At Trinity College at the University of Toronto, construction on the Lawson Centre for Sustainability is underway. Scheduled to open in 2025, the four storey, mixed-use building will include student residences and educational facilities with classrooms. This month, MTI Research Coordinator Shan Shukla sat down with Sara Navrady, Associate Architect at Mecanoo, and Jonathan Steels, Assistant Provost at Trinity College to gain a better understanding of the design process and motivation of the new mass timber addition to the U of T campus.
Shan Shukla (SS): What were the design goals of the Lawson Centre for Sustainability?
Jonathan Steels (JS): The goals were to fit within the campus but also within the programmatic needs. This included providing quality student housing and community space, while working within budget and operating through the lens of sustainability. The brief was created in an aspirational way. Occupant health and wellness were also at the forefront, as was overall student engagement and experience, and accessibility.
Sara Navrady (SN): Building on the sense of community and building something that reflects the way that students are working and living was a goal. Also, finding a balance between a modern design and a design that complemented the existing architecture with the campus.
SS: What sort of sustainability features are present in the design?
SN: We looked at what made sense for the project in terms of siting, aspirations and program, rather than checking off of a list. In addition to high tech components such as the geothermal heat pump and PV panels, low tech elements included finding balance between natural daylight through glazing and a high performing (solid) envelope, and rainwater collection. User wellbeing is also an important factor, allowing views to nature and leveraging exposed timber as part of the biophilic design.
JS: What makes the Lawson Centre for Sustainability truly unique and sets this LEED Platinum facility at the forefront is that it features all the major sustainability components – for example, geothermal exchange, timber structure, rooftop farm, rooftop photovoltaic array, advanced thermal envelope, and underground cistern for rainwater collection and reuse. Wherever possible, building materials were locally sourced, including compressed bricks (Cambridge, Ontario) and limestone (Elora, Ontario) by Arriscraft, and Ontario timber by Element5.
SS: The building is targeting Canada’s Zero Carbon Building Standard. What does this mean? What was the driver for certification?
SN: The overarching goal of certification is to drive advancement of sustainable design. Zero carbon is a framework evaluating operational carbon, embodied carbon, and avoided emissions in terms of initial design and future operation. Part of the qualification is energy modelling and the evaluation of embodied carbon. The cladding, initially aluminum, was switched to local masonry which is compressed rather than baked. At the onset, selecting a team with these sustainability values in mind was crucial. This led to collaboration with Footprint, the sustainability consultants as well as the broader consultant team including RDH Architects and RDH Building Science.
JS: All major systems, including a massive industrial kitchen, are entirely electric. The team crosschecked various sustainability rating programs and worked with the university to update their own programs.
SS: How did the mass timber structure impact the designing the form of the building and relate to design goals?
SN: The geometric shape of the building lends itself to a timber structure. Further design adjustments were made to the north south part of the building to fit the length of the CLT panel and reduce the number of picks for panels. The CLIPS panels from E5 also help to speed up the envelope enclosure which is important for protecting the timber. Spatial qualities were informed by working with some structural spans to operate within timber performance criteria.
Read the full interview, here.