Albert Campbell Library Renovation/Modernization

Reno reimagines potential to connect with people

By Brock James

The Albert Campbell Branch Library opened its doors in 1971 to serve Scarborough’s diverse community. In this rapidly growing Toronto suburb, the brutalist building stood as a beacon to the community. But after five decades, the Toronto Public Library (TPL) recognized the need for upgrades to meet contemporary needs. Working with LGA Architectural Partners, TPL sought to reimagine Albert Campbell as a more welcoming hub that brings people together and is connected to the community.

Originally, TPL believed that an expansion or a replacement would be necessary. However, our careful analysis revealed that 25% of the back-of-house space could be repurposed for public use by unlocking and reconnecting the buried first floor. This approach has enabled TPL to satisfy many of its wider visionary objectives such as sustainability and placemaking.

We began by relocating the main entrance from the second to the first floor. Previously, visitors accessed the building via an upward ramp, which created a dark and underutilized ground level. By carefully reshaping the land downward to follow the natural topography of the site, we redirected the library’s main entrance to the first floor. With new windows, the entry is now intimately connected to the front landscape.

On the second level, we cut a new floor opening above the entry and removed walls, allowing visitors to experience horizontal and vertical views into the entire branch while new east and west-facing windows draw in both daylight and verdant community views. A new elevator, painted red as a nod to the previous colour scheme, visually orients visitors while providing barrier-free access to all areas of the building, particularly to the previously limited-access subterranean community room, and the rooftop terrace.

Beyond achieving TPL’s objective to improve accessibility, the renovation was an opportunity for us to rethink the library’s programming and create a series of more contemporary spaces that would increase the community’s engagement with their local branch. Some of these new spaces include a Digital Innovation Hub, a recording studio, a room that accommodates Indigenous smudging, an outdoor roof terrace, group study rooms, medium and large multi-purpose rooms, a learning centre, and nine all-gender washrooms.

As for the project’s sustainability goals, our decision to reuse and renovate the existing concrete structure was the single most important step in limiting the project’s potential carbon footprint. Through the renovation, though, a number of other strategies were also applied to improve the building’s performance and bring it up to today’s standards.

Re-cladding the building’s exterior, for example, was one of these strategies. The exterior envelope was previously comprised of two wythes of concrete block with minimal insulation and no air or vapour barriers. To remedy this issue, we covered the existing block with a liquid-applied air/vapour barrier, R-25 insulation and fibre concrete panel cladding.

Project Team

Architect LGA Architectural Partners
Indigenous Consultant Trina Moyan, Bell and Bernard LTD
Landscape Architect Aboud & Associates
Structural Engineer Blackwell Engineers
Civil Engineer EMC Group
Mechanical/Electrical Engineer Enso Systems Inc
Contractor Pre-Eng Contracting
Photos LGA Architectural Partners

Brock James, OAA, FRAIC is Partner at LGA and Partner-in-Charge on the project.

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January 8, 2025January 8, 2025

The Dividends of Dissassembly

Reclaiming the value held in buildings

By Brenda Martens

Design for Disassembly and Adaptability (DfD/A) is an approach that facilitates dismantling a product or building at its end-of-use, enabling the recovery of components and materials intact, to facilitate their use in subsequent applications, including complete reassembly. The goal of DfD/A is to keep materials in their highest use for as long as possible.

Historical Highlights

The concept of DfD/A in permanent buildings isn’t new. Indeed, there were industrious (and perhaps morally suspect) parishioners in the 1500’s in Appenzell, a canton in the Swiss Confederacy, constructing homes on their lots, taking advantage of the free lumber from the church-owned forests offered to the congregation for this purpose, then disassembling these houses to sell to others, to be relocated and reassembled on a new site.

Even earlier, in Japan, techniques for carpentry (Miyadaiku) allowed for the removal and replacement of the wooden elements of construction. The dismantling, repairing or replacing, and reassembling of the timber parts has resulted in some wooden temples standing for centuries, largely replaced in place. The Hōryū-ji temple, over 1,300 years old, is the oldest standing wooden structure. After many restorations, only roughly a fifth of the original materials remain.

Canadian Context

Closer to home and our own time, the C.K. Choi Building at UBC (’96) is a striking early and influential project that demonstrated circular design principles. Under the direction of architects Joanne Perdue and Eva Matsuzaki and structural engineers Diana Klein and Gilbert Raynard, the project aspired to, and succeeded in incorporating salvaged heavy timber from the Armoury Building next door that was slated for demolition.

The Armoury, built in 1941 and used for military training in World War II, was repurposed after the war by UBC for registration, sessional examinations, graduation ceremonies and other assemblies but no longer fit with campus master plans. It provided approximately two thirds of the CK Choi’s structure, but only after the structural engineers had regraded all of the salvaged timber appropriate to its future use, with the knowledge of where it would be used in the new building, overruling the lumber grader’s previous conservative grading.

Brenda Martens, OBC, B.Sc., LEED FellowBCIT faculty and developer of the Applied Circular Economy: Zero Waste Buildings microcredential. with courses on Design for Disassembly, Deconstruction Management and Construction Material Flows. www.bcit.ca/ZeroWasteBuildings

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January 8, 2025January 8, 2025

Ecole du Zenith

New school a harmonious fusion of education and nature

In partnership with Leclerc Architects, Montreal-based Pelletier de Fontenay has recently completed École du Zénith in Schefford, QC, a project resulting from a series of competitions launched by Lab-École in 2019. Being the first school architecture competition since the 1960s, this major project marks a turning point in Quebec’s educational landscape, renewing the program, organization, and way of building elementary schools in the province.

Project Credits

Client Centre de Service Scolaire Val-des-Cerfs
Architects Pelletier de Fontenay + Leclerc
Landscape Architect Fauteux et associés in
collaboration with agence Relief Design
Structural Engineer Lateral Conseil
Civil engineer Gravitaire
Electrical and Mechanical Engineer BPA
PhotoS James Brittain

Edited by Jim Taggart from text supplied by the project team.

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November 12, 2024November 12, 2024

Giant Steps autism centre

A giant step for autism

A thorough, highly individualized interdisciplinary approach led to the design of Giant Steps Autism Centre, a cutting-edge facility aiming to transform the way autism services are deployed worldwide. Tailor-made for individuals on the spectrum, this project constitutes a perfect example of the use of architecture as a malleable work tool. More than just a school, Giant Steps is a place of solace – a safe space for the entire community.

For the past 40 years, Giant Steps Autism Centre has asserted its leadership in the provision of services supporting the education and success of people with ASD. As the number of individuals and families affected by autism steadily grows, there was an urgency to develop new ways to respond to their needs. The Centre represents a centralized hub based on four separate but integrated pillars: education, adult services, community outreach, and research.

Giant Steps Autism Centre finds its home in the Technopôle Angus, an avant-garde eco-district guided by principles of innovative sustainable development. With a design informed by the many perceptual differences and sensory challenges often facing people with autism, the Centre integrates the values of its new environment with style, placing innovation at the heart of its achievements.

The architecture is expressed as a concave curve creation that opens into an inner shielded courtyard and closes at the site’s rear embankment. Individuals on the autism spectrum experience both perceptual differences and difficulty processing sensory information.

Any of the senses may be over- or under-sensitive, or both, at different times. Since a child’s development – autonomy, socialization, creativity, and learning – is optimized through sensory stimulation, the building serves as a tool to introduce stimuli at every opportunity.

Vertically, the structure is defined by multiple storeys deployed in step-like fashion, serving to open up the courtyard space. The entrance leads directly to the school’s core, creating a visual link with the courtyard focal point. Lining the building’s massing is a corridor, constituting a shifting space revealing different opening and closing areas. Developed in close collaboration with occupational therapists, the schoolyard is designed to introduce children to many different stimuli.

Project Credits

Client Giant Steps Autism Centre
Architect Provencher_Roy
Project manager Gestion Proaxis
Structural engineer L2C Experts
Concrete Prefabricator BPDL Inc.
Photos 2 and 6 Thibault Carron, 1, 3, 4 and 5 Adrien Williams

Emile Deschenes P. Eng. is Project Manager at BPDL Inc.

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May 30, 2019June 14, 2019

Bank of Canada Renewal, Ottawa, ON

Existing Building Upgrade Award | Perkins+Will

Jury comments: This major rehabilitation and revitalization project, driven by quantitative issues of obsolete infrastructure, poor energy performance and related carbon impacts, and an outdated working environment, has been addressed with aesthetic sensitivity and restraint. Innovative structural upgrades enabled the restoration of the integrity of this 1970s office tower by Arthur Erickson, while the 1930s centre building and its immediate surroundings have been transformed into valuable new public amenities.

Located just west of Parliament Hill in Downtown Ottawa, the Bank of Canada Head Office complex comprises 79,500m² of offices and operation spaces. The original Centre Building was built in the 1930s; the twin office towers and connecting atrium being added in the 1970s. Completed in 2017, this project included the comprehensive renewal of the existing complex, including some reconfigurations and additions to the program.

A new museum invites and educates the community about the Bank’s role in the Canadian economy. The pyramidal glass entrance pavilion and the enhanced public realm that surrounds it form an abstraction of the Canadian landscape and functions as an accessible, multi-faceted public realm throughout the year.

Major drivers for renewal were the performance and infrastructure deficits of the facility, energy upgrades and carbon reductions, and modernization of the workplace. Within the towers, floor plates and waffle slab ceilings were restored to their original open plan concept.

The renovated towers were designed to be modular, allowing for a diverse range of uses so that each contains a combination of private and collaborative spaces.

The Centre Building accommodates both offices and conference facilities, while the atrium provides a variety of social spaces.

The design looked to maintain as much of the existing building infrastructure as possible, to lower both costs and negative environmental impact. Passive design strategies include revealing floorplates, allowing for deeper daylight penetration and greater access to views to the exterior and atrium.

PROJECT CREDITS

Client: Bank of Canada
Architecture/Interior Team: Perkins + Will
Civil Engineer: Novatech Engineering Consultants
Electrical/Mechanical Engineer: BPA Engineering Consultants
Structural Engineer: Adjeleian Allen Rubeli Limited
Project Manager: CBRE Limited/Project Management Canada
General Contractor: PCL Constructors Canada Inc.
Landscape Architect: DTAH
Food Service/Commissioning Agent: WSP
Heritage Consultant : Evoq Architecture
Building Envelope: ZEC Consulting
Building Science: CLEB
Sustainability Consulting Team: Perkins + Will
Security: LEA
A/V: Engineering Harmonics
Acoustic: HGC
Cost Consultant: Turner & Townsend
Lighting: Gabriel MacKinnon/Perkins + Will
Code & Life Safety: Morrison Hershfield
Photos: Younes Bounhar

PROJECT PERFORMANCE

Energy intensity = 183 kWh/m² /year
Energy savings relative to reference building = 44%
Water consumption = 4,645L/occupant/year (based on 250 days operation)
Water savings relative to reference building = 35%

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May 29, 2019May 30, 2019

Sechelt Water Resource Centre, Sechelt, BC

Commercial/Industrial [Small] Award | Public Architecture + Communication

Jury comments: We hope this project marks the beginning of a new era in which the invisible infrastructure that has long-supported urban life is brought out into the daylight. Only through making infrastructure visible can we fully grasp and understand the implications of our linear systems of production, consumption, treatment and disposal. Alongside the learning opportunities provided by this facility, the volume of waste discharged into the ocean has been reduced by 90% compared to its predecessor and the bio-nutrient by-products can be used for industry and agriculture.

The Sechelt Water Resource Centre (SWRC) rethinks traditional municipal wastewater treatment. Instead of sequestering this essential service behind a locked chain-link fence, the transparent suburban facility reveals the mechanical and biological systems that clean wastewater, replacing the traditional ‘flush and forget about it’ systems with one that encourages the public to consider their role in the hydrological cycle.

In comparison to the facility it replaced, the SWRC discharges ten times fewer waste solids into the sea, boasts double the treatment capacity and nearly half the operational costs; and, captures resources (biosolids, heat, and water) for industry, parks, and agriculture. A sewage treatment plant, botanical garden and teaching facility in turn, the centre also provides a more humane work environment where employee duties include harvesting tomatoes and pruning roses.

Wastewater is treated and reused at its source instead of being pumped back and forth from an energy intensive pipe network, effectively closing the water loop. The SWRC replaces an existing packaged extended aeration plant with the first North American installation of the Organica Fed Batch Reactor System.

This system is set apart by the inclusion of microorganisms, which live among the roots of plants grown in a greenhouse above the reactors. The plant roots create a complex environment which fosters a biologically diverse community of insects and bacteria that consume the organic matter.

What is remarkable about this system is the elimination of noise pollution and odours associated with conventional treatment as well as its reduced footprint. The entire process is housed in a single building, which integrates with the surrounding neighbourhood and nearby Sechelt Marsh Park.

PROJECT CREDITS

Owner/Developer: District Municipality of Sechelt
Architect: Public Architecture + Communication
General Contractor: Maple Reinders Group Inc.
Landscape Architect: Urban Systems
Civil Engineer: Urban Systems
Electrical Engineer: IITS Ltd.
Mechanical Engineer: HPF engineering Ltd.
Structural Engineer: CWMM Consulting Engineers Ltd.
Commissioning Agent: CES Group
Photos: Martin Tessler

PROJECT PERFORMANE

Energy intensity (process) = 584 KWhr/m²/year
Energy intensity reduction relative to reference building under ASHRAE 90.1 2007 = 22%
Water consumption from municipal sources = 12,597 litres/occupant/year
Reduction in water consumption relative to reference building under LEED = 69%
Recycled material content by value = 17%
Regional materials (800km radius) by value = 26%
Construction waste diverted from landfill = 96%