Living building concept will distinguish engineering centre and its students

Much in the same way medical interns are educated in teaching hospitals, students in the University’s Centre for Engineering Innovation will have the unique experience of learning from the very building in which they’ll study: a “living” facility that will teach them about the civil, electrical and mechanical concepts of their profession in a way a textbook never could.

And just like a doctor might check the pulse and blood pressure of a patient, students will be able to monitor the vital signs of the 300,000 square foot building to better understand the performance of functions such as its heating and cooling systems, its water circulation systems and even its bio-wall, a large structure of living plants designed to filter and clean the facility’s air.

“It’s a teaching building,” said Kevin Stelzer, senior architect with B+H Architects, the Toronto-based international firm that designed the building. “We can check its health and we can tweak its performance. The students can stream data directly from the building and they can understand in a very tangible way how these systems operate. It takes the notion of a laboratory even further and provides very visceral and physical examples of what we’re teaching students.”

The buildings features include:

• Sensors built in to pedestrian bridges that will allow students to monitor and learn about load distributions and strain
   
• A “Therma-build” HVAC system, which utilizes the thermal mass of the building by heating and cooling it with a series of hollow plank concrete structures in the flooring and walls. Students will be able to monitor the system’s efficiency and learn about concepts such as heat transfer
   
• An exposed structural system that will allow students to learn about its various materials and assemblies, such as post-tensioned concrete, long-span, high-bay lab structure, light steel roof and ‘glu-lam’ woodThe decision to construct the CEI as a living building was made very early in the process, right from the time planners were applying for the $80 million in federal and provincial funding they received to design and construct the $112 million facility, according to Nihar Biswas, senior associate dean in the Faculty of Engineering.

The decision to construct the CEI as a living building was made very early in the process, right from the time planners were applying for the $80 million in federal and provincial funding they received to design and construct the $112 million facility, according to Nihar Biswas, senior associate dean in the Faculty of Engineering.

“We don’t just want to build another building,” said Dr. Biswas, chair of the committee overseeing the facility’s living components. “It has to be a building where students feel different. They will know that this building has a lot of features that they will learn from as they progress through their studies.”

Stelzer said the design team was forced to “think like a student” during the planning stages and expand on the conceptual possibilities of what a laboratory could be, bringing to it a new level of sociability for people engaged in highly technical endeavours in sometimes sterile spaces.

“The building has this idea that people come together to make ideas happen, but the building also has a legacy and a very strong sustainable agenda and it wants to express that agenda,” he said. “Everything is exposed, everything is out there, everything is about the workings of the building being on display.”

Biswas and Stelzer both agreed that an education in the CEI will produce a higher quality graduate who will have greater employment prospects from being taught in such a state-of-the-art facility.

“Having been in this learning environment, we’re confident that our students, when they come out of this program and when they graduate, they will definitely have a competitive advantage over other students,” said Biswas.

— Stephen Fields