This presentation will explore the use of mass timber for a newly proposed 12 storey hotel in Kelowna, British Columbia. The 82 suite hotel builds upon the knowledge gained from the completed West Wing Hotel; also commissioned by RBP Hotels and Resorts. As building technologies improve and demands for green buildings increase, opportunities to explore and push the boundaries of mass timber construction will only follow suit.

Key Opportunities for using mass Timber:

1. Speed of Construction
2. Environmental Impact
3. Safety and Performance
4. Reduced Structural Weight
5. Biophilic Design Benefits

This presentation will discuss the merits and value of using mass timber from an architectural perspective. Rob and Nick will share experience utilizing mass timber through a sampling of transportation projects, featuring Kelowna International Airport and the Joyce-Collingwood and Surrey Central SkyTrain stations.

Attendees will learn the following:

The decision-making process that fostered the adoption of mass timber.

• The relationship between mass timber, meaningful placemaking and community values.
• How mass timber was integrated into these specific projects.
• Where this knowledge has influenced other architectural applications.

As a Principal, Rob leads a range of different project types from small and focused studies to very large and complex projects involving multiple phases, contractors, and stakeholder groups. Rob is currently the Project Principal for the current Kelowna Airport expansion. As a panoramic thinker who embraces the full spectrum of architectural practice, he has honed his ability to address the demands of tight schedules, complex building programs, and intricate systems coordination, all within the tight constraints of demanding regulatory requirements and procedures.

Raised in the middle of a rainforest on Vancouver Island, Rob enjoys designing with a natural material grown from the earth. Unlike manufactured products such as steel or concrete, mass timber adds a personal layer to buildings that helps connect users to their environment. With each new project, Rob explores new ways wood can be integrated and enjoyed for generations to come. One of Rob’s most notable projects utilizing mass timber is the award-winning Fort McMurray International Airport.

Nick has over 23 years of international experience in a wide range of complex projects types from transportation, commercial, institutional and private clients. As a Principal at omb, he provides valuable leadership in the coordination of client requirements and consultant team design integration, that results in strong project delivery. In addition to his role as Project Principal on both Joyce Collingwood and Surrey Central SkyTrain Station Upgrades, he has provided progressive leadership on several airport expansions, including Nanaimo, Terrace and Turks and Caicos.

Growing up in a 350-year-old timber frame house in England, and helping his family’s timber framing business, Nick developed an early affinity with wood. He loves the timeless and contextual nature of

wood and likes to incorporate natural and local materials whenever possible. When designing with timber, Nick prefers to keep it simple and let the natural beauty of the material speak for itself.

Matthew and Gary will highlight Design Build Services’ use of mass timber in building an invigorated, enriched, diverse community of Langford on Vancouver Island.  Their multi-family dwellings are carefully designed to be part of sustainable, livable neighborhoods that are pedestrian-friendly and close to local amenities – achieving this while maintaining social and environmental responsibility. Encouraging alternate forms of transportation, the homes are strategically located to take advantage of upcoming new links between the West Shore and Downtown Victoria. Featuring architecture that is vibrant and welcoming, their Mass Timber buildings are the cornerstones of their community, sustainably creating innovative designs for families and businesses. They are the iconic landmarks that you can call home.

The presentation will start with their 6 storey projects like Hockley Corners, The Arc, and Peatt Commons 2. From there they will discuss their flagship project, District 56, consisting of three mass timber phases. The first, Terminus, is an innovative, 5 storey, mass timber commercial building designed to operate as the business hub of the community they’ve built. The second phase is Tallwood 1, Vancouver Island’s first 12 storey mass timber building, which will be home to 124 residential rental units. Finally, our presenters will explain why they’ve become dedicated to building with mass timber on of their future projects, further building their “mass timber community” in Langford and the surrounding area.

CLT was used as the flooring structure of the house. The reasons of selecting CLT are:

· LBC requires that all lumber to be used in the project must be FSC certified or recycling material. After exploring the supply market, we were hardly to find a supplier who can provide us engineering lumber (PSL, LVL, TJI etc.) made from FSC material.

· Under the LBC requirement, the project is also required to generate “zero” waste. As we all known that stick framing on site always produces tons of cut waste. Hence, pre-fab off site is the approach that we have to work with. All the walls are hence pre-fabricated. However, pre-fabricated floor using traditional beams/joists-plus-floor-sheathing panel is challenging from both structural and transport/installation. Therefore, CLT is a prefect solution.

Because of the ‘split-levels” layout, the structure of the house asks for heavy structural steel members as the main vertical and horizontal supports. The CLT floors and pre-fab walls have to be fixed accurately with these steel members. Hence, the main contractor has to work and coordinate closely with the structural steel supplier, the CLT supplier and pre-fab wall supplier to make sure their design are working together. 3-D modelling was used as a key tool in the design coordination. Installation on site was also asked for tight coordination too. The whole installation on site including structural steel, CLT and pre-fab wall was completed within four weeks and without major conflict.

This presentation will include an overview of working within an Indigenous framework to create appropriate and meaningful spaces.  We will explore a number of projects, exploring the use of wood to create cultural and societal meaning.  The common key to the success is the inclusion of the Nation from the outset to create the vision for the project.  We will also review implementing construction contracts that allow promote the use of band labour and materials.  Each of the projects presented includes a different approach to wood construction that is specifically appropriate to the Nation and the land.

Projects will include the T’it’qet Community Hall and Health Centre, Cooks Ferry Housing, SHXW’OWHAMEL Community Hall and Health Centre and the Lower Post Health Centre.

completed Radium Hot Springs Community Centre and Library was one of the first DLT buildings in Canada and received a SAB Green Building Award. Other award winning recent work includes the Summerland Branch Library and the Engineering Student Centre at UBC.

Shelley graduated from the University of Waterloo with a Bachelor of Environmental Studies (Architecture) in 1980 and from the Architectural Association with a Masters in Architecture in 1984. Prior to forming Urban Arts Architecture Inc. in 2006, she was the principal of Urban Forum Architecture for 14 years. Shelley has been an adjunct professor at the UBC School of Architecture, University of Waterloo, and the Emily Carr University. She currently sits as chair of the UBC Advisory Urban Design Panel, WoodWorks! Steering Committee and is a Canadian Wood Council board member.

Shelley is well known for her commitment to “built in BC” design and research. She has received a BC Woodworks 2019 Wood Champion Award, Wood First Premier’s Award, AIBC Innovation Award and the 2009 WoodWorks Architect Award for her work featuring wood design and research. Shelley has presented lectures across the country on UAA’s progressive wood designs and research.

The future seat of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation government, health, cultural and community services is the first phase of a campus-style village centre located on a site overlooking the Burrard Inlet. During 10,000+ years of history, Tsleil-Waututh Nation has developed sophisticated art, philosophy, social structure, and building technology using the versatile properties of wood from the Pacific forest, particularly cedar. The values of that important cultural heritage are embodied in the design of the new Administration and Health Centre and were developed through an integrated design process with the entire team of sub-consultants and in close collaboration with representatives of the Tsleil-Waututh community. The building is sensitively placed on a north-south axis and follows the course of a creek on the east side of the site taking advantage of the relationship between the water and forest. A strong synergy between the interior and exterior spaces is incorporated in the design so that the surrounding nature and views of the ocean can be appreciated inside and out.

Tsleil-Waututh means “People of the Inlet”. The symbiotic connection between Tsleil-Waututh culture and the sea is embodied in the wavy forms of the roof. The largest roof form is over a central, multi-

purpose Gathering Space that will be the heart of community events and a Council Chamber that will provide the seat of government.

Four cedar log columns and cedar log beams, symbolic of traditional structures, define the Chamber. The Chamber can be easily adapted to be closed off for privacy or opened up to provide an addition to the Gathering Space. The cedar-clad walls will provide a background for permanent or temporary displays of traditional and contemporary art created by Tsleil-Waututh artists.

The structure, utilizing engineered wood products and natural lumber, is a combination of post and beam frames infilled with glazing and a limited amount of strategically placed shear walls, requiring precision pre-manufacturing off-site. This design exposes every element of the structure as an architectural feature and demands skillful concealment of the mechanical/electrical networks.

Extensive fenestration allows for plenty of natural light minimizing the need for artificial lighting, while operable windows provide natural ventilation to individual offices. Mechanical units provide heating and cooling to each office and are individually controlled. Green roofs are a feature element, planted with indigenous plant species to help regulate the indoor temperature, save energy and encourage endemic biodiversity.

The quality and clarity of the interiors are created by exposing every structural building element without the need for additional artificial interior finishes. This approach of almost furniture-like assembly of construction elements presents a great challenge – incorporating significant technical infrastructure without being visible. The hidden technical infrastructure contains heating, cooling, ventilation, acoustics, audiovisual, electrical distribution, lighting distribution, fire protection and the security network.

This presentation will discuss the design of the 2150 Keith Drive a 164,000 sq ft, 10-storey mass timber office building that will be built in Vancouver’s False Creek Flats area. The lead tenant for Keith Drive will be Nature’s Path, a Vancouver-based producer of organic food. The company is an industry leader in organic food development, farming innovation, and sustainable food production, and this new office building is envisioned as an extension of its sustainability mandate.

Mass timber is the material of choice for Keith Drive because it ties into Nature’s Path’s commitment to natural, renewable resources, but also because it is aesthetically pleasing, flexible, highly functional, sequesters carbon, and supports the local lumber industry. The design team was inspired to push the boundaries of mass timber commercial office building designs with this project, and in the end delivered an innovative design that boasts larger floor plates, taller floor-to-floor heights, and greater column spacing than typically found in this building type.

The presentation will focus on tall wood innovation as an opportunity to elevate mass timber design and construction, and demonstrate what is possible under new regional and national building code regulations that allow for 12-storey wood buildings. This building will, in fact, be unlike anything else when it is complete. Keith Drive will be the tallest timber seismic force-resisting building in North America, at 45 m / 147 ft. That feat will be made possible in part thanks to Tectonus structural connections, which will allow the building to self-centre after an earthquake.

The extensive use of engineered wood products will define both the interior and exterior character of the building. The glulam timber perimeter-braced structural system creates a striking expression of the building from the exterior, and eliminates the need for conventional cast-in-place concrete cores. These braces, along with a series of cross-laminated timber shear walls in the interior, will resist wind and seismic loads. Extensive destructive testing has been conducted to ensure the mass timber structure will be able to withstand projected seismic forces. Inside the building, the project team worked hard to maximize both the aesthetic and functional benefits of engineered wood. An exposed wooden structure will show off the natural beauty of the material, as well as meet a two-hour fire rating code requirement – without having to be encapsulated by gypsum (drywall), as was the case in many first-generation tall wood buildings.

PUBLIC: Architecture + Communication will present on their design and completion of UBC Okanagan’s Skeena Residence, the first on-campus residence built to Passive House standard in Canada. In this discussion, Brian Wakelin and Jamie Harte will share lessons learned about why conventional wood framing is best suited to Passive House projects from a strategic and tactical perspective. In particular it offers:

• Industry familiarity and competitive pricing compared with other structural systems
• Flexibility to accommodate atypical service sizes
• Simplified window installation
• Improved structural durability when combined with Passive House envelope
• And resilient detailing to manage thermal bridging compared with other structural systems.

The Sewells Landing project in West Vancouver celebrates the use of heavy timber.  The project is conceived as a village of structures stepping up from the waters of Horseshoe Bay to the cliffs of Tyee Point.  Everywhere the project is crowned in wood.  The timber forms the uppermost levels of all of the buildings, such that the living space comprises ’Westcoast houses in the sky’. 

The project integrates heavy timber within non-combustible construction. On the basis of Code Alternative Solutions, the project team has been able to include exposed timber throughout, capping the concrete construction below.  This is actual timber structure up to twelve stories in the air, not a veneer. 

We considered timber to be the most appropriate material to integrate the project into the village of Horseshoe Bay.  It allows residents to enjoy an authentic experience of Westcoast living, under wood, at the foot of the mountain, and beside the sea.  The Amenity Boathouse concludes this experience, offering access onto the water itself from a cathedral of timber. 

In face of climate change, building with wood is the architecture and construction industries’ chance to challenge norms and drive the world’s aspirations towards zero carbon emissions. This presentation will demonstrate the potentials of advanced wood design and construction at scales from x-small to x-large. We will present two Vancouver projects designed by Perkins and Will with world class innovation in-mind, and with aspirations to be a catalyst for change: The Petal at Emily Carr University, and SoLo Off-Grid Cabin.

The Petal is both a landmark sculpture and a small coffee house pavilion that anchors the regeneration of the False Creek Flats area in Vancouver. The structure takes inspiration from flowers – and is a layered composition of mass timber shell petals, digitally manufactured and assembled on site. The design process of the pavilion connects the dots between design, technological innovation, and hands-on physical construction.

SoLo is an off-grid Cabin in the Lower Soo Valley, north of Whistler BC. The building paves a new path forward for a future way to build. It serves as a case study to test way and means to achieve net zero in both embodied and operation emissions. It is built of modular, prefabricated mass timber and follows rigorous Passive House standards to dramatically reduce energy consumption. It challenges notions of what high performance buildings can achieve in both performance and aesthetics.