around the wires.

CA: Tell me about the underground systems that you’re planning to distribute freight and collect waste.

KK: The way Quayside is laid out right now, we have an urban consolidation centre in the northeastern corner of one of the buildings. We’re able to bring in some of the freight and consolidate it into items that can be dispatched into the buildings. The buildings have tunnels connecting them to this urban consolidation centre. Robotic freight can go through the tunnels, get to a freight elevator within a building tower, and put the parcels into the freight elevator in a rack system. Then that rack gets pushed out of the elevator onto a vestibule on a floor. The resident would get a notification and be able to collect their parcel from their own floor.

Likewise, we have a m-vac system to evacuate the waste, but some items don’t fit in there, so on the return trip, some of the freight robots will be collecting boxes and things, and bringing them back to the consolidation centre where they can then shipped to recycling.

CA: And the waste system is a separate set of vacuum tunnels.

KK: As a tenant, I would have a place to go to deposit my waste. It will have organic waste, separated plastics and metals and all those things. Of course, there has to be a good education system. We all get confused because systems are designed differently. We’re going to have [a system] that’s district-wide and we hope broadens further, and helps identify which items go [into which] vacuum tube.

CA: So that sorting is done mostly by the tenants rather than it being an automated system, or it’s a combination of both?

KK: It’s a combination. We’re looking at some automation systems for sorting, using machine-learning to identify the objects that are dropped. There will be details to come on that.

Karim Khalifa is Director of Buildings Innovation at Sidewalk Labs. Interviewer Elsa Lam is the Editor of Canadian Architect.

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A significant experiment in smart city design is being proposed in Toronto. Sidewalk Labs—a Google affiliate—is partnering with Waterfront Toronto to create a mixed-use community on a 12-acre site east of downtown.

There has been political turmoil over the project, amidst concerns about how the project was awarded, the ownership of the data collected by the district’s sensors, and who stands to profit from the intellectual property that the project generates. But in the meanwhile, it’s worth looking at the panoply of groundbreaking architectural innovations that Sidewalk has been developing.

The initial site plan includes a dozen mass timber buildings, including two 30-storey structures. Sidewalk worked with architect Michael Green, engineers Equilibrium and Aspect, and manufacturers to develop a kit of parts for building with mass timber. They then sent that toolkit to two other architects—Snøhetta and Thomas Heatherwick—to test how it could be deployed. Gh3*, Teeple Architects, and Dubbeldam Architecture have worked on concept designs for the residential units in the buildings, which would have exposed wood surfaces. “We really want to grow the local talent, so that this isn’t just a district, but expands as far as it can across the country,” says Karim Khalifa, Director of Buildings Innovation at Sidewalk Labs.

On a larger scale, Sidewalk plans to develop a digital configurator that could work with the kit of parts to generate mass timber design options (along with cost and time estimates) for any given site. The BIM models could be refined by an architect, and eventually transmitted directly to a manufacturer for off-site production, speeding construction and reducing waste. “Every piece of the building basically has a serial number,” says Khalifa, “so if there’s a problem with some element, you would know where those trees came from and what production line they were in, and could look to see if that impact is on any other piece of the building.”

The podium levels of Sidewalk’s building are envisaged to allow for flexible use by retail, production, arts and community spaces. Apart from the de rigeur folding garage doors, they include six-metre-high ceilings that can allow for mezzanines, and a flexible wall system that Sidewalk is developing. Sidewalk pinpointed the installation of utilities as a barrier to entry for pop-up tenants. That led them to propose installing a digital power system—a new technology which runs on wires without conduit, and can deliver up to 2,000 watts. They’re also planning on a sprinkler system that uses flexible tubes rather than pipes for easy reconfiguration.

‘Building Innovation’ with Sidewalk Labs’ Karim Khalifa

The development aims for a 75-85% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to standard developments. This is partly achieved through automated building energy management systems—digital systems that optimize the use of energy—as well as renewable sources including photovoltaic panels, geothermal wells, and sewer heat recovery.

Some of Sidewalk’s most interesting proposals are underground. A district-wide vacuum system would collect waste. Recyclables and compostable material would be sorted partly by residents, and partly through an automated system that Sidewalk is developing, which will use machine-learning to increase its capabilities over time.

To further reduce above-ground traffic, freight would be distributed through tunnels in the neighbourhood using a robotic system. Parcels would arrive at a single point, from which robots would sort and consolidate parcels, transport them to each building, and place them in a rack system in each building’s freight elevator. The items would be delivered to a designated room on each floor for residents to pick up.

There are significant political, regulatory and practical issues to address before any of this becomes reality. But one can marvel at these ambitious proposals, which together take a wide scope in rethinking the way that neighbourhoods—and on a larger scale, cities—might function.

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A strong demand for housing and limited supply in Ontario has resulted in rapidly rising housing costs over the last few years. In high-growth urban areas, high prices and rents have made it too hard for people to afford the housing they need. High prices also affect other parts of Ontario, including northern and rural communities, where a lack of supply has made ownership more difficult and quality rental housing hard to find. To help increase the supply of housing in Ontario, the government is developing a Housing Supply Action Plan that will address the barriers getting in the way of new ownership and rental housing.

To inform the Action Plan, the government wants to hear the views of all Ontarians on how to expand the housing supply in Ontario. Your input will provide important information about how we can make it easier for Ontarians to find an affordable place to call home.

Housing is one of the largest cost burdens for households in Ontario, and an imbalance between strong demand for housing and limited supply means these costs have risen dramatically over the last few years. Across Ontario – in both urban and rural communities – high prices and rents have made it hard for people to afford the housing they need.

Creating more housing, of the types and sizes people need, will help make home ownership and renting more affordable and give people more choice.

The government is developing a Housing Supply Action Plan to address the barriers to creating more housing. It will include measures that the Province can take to increase the supply of new ownership and rental housing in Ontario.

The Housing Supply Action Plan will support the government’s commitment to reduce red tape and make it easier to live and do business in Ontario.

This consultation does not cover initiatives specifically related to community housing (e.g., social and supportive housing). However, the barriers and potential solutions being explored may have a positive impact on community housing providers, such as by either making it easier to develop new housing, or by easing some of the pressure on waitlists.

More information about the Housing Supply Action Plan — and a direct link to the survey — is available via the province’s official website, linked here.

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Students at the University of British Columbia are hoping to build bus shelters with environmental benefits.

Tabinda Shah, a final-year urban forestry student, said she and several other students are working to build a “tree canopy bus shelter,” which would not only shelter people from the rain as they wait for their ride, but also help the environment.

“The aim of the project is to bring ecologically conscious infrastructure into dense urban areas by maximizing opportunities for green infrastructure in small spaces,” she said in an email.

The roof or shelter would be made of treated wood that can withstand the elements and host a layer of plants that are hardy and succulent, and can thrive in not just the rain but the dry months too. The excess water from the roof would run off into the ground to recharge the water table.

The students are crowdfunding the project and want to build at least three bus shelters to measure their effectiveness. Shah said each shelter costs about $50,000, and the team is hoping to have a prototype shelter built by sometime next year.

Daniel Roehr, associate professor at UBC, said while the team does not have any arrangement with the City of Vancouver or the transit agency, they do have permits to build three structures on the University of British Columbia campus.

Shah said Vancouver is a very walkable city, but that hardly anyone wants to walk in it during the winter because of a lack of pedestrian shelter from the rain.

“Being an urban forestry student, I wanted to bring a multifaceted solution to the table that would not only increase walkability in the city, but also create habitat space, more sustainable stormwater management and a biophilic city,” she said.

Roehr said Vancouver has a number of green roofs but most of them need to be irrigated, so one of the main design aims of these tree canopy bus shelters was that they would be self-sufficient.

Roehr and Shah are working with a team of other students from different disciplines on the shelters.

“We have flow devices to measure rainwater runoff from these roofs and how effective they are,” Roehr said. “We want to monitor it. And if it is effective we can use it all over the city _ we could use it on all bus shelters.”

Shah said this will be the first type of bus shelter to measure how much rainwater is runoff. She added that such bus shelters are important because they are one more step towards tackling climate change.

The prototype and research will help justify whether a larger investment into such an idea would be worth it, she said.

“We’re hoping to have the prototype constructed along Wesbrook Mall at the University of British Columbia, but in an ideal world, we would want these all over the city street networks of Vancouver,” Shah said.

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Pomp and circumstance on Parliament Hill are about to get a little more complicated.

The most formal rituals — speeches from the throne, twice-yearly royal assent ceremonies — involve a lot of stately to-ing and fro-ing between the House of Commons and the Senate.

Easy enough when the two houses of Parliament are at opposite ends of the same building.

But with the closure next month of the iconic Centre Block for at least a decade’s worth of renovations, the Commons and the Senate will be housed in separate buildings. And so far, no one has decided how to deal with ceremonial parades between parliamentary chambers that are three city blocks apart, separated by a busy city street instead of just a corridor.

“It’s a very good question and it’s one that we are struggling with in terms of how we pull it off,” says Senate Speaker George Furey.

Consider what’s involved for throne speeches or formal royal assent:

Garbed in a black tail coat and bicorne hat, the Usher of the Black Rod — officially the Queen’s personal attendant and messenger in Parliament and the most senior protocol officer in the upper house — walks solemnly from the Senate to the Commons, preceded by three attendants. He raps three times on the Commons’ door with his gold-tipped ebony cane and, once admitted, informs MPs that they’ve been summoned to the Senate by the Queen or her representative, the Governor General, to listen to a throne speech or witness royal assent being given to bills.

He then marches back to the Senate, followed by the similarly attired sergeant-at-arms bearing the heavy, gilded mace, the black-robed Speaker of the Commons and a parade of MPs. When the ceremony is finished, the denizens of the Commons all troop back to their own chamber.

Now consider how this ritual is to be carried out when participants have to navigate three blocks outside.

Will the Black Rod have to trudge through rain, sleet, snow or stifling humidity along Wellington Street between the Senate’s new home in Ottawa’s historic train station to Parliament Hill’s West Block, where the Commons is being temporarily housed? Will the sergeant-at-arms, lugging the mace over his shoulder, have to dodge tourists and city buses as he makes his way to the Senate?

Will Wellington Street have to be closed to accommodate 338 MPs walking in a group to the Senate and back? Or, will MPs be loaded into the little green buses that normally ferry them around Parliament Hill?

“The Black Rod is going to Uber up to West Block,” jokes Sen. Scott Tannas, chair of the Senate subcommittee overseeing the upper house’s move.

The move “changes it totally,” acknowledges Geoff Regan, Speaker of the Commons. “We can’t just walk down the hall any more to the Senate … There will be times when we’ll have to hop on buses or walk or whatever to get from the House in West Block to the new Senate building.”

Discussions about how precisely to handle the ceremonial activities are ongoing among the clerks, Speakers and others in both houses. Furey says a “couple of plans” have been developed but they’ll have to conduct some dry runs in the new year to see if they’re workable. One such dry run this month yielded the surprise that a design flaw leaves the new Senate chamber unbearably echoey.

Compared to other logistical challenges involved in relocating hundreds of MPs, staff and administrative personnel and moving or storing hundreds of historic paintings, sculptures and massive pieces of furniture, what to do about the ceremonial events is small potatoes. And it’s just one of many unanswered questions surrounding the multi-year renovation of Centre Block.

Among the other unknowns:

How much is the renovation going to cost and how long will it take?

So far, Public Services and Procurement Canada says it has cost about $3 billion just to prepare for the closure of Centre Block: restoring and renovating West Block and the old train station and other buildings in the parliamentary precinct that will house everyone relocated from Centre Block. In addition, contracts worth about $770 million have already been awarded for work on Centre Block.

The duration of the renovation has been estimated at anywhere between 10 and 13 years, although many suspect it will take more like 15.

Rob Wright, assistant deputy minister of PSPC’s parliamentary precinct branch, says no final price tag or timetable can be estimated until the real condition of the 100-year-old building is established — ascertaining, for instance, whether the integrity of the building’s steel structure has been compromised by rusting due to water leakage.

“We know a lot about that but we have to really start opening up the walls and the floors and the ceilings and, as anybody knows with a big reno, you only really get to know what the condition is once you start opening that up.”

The final cost will also depend, Wright says, on the scope of the modernizations parliamentarians deem necessary. In effect, he says, the cost will be whatever it takes to do the renovation right.

“At the end of the day, the most important thing is to have the Centre Block and the other buildings in the parliamentary precinct work for parliamentarians in a 21st-century parliamentary democracy and make sure that Canadians can be proud of this place for centuries to come.”

How much will the interior of Centre Block change?

Wright says the renovation will attempt to strike “a fine balance between heritage restoration and modernization so that we can keep the best of the past and lean forward as a country.”

Earlier this month, MPs on the House of Commons’ procedure and House affairs committee complained about the lack of consultation with parliamentarians and the public on the kinds of changes that should — or should not — be made. They appointed themselves as watchdogs to keep an eye on the progress of the renovation and, if necessary, demand changes.

Regan says most of the biggest changes won’t be visible: removal of asbestos in the walls and ceilings, replacing electrical, plumbing, heating and cooling systems, elevators, and the mortar holding all the stonework together, adding structural supports for earthquake resistance. As well, the building will be made more accessible for the disabled and provide more amenities for female parliamentarians, who weren’t a factor when the building was erected 100 years ago.

As for any changes that alter the character or historic aspects of the building, Regan says: “I can’t see that happening without approval” from parliamentarians.

That would include any consideration of replacing the current adversarial seating arrangement in the Commons — government and opposition MPs facing one another, their benches separated by two swordlengths — with a circular, semi-circular or horseshoe-shaped model that some suggest would be more conducive to collegiality. (Regan is skeptical, having checked out the semi-circular National Assembly in France and finding it “probably noisier than our chamber”).

Public Services Minister Carla Qualtrough says that kind of change is “completely on the table” and she, for one, thinks anything that modifies MPs’ conduct “would be a wonderful advancement.” But for now, she says, the plan is “to keep things as they are until decisions are made otherwise.”

On the Senate side, Tannas says he’s seen little inclination to change even senators’ cramped desks, much less their arrangement.

“I’m six-foot-four, I weigh 270 pounds. I’m sitting at a desk that was designed in 1915 for the average-size man,” he says. “So, I was kind of in favour of maybe we could look at different desks and I was shot down very, very quickly, (told) that, ‘Nope, we are adhering to traditions around those kinds of things, there’s no discussion about it.’ So I took my cue and shut up.”

Tannas predicts there’ll even be “a fight with a whole bunch of traditionalists” over replacing the marble in stairs worn down by decades of use.

“It would be a shame to kind of get rid of everything that gives character to the building.”

What will Parliament Hill be like during the renovation of its primary building?

Public Services and Procurement Canada says it’s committed to maintaining a positive experience for tourists throughout the construction. It is working with partners to ensure there’s no disruption to activities such as the regular sound-and-light show, Canada Day celebrations, the daily changing the guard ceremony in summer and weekly yoga classes on the lawn in front of Centre Block.

Catherine Callary, vice-president of destination development at Ottawa Tourism, says there’s no way to avoid an impact when Ottawa’s most-photographed tourist site is closed to the public. There’ll be new sites for tourists to look at — West Block and the new Senate building — but she says the key to keeping visitors coming will be how the scaffolding around Centre Block is wrapped.

Like iconic buildings under renovation elsewhere around the globe, Callary says Centre Block should be wrapped with tarpaulins designed to replicate the structure underneath so that visitors can still feel like they’ve seen the site and been able to take their selfies standing in front of it. Those are, she acknowledged, very pricey.

PSPC says it “understands the need to reduce the visual impact” of construction but no decision on tarp design will be made for some time since no tarp is to be installed until early 2020.

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Today, the Honourable Carla Qualtrough, Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility, officially handed over the newly renamed Senate of Canada Building to the Honourable George J. Furey, Speaker of the Senate.

The event marks the culmination of years of collaboration with the Senate to restore the century-old former train station and modernize it into a state-of-the art, accessible and green building. Designed by Diamond Schmitt Architects in collaboration with KWC Architects, the interim Senate Chamber is built in what used to be the train station’s concourse.

The chamber, with Frank Gehry desks. (JK.) pic.twitter.com/wCeO1T5nLW

— Alex Bozikovic (@alexbozikovic) December 14, 2018

The design takes full advantage of the room’s high ceilings and prominently features the heritage skylight and plaster ceiling. The new interim Chamber is the same size as the Senate Chamber in the Centre Block but is fully fit-up for television and online broadcasting.

In Ottawa today. The Government Conference Centre, temporary home of the Senate. Built as Union Station, Ross & MacDonald 1912. pic.twitter.com/72WLHi0Crv

— Alex Bozikovic (@alexbozikovic) December 14, 2018

“Canadians can be proud of the utmost care and diligence taken in restoring Ottawa’s former Union Station for generations to come. This building was once a point of entry to Ottawa for tourists, new Canadians and visitors. It is only fitting that it has been revitalized into a safer, greener and more accessible space that will allow the public to see the important work of Canada’s Senate,” said Carla Qualtrough, Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility.

Narrowly escaping demolition in the 1960s, Ottawa’s Union Station has undergone several transformations since it was completed in 1912. Its most recent transformation from the Government Conference Centre to the interim home of the Senate of Canada will make it accessible to the public once again.

The project introduced an addition on the east side of the building, finishing the east façade so it now matches with the building’s Beaux-Arts style architecture. That side of the building had been left unfinished when the building next to it was demolished in the 1960s.The new addition includes elevators to make the building more accessible.

The restored building will house the Senate Chamber, as well as 3 new committee rooms, and offices for the Senate Administration and Senate Leadership. The restoration created about 1,400 good middle-class jobs for construction workers, skilled tradespeople, engineers, architects and other suppliers.

More than 90% of construction waste from the project has been diverted from landfills.

Images via Diamond Schmitt Architects.

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On December 11, the new Centech premises were officially inaugurated in the former Dow Planetarium by the Director General of the École de technologie supérieure, Mr. Pierre Dumouchel, and by the Director of Technological Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Centech Executive Director, Mr. Richard Chénier, in the presence of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, Mr. David Lametti, the Minister of Education and Higher Education, Mr. Jean-François Roberge and the Head of the Smart City, Information Technology, Innovation and Advanced Education Executive Committee for the City of Montreal, Mr. François William Croteau.

Closed since 2011 after 45 years of existence and transferred to the École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS) by the City of Montreal, the conversion project by Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux Architectes aimed to rehabilitate this iconic Dow Planetarium building located at 1000 St. Jacques in Griffintown, in the heart of the Quartier de l’Innovation to welcome Centech, a business incubator. Founded by ÉTS, Centech is a non-profit organization that aims to support technology companies by promoting their economic development and technology transfer.

In the spirit of creating synergies between the university community, the business community, the citizens and the ÉTS community, the new vocation of the Planetarium commissioned the typology of spaces: spaces to encourage encounters, collaboration and reflection linked to tools and advanced technologies, spaces of social diversity and exchange platforms for sharing knowledge.

The main architectural challenge met by Menkes Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux Architectes was to find a way to bring light into the heart of this building designed and intended, by definition and function, to be both obscure and opaque while preserving the memory and the nature of the place, inscribed in the imagination of Montrealers.

The choice to develop the project around the concepts of revolution (about an axis) and the circular shape, imposed by the intrinsic nature of the building, was decisive. Inspired by the perpetual movements of the universe and by the curious complexity of ancient instruments such as the astrolabe or the Orrery machine that translate it, the team of architects transformed the former Dow Planetarium not only into a place that allows to see and explains the cosmic movement, but into a dynamic place which uses it. The era of observation having gone by, this building becomes a generator, accelerator and source of inventions.

Beyond the materiality, the architects have thus favoured the formal language to make the movement and this acceleration real and perceptible: from the gears that recall walls composed of a juxtaposition of vertical slats to the concentric circles which are superimposed in the plan, everything is about mechanical rotation and spinning.

The centre of the building is an open circular space accessible on all sides and that controls the entire spatial organization of the building. Designed to be the heart of the accelerator in the image of a crucible of innovation and announcing the premises of what will be created in this place, it is intended for unplanned encounters and opportunities that are often at the origin of the greatest discoveries.

The mechanics of the rest of the building are entirely articulated around this central space. Similar to the ingenious principle of watchmaking and the cogwheel, a concentric circulation path leads to the café, the meeting space and the ideation room that wrap around and revolve about a solidary and precise mechanism.

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A groundbreaking ceremony today marks the launch of a transformative restoration and expansion of University of Toronto Schools (UTS), an affiliate of the University of Toronto on the downtown St. George campus.

The design by Diamond Schmitt Architects restores the heritage central and east wings built for the school by Darling and Pearson Architects in 1910 and 1924. Transformation of these wings includes conversion of the former gym into a Black Box Theatre and the former 25-yard pool into music teaching space.

The school program area is expanded by 40 percent with a new wing that includes a 700-seat auditorium lifted above grade to allow the school library – conceived as a learning crossroads – to overlook the community and neighbourhood park. The cantilevered auditorium creates a covered verandah where children in the park are protected from sun and rain. A new double gym is tucked under the park to conserve site area. Thirdly, a former parking lot will be transformed as a vertical forum and meeting place connecting the UTS community and all learning levels.

“UTS strengthens its historic alliance with the University of Toronto and with this compact plan enables the university to redevelop and expand on this gateway block of the St George campus,” said Donald Schmitt, Principal, Diamond Schmitt Architects.

The renewed school will serve 670 students and represents a best in class environment for secondary school learning.

“UTS has a 108-year-old tradition of educating leaders who make a significant impact at the local, national and global level. Alumni such as our 21st Rhodes Scholar are just one testament to the exceptional value of a UTS education,” says Jim Fleck C.C., Chair of the UTS Board of Directors, Co-Chair of the UTS Building the Future campaign, alumnus (1949). “There is no limit to what our students can achieve in a revitalized building, with state-of-the-art facilities that can help them reach their full potential.”

The project is targeting completion for September 2021.

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The EIFS Council of Canada officially launched its 2018‐2019 Architectural Design Awards Program to honour design professionals and firms which incorporate EIFS products into innovative and creative built projects.

Grand Prize winners from previous years included KNYMH Architecture Inc.’s innovative six storey wood structure, “Aquablu Condominiums,” and NumberTEN Architectural Group’s beautiful school project, “Enchokay Birchstick School.” This year, the EIFS Council encourages all architects and design professionals to submit their recent EIFS projects for the opportunity to be selected as the Grand Prize recipient.

“The EIFS Council of Canada is pleased to continue to recognize and honour projects that have used EIFS in an innovative way,” remarked John M. Garbin, President/ CEO of the EIFS Council of Canada, “We developed this Awards Program with the objective of creating a new benchmark in EIFS construction. The finalists and winners from the past few years have proven that EIFS buildings will help realize Canada’s national objective of creating resilient, sustainable and aesthetically pleasing buildings.”

The Awards Program is open to all architects, architectural firms, builders or design professionals that have designed and completed a project located in Canada that utilizes EIFS. Eligible projects must be occupied no sooner than January 1st, 2017 and no later than January 31st, 2019. All applicants may submit their projects in one of fiv categories: 1) low rise residential, 2) high rise residential, 3) commercial/retail, 4) recreational/institutional, and 5) renovation.

Registrations to determine eligibility are open until January 31st 2019. All eligible applicants will then have until April 12th, 2019 to prepare their electronic submission packages. Final submission packages must be received no later than 12:01am April 12th, 2019.

Award finalists will be announced on May 6th, 2019. All Award finalists will be announced in a Press Release and featured in articles submitted to prominent Canadian architectural and construction publications. The recipients will be selected by a renowned jury of industry experts from a variety of building industry disciplines. The jury will consider the submissions in relation to a range of established criteria to decide on a winning project. They will select one Grand Award winner with a maximum of 2 honourable mentions for each category. Award recipients will be honoured at the EIFS Council of Canada Annual General Meeting and Awards Dinner in June 2019.

More information about the awards is available here.

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