All posts by Giulio

The race to mass timber is on – 77 Wade Avenue to be among the tallest mass timber commercial buildings in Canada

Located in Toronto’s Junction, 77 Wade Avenue will be a purpose designed and built office with collaboration space for the new digital age industrial worker. Designed by Bogdan Newman Caranci (BNC) Architecture and Urban Design, and developed by Next Property Group, 77 Wade Avenue will be 8 storeys and approximately ~150,000 square feet, making it among the tallest modern mass timber office and commercial buildings in Canada targeting LEED Gold, and the first of its kind to be built.

The key design intent of this project was to fuse contrasting materials to enhance the inherent warmth of an exposed wood structure comprised of composite mass timber, concrete and steel structural assemblies. Unlike the construction of 20th century post and beam buildings, construction of 77 Wade optimizes the use of a mass timber hybrid structural system by way of pre-fabricated components and just-in-time delivery and construction practices to achieve spans akin to traditional concrete and steel superstructure projects for modern commercial office buildings.

The overall design celebrates the advanced use of mass-timber construction within the ever-evolving architecture of Canada. The development and design of 77 Wade maximizes and streamlines the inherent structural and aesthetic qualities of exposed wood construction in a new and modern way; ultimately showcasing both our Canadian talent pool and our renewable wood resource. The building’s envelope will predominately be clad in a folded plain curtain wall to expose the innovative structure within, while also adding a dynamic form to the streetscape. The approach to the building is unified with an origami based geometric soft and organic front entrance, retail and flexible collaboration spaces. Perched above the form is a wood canopy that creates shading for the outdoor amenity and social space.

The rear of the building has a sunken parking area as well as a unique bike storage feature, connecting pedestrians and cyclists though the site, from the adjacent and elevated GO Barrie line corridor to be constructed complete with a linear park and Multi-Use Trail below (aka Metrolinx’s ‘Davenport Diamond’ project).

Today, tech-oriented and innovative companies desire work environments that hum with architectural character. 77 Wade achieves this with the use of wood construction and the fusion of contrasting materials. The provision of communal spaces for both the building’s users and the public, paralleled with the use of appropriate landscape design and softer and transparent cladding materials, makes 77 Wade Avenue a state-of-the-art contemporary office building that addresses the City and its urban citizens with a unique and innovative architectural language.

About BNC Architecture + Urban Design Established in 1969, Bogdan Newman Caranci Inc. is a Toronto-based firm with expertise in architecture, urban design, and master planning. For 50 years, BNC has been involved in projects across Canada, the US, and internationally, creating vibrant places for living, learning, working, and leisure. From institutional, cultural, commercial, mixed-use, and residential projects, to new community designs and urban redevelopment projects at all scales, the practice has a long, rich, and deep portfolio. Visit www.bncarchitects.ca .

3XN TO DESIGN TALLEST TIMBER OFFICE BUILDING IN NORTH AMERICA

Newest addition to Toronto’s emerging Bayside community offers flexible work spaces and connects the city to the waterfront

International real estate firm Hines has announced plans for T3 Bayside, the first office building in Toronto’s emerging Bayside community, located on the shores of Lake Ontario. Designed by the renowned Danish architecture firm 3XN, the 10-story structure will stand at 42 meters high, becoming the tallest timber office building not only in Toronto, but in all of North America.

3XN was selected by Hines to design an office space as part of the unprecedented 2,000-acre revitalization initiative that will transform Toronto’s waterfront. T3 Bayside joins 3XN’s two residential buildings in the area, Aqualuna and Aquabella, which activate Toronto’s newest and most dynamic live-work-play community. The new building and adjoining plaza will serve as dynamic visual and pedestrian gateway to the entire neighborhood, connecting residents and visitors to the revitalized waterfront.

“With 3XN’s world class design and the building’s unrivaled amenity offering, T3 Bayside will truly set a new benchmark for creative office space and will ultimately be responsible for creating more than 3000 jobs at Bayside,” explained Avi Tesciuba, Senior Managing Director and Country Head from Hines.

T3 Bayside is designed to reflect and emphasize the emerging neighborhood in which it sits, a community modeled around the intertwining principals of life, work, and play, offering a multitude of opportunities for the next generation of Torontonians. The building creates a continuously activated ground level, with abundant retail opportunities available on all sides. At the base of the building a new central plaza has been created, around which are additional stepped community and shared spaces, including exhibition and gallery spaces, flexible offices space and coworking facilities.

“We are honored to contribute to the development of this new neighborhood in Toronto,” said Kim Herforth Nielsen, Founder and Creative Director of 3XN. “3XN believes in creating buildings that focus on people and contribute to the public realm, which is our aim in this project as well. WithT3 Bayside we created flexible office spaces that can meet the requirements of a diverse group of tenants both at the moment and in the foreseeable future.”

Located at the northern edge of the Bayside development, situated along Queens Quay East and flanked by Merchant’s Wharf, T3 Bayside presents an opportunity to enhance and enforce the existing master plan on multiple levels. Through a series of stepped roof terraces, the building strengthens and emphasizes the movement and heights of the existing master plan at either end of the site. The same terraces step downwards toward the plaza, a new urban gateway and focal point that invites visitors and residents alike into the Bayside community as a whole. T3 Bayside marks the entrance to the neighborhood, leading all visitors toward the new waterfront promenade and thus connecting the city of Toronto with Lake Ontario.

Equal parts urban market, social space, and landscape, the new plaza is the public heart of the T3 Bayside project. Along the edge of the central plaza, corner lobbies, retail and café spaces are designed with flexibility and operability in mind. The building incorporates flexible event and community spaces that face the plaza on multiple levels, all of which can be used individually or booked together to facilitate various programming and events throughout the year. In this way, all activities within the space are visually connected to the central plaza, assuring that activity within the building is part of the exterior experience as well.

T3 Bayside will be the tallest timber office building in North America. The use of timber contributes to the sustainability of the building, both reducing construction time and allowing the building’s elements to be easily disassembled and re-used for other purposes.  The idea of using timber was suggested by the developer Hines. The materiality of timber defines the unique interior aesthetics and will also be reflected in the exterior of the building. Both the material and the shape of the wooden frame will ensure great acoustics. The use of wood, a breathable and absorbent material that allows the release of moisture, ensures a naturally regulated and healthy indoor environment.

“Canada, with its great forests, seems a natural place to build the tallest timber office building in North America and we are excited to be part of this development,” said Jens Holm, Partner in charge of 3XN North America and Head of Design for the T3 project. “The wooden structure will be a prominent part of the design and provide a warm tactile environment for the tenants that doesn’t compromise sustainability. The flexible layout will be able to meet the diverse needs of the users and bring people together.”

T3 Bayside brings together a flexible office space with a mix of coworking and community spaces, offering an experience that appeals to a broad array of tenants. The shared office spaces each hold the potential to combine intimate, single-height zones and social, double-height zones that suit ideas of coworking and are designed to accommodate a variety of programs. These office spaces can be directly connected to the lobby and help to activate the central plaza. Diagonal cuts in the building volume break the massing down to a more human scale around the plaza, and build back up to city scale as they rise across the façade.

About 3XN:

3XN is one of Denmark’s most-renowned architecture firms. Since it was founded in 1986 by Kim Herforth Nielsen, 3XN has been advancing Scandinavian traditions of clarity and generosity in architecture and translating them for a global audience. The firm’s work is grounded in ongoing research into how buildings reflect and influence human behavior and the environment, which results in innovative solutions to increasingly complex contemporary challenges. Among 3XN’s highest-profile projects are Olympic House, the new HQ for the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne, Quay Quarter Tower in Sydney, The Blue Planet (National Aquarium) and Royal Arena, both in Copenhagen, and the Museum of Liverpool. Based in Copenhagen, the firm also maintains offices in Stockholm, New York, and Sydney.

Photos credit: 3XN

Canada ranks 2nd in the global LEED buildings outside USA

 

The US Green Building Council (USGBC), creator of the LEED green building rating system, has revealed the top 10 countries for LEED buildings outside of the US.

The list ranks countries and regions in terms of cumulative LEED-certified gross sqm as of December 31, 2018.

Mainland China tops the list with more than 68 million gross sqm and 1,494 projects, followed by Canada with more than 46 million sqm and 3,254 projects.

leed2.jpg

leed3.jpg
Image credit: USGBC

“For the last 25 years, LEED has played a key role in sustainability efforts around the world,” says Mahesh Ramanujam, president and CEO, USGBC and Green Business Certification.

“A better future requires a universal living standard that leaves no one behind – and that future would simply not be possible without the extraordinary work being done in these countries.”

LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is the world’s most widely used green building program with 96,275 registered and certified projects in more than 167 countries and territories.

CREATING A PATHWAY TO CLIMATE POSITIVE COMMUNITIES

By Charlotte Matthews, Director of Sustainability, Sidewalk Labs

I love buildings. When I was eight years old my family moved to Hong Kong, one of the world’s most amazing cities. But even as I grew up fascinated by architecture, I also saw, in vivid detail, the heavy impact human activity had on the world around us.

So, I also care deeply about protecting the environment. The environment can’t speak for itself. It needs us to speak — and act — on its behalf.

How the built and natural environments can intersect for the benefit of both — and ultimately, for us, the people who live in them — is the focus of the work I do here at Sidewalk Labs. With Quayside, we’ve set ourselves a goal I am the first to admit is absurdly difficult: we are proposing to plan, build and operate the first climate positive community in North America.

What, exactly, do we mean by climate positive? You may be more familiar with the terms ‘net zero energy’, “nearly zero” and ‘carbon neutral.’ To achieve these classifications, a project must be able to show that over the course of a year, it can generate as much energy onsite from renewable resources (or purchase green energy through the power grid) as it consumes. Typically, honours are attained based upon projected energy use, estimated with computer models and assuming energy efficient tenants, rather than the project’s actual operating energy, because the role of the developer ends on opening day.

Getting to net zero, or even close to, is no easy feat. Those efforts are to be applauded. That said, to achieve true sustainability, we need to take a step further, to climate positive. Why? Because, to stave off the worst impacts of global warming in the decades to come, we cannot maintain existing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We must reduce them significantly. Which brings us to the challenge — as absurdly difficult as it is — of creating a neighbourhood that goes beyond zero and improves the health of the existing environment through its development.

The opportunity to aim for climate positive in Toronto is an objective of Waterfront Toronto for the Quayside development. In 2014, Ontario demonstrated world leadership by completing its elimination of coal fired power generation; a remarkable reduction from 25% of supply to zero in just ten years. Today, 90 percent of the power generated in Ontario is GHG-free. That’s like moving the starting line in a 100 metre dash up 65 metres because you have access to ample GHG-free energy through the power grid. In the race to get to climate positive, it gives Toronto a huge advantage over other cities in North America.

With the development at Quayside, we have the opportunity to use design principles and building techniques and materials to create structures modelled on the concepts behind Passive House. Passive House is one of the most rigorous voluntary standards for energy efficiency, and it has its roots in Canada with the construction of Saskatchewan Conservation House in Reginain 1977.

We also have the opportunity to learn from completed projects that have sought and achieved unprecedented performance. Many of these projects have found how in construction and operations, modeled results fall short.

Rather than build first and learn later why our buildings don’t meet modeled projections, we decided to study the energy use of existing buildings in Toronto, and compare actual building performance with modeled projections. That work is captured in detail in a white paper you can read here.

The study found that, on average, multifamily buildings in Toronto are using 39% more gas for heating and 21% more gas for domestic hot water generation than modeled, and on the flip side, residents are using 26% less electricity than predicted. The diagnosis for these gaps includes optimistic modeling of exterior wall construction, and how well steel components (which are superhighways for heat) are insulated (like a stirring spoon in a hot cooking pot) and outdated assumptions about the energy intensity of equipment and devices. And beyond modeling conventions, there are also lessons to learn about how systems are actually operated in buildings versus idealized models.

 

One of the major choices we’ve made with Quayside, to move us to our goal of climate positive, is to go 100% electric — including heating. As I mentioned earlier, Toronto and Ontario are already ahead of the climate-positive curve by having electricity generation that is 90% GHG free. That said, the reality of demand cycles is that power drawn during peak hours, even in Toronto, is at its most GHG-intensive. In Ontario, this is when gas-fired generation plants come online. To bridge the supply gap in Quayside, we’re planning on using a combination of solar and battery power, as well as geothermal exchange, sewer (waste water) heat and the heat rejected by air conditioning systems which run year-round for some commercial and industrial uses.

We’re also moving toward the goal of making our buildings more autonomous. We want them to learn from how their occupants use them and, for example, turn down or up the temperature when a space is unoccupied. Many people have early versions of this technology in their homes today in the form of smart thermostats. We’re looking at expanding this approach to a building’s entire energy ecosystem.

We have many more ideas in development, many of which we shared at Roundtable 4. We’re building on those ideas later today at Waterfront Toronto’s Design Review Panel, where I’ll be making a public presentation on our Pathway to Climate Positive Communities. I’ll be covering six main areas where we’re working today:

Advanced Power Grid: How we can use solar, batteries and new dynamic electricity rates to reduce peak demand (when grid-based power is at its highest GHG content)

Thermal Grid: Like a power grid, a thermal grid with heat pumps can exchange energy between “sinks” and “sources” to move heat from areas with excess (like the sewer system, which is full of hot water from showers) to areas that want more (like your home on a cold winter day) and also to seasonal thermal batteries, which is a service that geothermal wells can provide.

Low Load Buildings: Insulated and airtight buildings require less heating and cooling and can maintain occupiable temperatures without heating through a wintertime power outage of at least three days.

Advanced Energy Management: Expand automated, easy-to-use controls to a building’s entire energy ecosystem to reduce energy waste and customer utility costs.

Active Stormwater Management: Developing a connected, green stormwater infrastructure that reintroduces nature into a gritty urban environment while reducing the need and cost of concrete infrastructure in buildings.

Smart Disposal Chain: Using smart chutes and a pneumatic waste system to enable “pay as you throw” disposal, feedback to individuals on the community’s sorting practices and streets without garbage trucks.

The proposed community of Quayside is just that, a proposal. Everything we’re planning is iterative. All of our hypotheses will not play out. It’s also why we’re sharing our plans, and listening to feedback, every step of the way.

Toronto already has a reputation as a world leader in building and energy innovation. Quayside offers the potential to build on that progress and deliver a North American first — a community that is actively and measurably climate positive.

Want to know more? You can download my presentation to Waterfront Toronto’s Design Review Panel here and read the reports on our residentialand commercial building studies.

Renderings credits Picture Plane for Heatherwick Studio

Safdie Architects to Set New Standard for Community-Centric Airport Design With the Opening of Jewel Changi Airport in Singapore in 2019

Features include an expansive indoor forest, the world’s tallest indoor waterfall, tree-top walking trails, restaurants, retail, and a variety of gathering places

Jewel weaves together an experience of nature and the marketplace, dramatically asserting the idea of the airport as an uplifting and vibrant urban center, engaging travelers, visitors, and residents, and echoing Singapore’s reputation as ‘The City in the Garden.’

–Moshe Safdie

Designed by Safdie Architects, Jewel Changi Airport, the newest development at Singapore’s award-winning Changi Airport, will commence a phased opening in Q2 2019. Jewel Changi Airport combines an intense marketplace and a paradise garden to create a new center – “the heart and soul” of Changi Airport. Once open, Jewel will establish a new paradigm for community-centric airport design, extending the airport’s principal function as a transit hub to create an interactive civic plaza and marketplace, combining landside airport operations with expansive indoor gardens and waterfall leisure facilities, retail, restaurants, and a hotel as well as other spaces for community activities.

Linked to the city’s public transportation grid and with open access to Terminal 1, and to Terminals 2 and 3 via pedestrian bridges, Jewel engages both in-transit passengers as well as the public of Singapore. Entirely publicly accessible, the 134,000-square-meter (144,000 sq.ft.) glass-enclosed toroidal building asserts a new model for airports as a destination for community activity, entertainment, and shopping.

“Jewel presents a new building prototype for connecting the city and the airport,” said Jaron Lubin, Principal at Safdie Architects. “Like an Ancient Greek ‘agora,’ it aligns social and commercial values to create an animated public realm destination.”

PROJECT FEATURES

The Forest Valley

To create an airport experience unlike any other, Safdie Architects integrated spatial and interactive experiences throughout a lush indoor garden and a five-level retail marketplace. The core of Jewel is the Forest Valley, a terraced indoor landscape featuring walking trails and quiet seating areas set amongst more than 200 species of plants. The Rain Vortex, the world’s tallest indoor waterfall, showers down seven stories from a central open oculus in the domed roof, compelling visitors with dramatic cascades during the day and performance light and projection experiences by night. During the region’s frequent and powerful thunderstorms, recirculated, natural rainwater will flow at more than 10,000 gallons per minute, which helps provide cooling and airflow in the landscape environment, collecting significant rainwater to be re-used in the building.

Jewel is slated to receive a Platinum rating from Singapore’s GreenMark program for environmentally sustainable buildings. An integrated system of glazing, static and dynamic shading, and an innovative and efficient displacement ventilation system was developed to achieve the required level of comfort for a diversity of activities, as well as to sustain the vast array of plant life.

Canopy Park

On the fifth level is the Canopy Park, which includes 14,000 sq.m. of attractions integrated within the garden spaces such as net structures suspended within the trees, a suspended catenary glass-bottom bridge walk, a planted hedge maze and mirror maze, and feature installations completed in collaboration with internationally acclaimed artists. The highly immersive features are designed to be both aesthetic and functional, providing pathways for traversing the space while delighting visitors with gorgeous sightlines, providing spaces for interpersonal interaction and community building, and creating a sense of wonder and discovery. Additional highlights include a topiary walk, horticultural displays, and an event plaza for 1,000 people.

Connection to the City and the World

Conceived to serve the people of Singapore and travelers equally, the building is directly connected to the Changi Bus Terminal and the airport’s Terminal 1. It is also accessible from Terminals 2 and 3 via pedestrian bridges, and the inter-terminal train crosses through the gardens, giving visitors with limited time a glimpse into the Forest Valley. The retail galleria, featuring more than 280 retail and food and beverage outlets and a 130-room hotel, develops the foundation of Jewel’s one-of-a-kind integration of marketplace and garden.

All images are courtesy Safdie Architects

PLUG-IN CITY 75

Inhabit the Facades

Located in the heart of the 16th arrondissement of Paris, a stone’s throw away from La Seine river, this building of the 1970s is, like most buildings of this period, lacking of energy performance. A condition due to the presence of thermal bridges, bad insulation and the old standard windows. Its average energy consumption is approximatively 190KWh / m² / year.

In addition, the apartments were too small and gloomy, which led the co-owners to mandate Stephane Malka to optimize their properties.

Since the Alur law ( a new property law which relaxed planning laws, particularly those for rooftops, and introduced rent-stabilization measures ) does not allow the building to be raised, Stephane Malka Architecture decided to graft the building with a succession of extensions, bow-windows and loggias; Each inhabitant control the necessary surface area needed for its own development upon request.

The result is an extension of the dwellings on the ground floor as well as hanging gardens along with bow-windows, balconies and loggias of variable dimensions.

The structure of the boxes is made of bio-sourced wood, made from wood particles and chips, which allows them a lightness and a great flexibility of implementation on site. Modular and mounted in a workshop, each cube is directly plugged to the existing façade of the building.

The accumulation of extensions on the façade divides the energy consumption of the building by 4, and classifies the rehabilitation of this building in Paris Plan Climat Label with an average energy consumption of 45KWh / m² / year.

Thus the building is transformed and adapted to the real needs of its inhabitants;

The ground-floor accommodation stretches towards the inner garden. These extensions allow the inhabitants of the 1st floor to benefit from large private terraces opened to the sky. Thus, each cube allows two levels of extensions, one covered and one open in its top floor. Private and common interstitial terraces are thus generated by default, in negative of the loggias.

Utopia of yesterday, Today’s architectures, the mutation of cities must be built on existing heritage. “Para-Site” the city, literally, lean back against it, healing the wounds of the city and its heritage in a logic of transformation. By superposition, addition and extension of the built heritage, rather than the categorical tabula rasa.

Courtesy of  Stephane Malka Architecture

Diller Scofidio + Renfro unveils the design of the proposed University of Toronto building

90 Queen’s Park provides an urban and cultural hub, bringing together nine previously dispersed departments—including the School of History, Music, Law, Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies and a home for the new School of Cities—into a single building.

Positioned at the intersection of Bloor Street and Queens Park, 90 Queen’s Park produces a new gateway into the campus and a connector between its neighboring buildings: the Royal Ontario Museum, the 1960’s era Edward Johnson Building and two historic structures from the 1900’s – Flavelle House and Falconer Hall.

90 Queen’s Park provides an urban and cultural hub, bringing together nine previously dispersed departments—including the School of History, Music, Law, Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies and a home for the new School of Cities—into a single building.

At the heart of the building is a dynamic central atrium and stair linking clusters of lounge spaces, study spaces and meeting rooms. This public commons fosters access and views between the disciplines, promoting a culture of collaboration.

90 Queen’s Park will be a central gathering space receiving visitors from all directions. The design buries the access road under the building to create a generous new entry plaza with a terraced landscape, welcoming visitors from the South and Philosopher’s Walk. A cafe and restaurant extends from the inside-out with a gently stepped hardscape and softscape marking entry from the North. At ground level, the Centre provides direct access into the Edward Johnson Building and Falconer Hall. Located on the second floor, the school of Cities’s Urban Lab forms a canopy for the Southern entry with classrooms performing the same function at the North plaza. Floating above neighboring buildings within the erosion, the Centre’s 250-seat recital hall and a flexible event space provide larger gathering spaces where visitors can enjoy views of downtown Toronto.

Rendering by bloomimages, courtesy of Diller Scofidio + Renfro

The Launch of “Burj Jumeira” – The New Icon to Dubai Skyline

Following a record-breaking 2018 and its completion of 13 different high-rise buildings that are 200 meters and more, Dubai – the well acclaimed “World’s Capital of Modern Architecture”, is back and at it again, with the state-owned Dubai Holding recently unveiling plans for a new tower, design conceived by Skidmore, Ownings & Merrill (SOM).

The Burj Jumeira will stand 550-meters-tall (1,804-feet) in the Al Sofouh neighborhood of Dubai, home to popular Dubai landmarks, such as the Madinat Jumeirah, the Dubai Knowledge Village, and the Dubai Internet City.

Strategically situated between the world famous Burj Al Arab and the Mall of Emirates, the tower will offer top-notch amenities – nothing short of the luxury-living typical of the state. Also, the tower will be the highlight of the newly proposed urban district, a residential and commercial area that will be called “Downtown Jumeirah”.

“Burj Jumeira is bold, elegant, and dynamic,” said SOM Design Partner Mustafa Abadan. “It will tower over Jumeirah as the centerpiece of the neighborhood, and will feature a synthesized architectural and structural design.”

The tower’s flowing design emulates the regional dunes and oases of the United Arab Emirates, while its spherical observation deck is evocative of the native gulf pearl. The upper stories will have world-class sky lounges, restaurants, and observation decks with glass viewing platforms offering a unique 360-degree panoramic view of Dubai’s breath-taking scenery and the Arabian Gulf waters. The panelized metal façade system of the tower blends seamlessly into the structural system, and the central void will be used to host “social, cultural and artistic events and activities”.

 

The split-volume tower’s overall shape is similar to that of its future neighbor – the proposed 135-meter high Dubai Lighthouse of the 2017 launched Dubai Harbour project, split along the middle by a vertical void into two curvilinear masses, so much so that the supertall Burj Jumeira when completed might easily be tagged the world’s tallest standing twin towers – a position currently held by the Malaysian Petronas Towers, which stretch 452 meters (1,483 feet) into the sky.

Perhaps the most notable feature of the tower would be its base – designed completely from the outline of the real fingerprint of His Highness, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum. A large reflective pool and water fountains will highlight the base’s relaxing alfresco space and the walkable covered paths linking the tower to the array of retail outlets, the Sharaf DG Metro Station and other points surrounding the site.

The tower comes among the distinctive urban projects being set up in Dubai for the approaching expo 2020 and will be an architectural wonder that will proffer a daring new vision on Dubai’s landscape.

Construction began January 31st, the same day the project was announced, with the first phase set to be completed by 2023. The new mega-project is arguably Dubai’s biggest architectural marvel yet, which will offer the highest standard of luxurious homes, office spaces, and hotels while arousing more curiosity and intrigue from residents and tourists alike.

With a portfolio spanning thousands of projects across 50 countries, SOM is one of the largest architectural firms in the world. Their primary expertise is in high-end commercial buildings including Burj Khalifa – the world’s tallest building – 152 story-tower soaring 828 meters above the metropolis of Dubai. www.som.com

Celebrating seven successful years

It’s been an exciting whirlwind of activity since we started out, but we feel the best is yet to come. Please join us as the ride continues.

As Ontario’s only magazine for sustainable building and architecture, we have featured some of the most prominent green builders dedicated to pushing the envelope and going above the code. There are many examples, such as Times Group, Arista Homes, Reid’s Heritage Homes, Sorbara Group of Companies, Empire Communities, North Star Homes, Minto Communities, Great Gulf Homes, The Remington Group, Sifton Properties, Strashin Developments, Cora Group, Devron Developments, RND Construction and Barbini Design/Build. The list goes on …

Over the years, as an advocate of sustainable architecture, Green Building + Architecture magazine has featured a veritable who’s who of renowned architectural firms from Canada and around the world, including Frank Gehry, Vince Callebaut Architectures, James Law Cybertecture, MAD, Gentler, Heatherwick Studio, WZMH Architects, Stefano Boeri Architetti, superkul Inc, Foster + Partners, BIG, ZAS Architects, William Dewson Architects, Kongats Architects, KPMB, Sustainable TO, Williamson Williamson, Humphreys & Partners Architects, just to name a few.

To recap, we would like to stress that Green Building + Architecture is committed to showcasing the groundbreakers, with the newest, most innovative sustainable projects from around the world.

I’d like to take this opportunity congratulate all featured builders and architects and say a big THANK YOU to our advertisers who make this magazine possible, contributors, dedicated readers, and my team – which does an outstanding job each and every issue.

Giulio Marinescu

Publisher

www.gbplusamag.com

BJARKE INGELS GROUP – 79&PARK 

Located on the edge of Gärdet, a treasured national park, Kullen makes conscious decisions to provide a sensitive, respectful form while allowing the same choices to simultaneously manifest as exceptional residences with spectacular views. In direct response to the context, the northwest and southeast corners take the heights of their immediate neighbors; while the northeast corner, farthest from the park and nominally with the worst view, is pulled upwards to grant it the most spectacular views of park and port.

The southwest point of the building extends farthest into Gärdet; and to create a humane edge between building and nature, is pushed down to the lowest profile, transforming it into a public platform with a 270 degree view of parkscape and simultaneously freeing the majority of the residential units to views of the park. The same move also ensures that the central courtyard will always receive copious amounts of sunlight. In further deference to Gärdet, the massing is visually reduced through a language of pixels, scaled to the human form.

This manipulation not only allows for a more organic expression, perfectly reflecting the surrounding landscape, but also provides a way to accomplish the building topography in a controlled and inexpensive way through the use of prefabricated units of standardized sizes.

Photos: Laurian Ghinitoiu