Algonquin College Perth Campus
Algonquin College is a major provider of post-secondary education in Eastern Ontario, with campuses in Ottawa, Perth and Pembroke. The Perth Campus is located in the Town of Perth, approximately 65 km west of Ottawa. In keeping with Perth’s historic involvement with the Rideau Canal World Heritage Site, the Perth Campus’ area of excellence is heritage preservation training, which draws students from the local community and from around the world. In 2009, planning began for a new building capable of accommodating more students. During construction of the new building, comprised of the Academic Hall and the Construction Wing (Figure 1), classes continued in an old building that was subsequently demolished. A new outdoor construction pad is located over the footprint of the old building. The new building was ready for classes in September 2011, one year after the start of construction. The town of Perth has a rich history, reflected in the nineteenth-century mills and factory buildings along the Tay River, Victorian storefronts and grand, century-old, timber-frame buildings. The Algonquin College Perth Campus building sought to blend with this fabric through the use of traditional forms, locally sourced materials, and woodframe construction.
B.C. Schools (Crawford Bay Elementary-Secondary & Richmond Christian)
Crawford Bay is a small and remote community on the east shore of Kootenay Lake in the southern interior of British Columbia. A community of about 500 people, it is one of several such communities collectively known as the East Shore communities. Historically, the area has relied heavily on logging for employment but, since the 1960s at least, has also been home to grassroots environmentalists and, more recently, to highly educated exurbanites who form part of a ‘back to the land’ movement. There is also a strong artisan community with a broad range of skills in carving, weaving, ironwork and other arts. The village of Crawford Bay has been home to a one-room school house since 1946, and the need to replace this aging facility provided the impetus for this project. A feasibility study quickly determined that rehabilitation and expansion of the existing building was not cost effective, nor could the existing site readily accommodate a new structure and the required ancillary facilities such as playing fields and parking lots. Accordingly, a new site was selected and design of the new school commenced in 2004.
Community Resource Centre
The Greenfield Community Resource Centre and Elementary School is located in a small, isolated forestry community in Nova Scotia where 16.1 % of employment is provided by the forestry sector. This forestry based community is proud of its local heritage. Indeed, in 1987 it was dubbed the “Forestry Capital of Canada” and to this day has a “Build First with Wood” policy in place for new construction. The Resource Centre, valued at $1.3 million Canadian dollars, was built by a non-profit community group to replace an insufficient and outdated building that was over 60 years old.
Grizzly Paw Brewing Company
In 1996, The Grizzly Paw Brewing Company began brewpub restaurant operations in Canmore, Alberta, at the doorstep of Banff National Park. Since then, the business has attained microbrewery status, and success and growth have led to the need for a brewery building to meet present and future needs for supplying beer and carbonated drinks to Canmore, Banff, Calgary, and other communities across Alberta. The purpose of the new brewery is to augment the capacity of the existing brewpub by a factor of 8 to 10 to meet increasing demand for the Grizzly Paw brands. The new building will also have hospitality space suited to tours and receptions once the brewing facility is running smoothly. The building is located on a one-acre site in a commercial zone at the gateway to Canmore (Figure 1). The brewery was initially designed to be a steel building, but preliminary cost estimates were over-budget. An alternative conceptual design was made based on exposed heavy timber construction. The resulting timber building met all the building science challenges, saved money, and better met the Rocky Mountain architectural design motif of Canmore. It provides a pleasing appearance that will attract additional publicity and be very conducive to guided tours through the brewery.
Richmond Olympic Oval
The Richmond Olympic Oval is the largest structure to be built for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games. Designed to accommodate the long track speed-skating events before an audience of more than 8000 spectators, the building features a 6 acre (2.5 hectare) free spanning roof that is a precedent setting example of British Columbia’s and Canada’s advanced wood engineering and prefabrication capabilities. The building is located a short distance from Vancouver’s International Airport in the City of Richmond, where after the Games, it will be transformed into a multi-sports training and recreation facility at the centre of a new residential and commercial neighbourhood. Construction of the project began in 2005, and the building was opened on time and under budget in December 2008.
Slave Lake Government Centre and Library
Located 250 km north of Edmonton, the Town of Slave Lake, Alberta, is home to 7,000 residents and serves as a regional hub for a population of 25,000. It’s economic base includes tourism, oil, gas and forestry industries. The new Slave Lake Government Centre and Library was designed and built to consolidate a number of government services, in outdated facilities, that were distributed throughout the community of Slave Lake. The new building, which is a combination of renovated space and new construction (Figure 1), has streamlined the delivery of public services in Slave Lake and provided a central place where citizens can meet, interact and conduct daily business in one stop.
Wood Design Awards, 2014
Engineering Guide for Wood Frame Construction 2014
The Engineering Guide for Wood Frame Construction has been produced by CWC to provide guidance to engineers, building designers, building officials, builders, and students of these disciplines on the structural design of wood elements and connections for wood frame buildings that fall within the scope of Part 9 of the NBC. The Guide was revised, in this 2014 Edition, in order to conform to changes in the 2015 edition of the NBC.
