Toronto Region Conservation Authority Office
Location: Toronto, Canada
G.F.A: 80,000 sqft
Year: Under Construction
Architects: ZAS Architects + Bucholz McEvoy
By: Habiba Elnagdy
The Toronto Region Conservation Authority’s new head office is an 80,000 sq.ft., 4-storey mass timber post-and-beam administrative office building. Elements has been integral to the value-engineering process for this project, including the proposal of a cost-effective prefabricated exterior envelope, helping drive the design development forward. The building is intended to be one of the most energy-efficient office buildings in North America and received funding through NRCan’s Green Construction Through Wood (GCWood) program, which aims to encourage greater use of wood in construction projects. Through precedent photos and architectural documents, we discovered Site maps, plans, sections, heat maps of the building, structural capabilities, renders, construction photos and details. This lead to us navigating solar arrangement and how the building it formatted into a tiered system which manipulates the solar gain to the buildings benefit, it also exerts that energy through the solar chimneys. Our Process then moved from Diagrams to then the 3D Model to fully display our knowledge of the site.
The post and beam form of construction is fairly straightforward for this building. Building members are in repeated standardized modules which makes assembly more simple and efficient. Floors are constructed one after the other. First the posts are layed out, then beams, then the CLTfloor panels and finally the shear joint panels around the perimeter to lock all components together.This process is repeated for subsequent levels.
