As their entry in a competition for The Arbour, a new academic building for the campus of George Brown College on Toronto’s Lake Ontario waterfront, Montreal-based firm Provencher_Roy have revealed their design for an adaptable mass timber building that could grow and change in time.
Using a staggered truss structural system that divides the building into modular cells measuring 8.4 meters tall, 17.4 meters wide and 40 meters long, the firm explains that the stacked program elements can be reorganized as necessary, with classrooms and double-height auditorium spaces able to be converted to basketball courts or column-free open offices by adjusting the cross-laminated timber flooring, which can be adjusted without compromising the rest of the structure.
Chosen as a runner-up from four finalists in the competition, which was won by Moriyama & Teshima Architects, Provencher_Roy’s entry proposed an additional lightweight post and beam structure stacked on top of the main building to house the Tall Wood Research Institute, which will be dedicated to research on low-carbon mass timber construction methods.
The proposed design also brings in light and extends the public realm with an escalating atrium, which could be opened up to adjacent park space on Sherbourne Common, connecting the college building to its nearby context and community.
News via: Provencher_Roy.
