Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/177525
aving renovated 12 buildings on campus under its UBC Renew Program, the University of British Columbia has developed considerable expertise in architectural refurbishment. The most recent project, the Biological Sciences Complex, is an aggregation of four large academic buildings clustered on the southwest corner of Main Mall and University Boulevard. "UBC has developed an evaluation matrix which is applied to all of the buildings. The buildings are then ranked with the worst being targeted for renewal," says Mike Champion, UBC's manager of major projects. The four-storey South Wing, built in 1957, and the larger, ive-storey West Wing, built in 1970, were simply the next on the list. "Normally the province would partner with the university, but this time the province partnered with the federal government," says Champion. However, the federal component, funded under the Knowledge Infrastructure Program (KIP), complicated the construction with an aggressive opening date a mere 14 months from the start of construction. Construction began in 2010 with double shifts from the beginning, six days a week, and in an unconventional sequence. "We worked from the top down, which is unusual," says Darin Hughes, project manager for Scott Special Projects Ltd. "With electrical systems, you usually build up, but we did it this way so we could get moving on the upper loors while the seismic upgrades were being done at the same time." For the cast-in-place concrete West Wing, says Renato Camporese, principal at Read Jones Christoffersen Ltd., "the renewal required a complete stripping out of the interiors to allow a complete replanning and refurbishing of the spaces. In addition, the structure was to be seismically upgraded to meet 75 Biological Sciences Complex – UBC p.50-53 The 834_Biological.indd 51 PHOTOS COURTESY SCOTT CONSTRUCTION H Biological Sciences Complex – UBC by John T.D. Keyes per cent of the requirements of the 2005 BCBC . As this was a voluntary upgrade, it was not required to meet building code requirements for new construction. It was felt that a 75 per cent upgrade would reduce cost while still providing a structure with good performance in a large seismic event." The overall design was the purview of Acton Ostry Architects Inc., whose principal, Mark Ostry, calls the project "unique in terms of scale, scope and complexity." One of the foremost challenges was the seismic upgrade, he says, because "the Renew Program doesn't permit signi icant work at the building's exterior." The compromise solution was a new ductile concrete shear wall system and the installation of three seismic buttresses embedded nine meters deep, one of them atop a major electrical conduit, and clad above grade with glass panels featuring zoological and botanical imagery of kelp, salmon and birds that are illuminated at night. "The Renewal Program at UBC is significant," says Ostry, "yet these buildings go unnoticed. We took advantage of an opportunity to express the renewal visually. The buttresses break down the scale of the existing Brutalist facade and provide animation for people walking along Main Mall." Acton Ostry had designed the nearby Sauder School of Business, inspired by barcode language and currency iconography to re lect the building's use. Inspired by the botanical and zoological research that would be conducted at the BSC, Ostry wanted "to do something in the renewal process that would express that activity in an abstract way." As a result, the West Wing's multi-storey window spandrels are printed with imagery. The lowest level displays images of fungus, the middle level shows sea stars, and the upper level has wing patterns, "so you go from ground to sky," says Ostry. "At the base of the building is a bioswale. Stormwater travels down through drainpipes embedded in the buttresses and is routed to the bioswale, where the water irrigates a rain garden and reduces stormwater runoff." Another innovative component of the renewal can be viewed on the exterior south wall of the complex's South Wing. The Core Sunlighting System is a solar lighting collector comprised of an array of mirrors that track the movement of the sun and hybrid light guides that relay sunlight into the building without dissipation of intensity. Invented by UBC physics professor Lorne Whitehead and licensed to SunCentral Inc., the system feeds sunlight to SunCentral's ceiling-mounted hybrid light guides, which, says Geoff Cowan, SunCentral's senior vice-president of sales and marketing, combine "highperformance optical ilms as well as high-ef iciency luorescent lighting." Suf icient sunlight alerts the system to turn off the luorescent lights, which are used at night or at times of insuf icient natural light. The net effect is to produce and maintain consistent light while reducing energy consumption. FEBRUARY 2012 /51 1/23/12 10:37:39 AM