A mass timber showcase on Toronto’s George Brown campus is also a study in collaboration and innovation.
George Brown College director of design and construction Nerys Rau, Moriyama Teshima Architects partner Philip Silverstein and PCL senior superintendent Mike Love all explained the process behind building Limberlost Place at a session titled Exploring Limberlost Place: Advancing Mass Timber and Sustainability for George Brown College at the Canada Green Building Council’s Building Lasting Change conference held recently in downtown Vancouver.
Limberlost Place is a 10-storey mass-timber net-zero building that achieved occupancy in January.
Rau explained the goal for George Brown College at the project’s inception in 2017 was not simply to build a mass timber building but also drive innovation.
“We wanted to showcase what’s possible as well as prove it’s cost effective,” Rau said.
She added post-secondary institutions have different cost drivers and while sustainability was a primary goal, the structure must be appealing to students.
“To attract students, you need engaging student spaces that promote health and wellbeing and emphasize inclusion and accessibility,” she said.
She added the building reflects the college’s commitment to decarbonization across its entire campus, which comprises over two million square feet of built forms.
“If we can’t make them energy efficient, that costs us in the long run,” Rau said.
Silverstein said in terms of design, “everything about this project spoke to what we are as a firm.”
He said the building is rated at Tier 4 of the Toronto Green Standard, adding no other building in the city has reached that metric.
“It’s like LEED Platinum on steroids,” Silverstein said.
Limberlost Place has a pitched roof in order for a solar chimney to work. It acts as an outlet, so it has to be one to two levels above the level it is serving, he said, but the structure was only authorized for nine storeys.
In addition to the chimney, the roof also has an array of photovoltaic panels, Love added, but getting them onto the roof required ingenuity and custom engineered rigging.
“We knew we’d be challenged on this one,” he said. “We got the panels to a 37-degree angle on the ground, then lifted them (at that angle) into place.”
The building is also the first, Silverstein said, to use the heating component of Enwave’s District Energy Deep Lake Cooling System which leverages Lake Ontario to provide cooling to the building’s throughout downtown Toronto.
For approximately half the year the weather is suitable for the building to use natural ventilations, he added, but sensor arrays monitor and open and close windows automatically depending on conditions.
Love said the number one question he heard on tours during construction was “what if the wood gets wet?”
“It’s OK for wood to get wet. Just remove any ponding water and let it dry. It wants to breathe,” he said.
He added sealing the building too tightly ended up retaining water, so a tarp system was employed instead.
“We tarped the outside of the building while waiting for the envelope, which worked great because it deflected rain and snow, but you could pull it off and let the building breathe,” he said.
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