June 17, 2010

B+H ARCHITECTS

The Centre for Engineering Innovation at the University of Windsor has a reflective white roof and a smaller green roof.

Centre for Engineering Innovation targets LEED Gold

DAN O’REILLY

correspondent

While the construction of the two-phase $112-million, 300,000-square-foot Centre for Engineering Innovation (CFEI) at the University of Windsor only started a few months ago, the university and its consultants are heralding the success of the region’s largest targeted LEED Gold building.

Designed by Toronto-based B+H Architects with structural design by Halsall Associates, the centre has been designed to achieve that rating with an array of features including both a 200,000-square-foot reflective white roof and 10,000-square-foot green roof, a bio filter wall in the complex’s large atrium, a tight envelope design, solar shades, a zone-controlled HVAC system, and a rainwater harvesting system.

With flexible high-tech classrooms and specialized research labs, the centre’s faculty and staff will conduct experimental research and design in the environmental and automotive sectors in partnership with private industry. It will be the premier building for the Faculty of Engineering.

Locally-based PCR Contractors Inc. is the general contractor overseeing the project which is expected to generate more than 1,600 construction jobs, as well as helping to rejuvenate the Windsor area economy, say university officials.

The first phase research section will be completed in March 2011 to qualify for the Infrastructure Stimulus Funding program.

The inspiration for the centre, however, lies a few hundred kilometres to the east at Queen’s University in Kingston where B+H designed the university’s Integrated Learning Centre about eight years ago, says Douglas Birkenshaw, a partner with the firm.

It focuses on the development and support of undergraduate engineering initiatives through the CDIO principle — concept, develop, implement and operate, he explains.

That was the learning strategy the University of Windsor wanted to emulate and why B+H was invited to design the Centre for Energy Innovation, says Birkenshaw. Of course, there are a lot differences between the two projects, he adds.

“Eight years ago, there was a lot less knowledge and acceptance of sustainable products such as Urea-formaldehyde-free wood.”

With the assistance of the sustainable development section of Halsall Associates, the architects conducted a performance analysis before the building form was finalized.

The objective was to incorporate new products and leading edge technologies that would help minimize a dependence on expensive energy-consuming HVAC equipment, says Birkenshaw.

That goal has been reached through a number of factors including a tight envelope design and the Termobuild HVAC system, a technology that heats and cools a building by harnessing the thermal mass of a building and then delivering it through hollow concrete core slabs. This is the largest project in Canada to use the system.

Another way of reducing energy consumption is the orientation of the centre in a westerly direction, says Birkenshaw.

“The site is more or less a square and the grain of the building is on a west-east axis, which allowed for the creation of large floor plates.”

Daylight can penetrate deep into those floor plates through windows, skylights and translucent spaces that have been strategically placed. At the same “there are solar shades all over the building.”

Some examples of the large floor plate and window combination include a curtain wall-clad 350-seat auditorium at the northwest corner of the complex, a curtain wall and vertical fin clad entrance and the full-length three-storey-high atrium with a bio-filter wall which will filter and re-oxygenate indoor air.

Along with areas such as classrooms, graduate studios and a faculty lounge, the auditorium, the atrium and the main entrance are in the complex’s north half which is being built with a variety of materials such as concrete and wood.

The south half of the centre is composed of a two-storey industrial courtyard and an adjacent one-storey section. It will be comprised of a number of laboratories that will enable students to practically apply engineering theory.

As part of a fast-track construction process which will allow the university to be eligible for $40 million in Infrastructure Funding, this phase is being built with structural steel.

It will be opened by March 2011, with the total facility completed in the fall of 2012, says Birkenshaw.

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