George Brown College is poised to transform Toronto’s skyline with the construction of a 10-storey mass-timber building called The Arbour, designed by Moriyama and Teshima Architects and Acton Ostry Architects.George Brown/Moriyama and Teshima and Acton Ostry Architects
The movement to build big structures from specially engineered wood, often called mass timber, will get a boost on Tuesday morning when George Brown College breaks ground on what will be Ontario’s tallest wood building, funded in part by a $10-million donation from veteran Bay Street deal maker Jack Cockwell.
The donation is the largest ever to a college in Ontario.
In an interview, Mr. Cockwell’s son, Gareth Cockwell, used the term “plyscraper” to describe the 10-storey home for the school’s computing and architecture programs. It will also include a daycare centre.
“The building will be smart, it will be sustainable, it will be the latest and the best of mass timber technology,” said Luigi Ferrara, dean of the Centre for Arts, Design and Information Technology at George Brown.
George Brown’s vision for a mass timber building has taken years to get off the ground. A separate $8-million donation from Mr. Cockwell in 2015 helped the school secure the land on Toronto’s eastern waterfront, just across the street from the school’s Daphne Cockwell Centre for Health Sciences, named for Mr. Cockwell’s mother.
George Brown required a special building code designation for its wooden tower, which is four storeys taller than the building code allows for timber construction.
The building will be called Limberlost Place, after Limberlost Forest and Wildlife Reserve in Ontario’s Muskoka region, which Jack Cockwell bought in 1985. Mr. Cockwell, 80, had parlayed modest beginnings as an accountant in South Africa into a job at the helm at what became Brookfield Asset Management Inc. He has been a director of Brookfield since 1979. The firm now has assets of about $650-billion. Forbes puts Mr. Cockwell’s net worth at US$2.1-billion.
Donations to fund tall-wood innovation dovetail with the Cockwell family’s big bet on the future of Ontario’s forest sector. Along with Limberlost Forest, the Cockwells control Haliburton Forest and Wild Life Reserve, a 100,000-acre, mostly hardwood forest at the south border of Algonquin Provincial Park. The family operates these forests for both timber and recreation.
“We want people to have a positive outdoor experience in a natural space,” said Gareth Cockwell, who is Limberlost’s managing director.
The Cockwells also recently bought a 150,000-acre black spruce forest near Timmins. They own three sawmills in Ontario, and control about one million acres of forest in New Brunswick and Maine.
Mass timber is a name used to describe a few different types of building material, all of which are made from layers of wood that are laminated together, usually with glue. The sandwiched construction makes the material much stronger than ordinary wood.
“It’s basically beautiful plywood,” Gareth Cockwell said. “In Canada we have a wonderful and strong basket of wood, which is a very sustainable product. Limberlost Place will be a public and well-trafficked example of a building made out of a more responsible building material.”
Mass timber enthusiasts say wood buildings can help combat global warming. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimates that cement production is responsible for about 8 per cent of global carbon-dioxide emissions. Using mass timber as an alternative could help Canada reach carbon-reduction targets.
The material is becoming commonplace in Europe, and has recently been used in British Columbia and Quebec. Tallwood House, a student residence at the University of British Columbia that opened in 2017, is at 18 floors the highest wood building in the world. Acton Ostry, the B.C. architects of that tower, are co-designers of the George Brown building, along with Toronto’s Moriyama & Teshima Architects. The wood for Limberlost Place will come from Nordic Structures, which cuts black spruce and glues it into what’s known as cross-laminated timber at its Chantiers Chibougamau manufacturing plant about 700 kilometres north of Montreal.
Tall wood buildings have been slow to come to Ontario. Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, proposed building a 12-acre neighbourhood on the Toronto waterfront, with 12 towers made of wood. The company cancelled the project last year, not because of concerns over wood construction, but rather because of backlash against its plan to collect data on the neighbourhood.
Critics have expressed fears about fire in tall wood buildings. Mr. Ferrera said mass timber can withstand heat better than steel. “When a steel building reaches a certain temperature, the steel buckles and falls down,” he said. “Mass timber buildings will char, but the building still stands.”
“Every step of the way you have to educate the building department and the fire department,” he added. But he said the payoff is worth the effort.
“This becomes a catalyst for change on the waterfront and a more climate-positive way of building.”
Construction costs are pegged at roughly $160-million. The architects describe Limberlost Place as “a net-zero ready energy building with capacity to produce as much energy as it consumes.” The design includes solar chimneys, which will suck in air and circulate it through the building, and solar energy panels. The building will also tap into Toronto’s deep lake water cooling system, which uses Lake Ontario’s natural chill to provide air conditioning in downtown towers.
Mr. Ferrara said that, along with other fundraising, the school will have a mortgage on the building. Construction is scheduled to be completed in 2024.