It's not obvious, at first glance, why Toronto's new 43-storey RBC Centre is being touted as an office tower for the 21st century. But a closer look at the building's south and west-facing sides reveal sleek horizontal sunshades attached to the exterior glass facade, part of a state-of-the-art daylight harvesting design and just one indication of the building's environmental sophistication.
This year, downtown Toronto is being flooded with 3.14 million square feet of new office space as the finishing touches are put on the RBC Centre (1.2 million square feet), Bay Adelaide Centre (1.16 million square feet) and Telus Tower (780,000 square feet). Each tower is a showpiece of environmental design and energy efficiency and has been built to qualify for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold certification.
It was back in 2003 when RBC approached the developer community with its criteria for a distinctive new flagship office building. RBC wanted to create a workplace that reflected its goals, including those related to the environment, human resources and business growth, says Linda Mantia, senior vice-president, procurement and corporate real estate for RBC.
"We were looking at our lease maturities, the growth of our business, our strategy for our office personnel ... if we were going to have a flagship location, we wanted it to align very strongly with the values of our organization," Ms. Mantia explains.
Developer Cadillac Fairview Corp. proved to be on the same wavelength and got the project under way at Wellington and Simcoe streets in 2006. Leveraging its considerable clout as a lead tenant, RBC stipulated that the new space had to meet LEED environmental standards, and adhere to a corporate policy advocating employees' right to daylight, Ms. Mantia says.
Which brings us back to the sunshades. The slim blades, attached to the first 10 floors of the building's exterior glass, or curtain wall, are designed to reduce glare while still allowing the maximum amount of daylight into the building. The high-tech part of the system, however, is on the interior side of the 3.5-metre floor-to-ceiling glass walls. Inside, at about the 2.5-metre level, horizontal light shelves adjust throughout the day to reflect daylight into the centre of each floor. The shelves are controlled by sensors, which dim the interior lights on sunny days and activate a roller-blind system to control glare.
"It's a form of daylight harvesting," explains Wayne Barwise, senior vice-president, office development for Cadillac Fairview. "As you put that light into the centre of the floor, not as much artificial light is required and you save on electricity."
In fact, there are no drop ceilings fitted with harsh fluorescents in this building. Pendant fixtures reflect 92 per cent of artificial light off exposed concrete ceilings, with only the remaining 8 per cent shining down on the workspace. And all of the telecommunications wiring, and heating, ventilation and air-conditioning pipes are housed in a 45-centimetre, raised-floor space. This allows office workers to set their own heating and cooling comfort levels via floor diffusers, which are located about every 180 square feet.
The RBC Centre has a rainwater storage system which is used to flush toilets and urinals, it uses Enwave's Deep Lake Water Cooling and steam heating system, and 99 per cent of the waste resulting from the building's construction was recycled, Mr. Barwise says.
Much of the space leased by lead tenants RBC and RBC Dexia is open concept, and features "oasis" zones - collaborative workspaces outfitted with comfortable chairs and wireless Internet access. This kind of space, which gets people working in teams, was an important factor for RBC, Ms. Mantia says, from a staff recruitment and retention perspective. Many of the windows up to the 10th floor can be opened.
