Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/687429
J UNE 2016 | 69 Sawyer and Girouard Building Renovations – Royal Military College of Canada PHOTOGRAPHY BY BELL PHOTO/COURTESY J.L. RICHARDS & ASSOCIATES LTD. Sawyer and Girouard Building Renovations – Royal Military College of Canada by YVAN MARSTON O n a 100-acre peninsula that juts out into Lake Ontario at the mouth of the St. Lawrence stands the Royal Military College's Mackenzie building – a national historical site whose copper-clad mansard roof and classically detailed stone chimneys offer a distinctive 19th-century roofline. It's a 138-year-old example of Second Empire Style and remains the centrepiece of the campus's historic face. To get there, visitors must drive past the campus' more modern side. But if you happened by on some days over the last six years, you might have thought you were in the wrong place entirely. At scheduled intervals, sections of the five-storey, 1970s-era Sawyer building and the adjacent four-storey Girouard building, which together form the bulk of the teaching space at Canada's military university, had their facades ripped off, exposing jagged concrete edges and rebar. At times, they looked more like buildings in the process of demolition than under construction. "It's the first thing you saw when you came onto campus, and before the hoarding went up it was just exposed floor slabs and interior walls," recalls Dave Long, co-ordinator of construction services with Defence Construction Canada, the Crown corporation responsible for providing construction contract management support for the Department of National Defence. Now onto the last of six phases – the refit of the 90,147-square- foot Girouard building – most of the polished, modern look of the new facilities is starting to be implemented. To replace the original precast concrete bands and ribbon windows, the buildings have taken on a clean, homogenous curtainwall and aluminum composite panel rainscreen system. "We re-oriented the strong linear elements to run vertically, rather than horizontally, so that now you have curtainwall from top to bottom adjoining an aluminum composite panel rainscreen system," says project architect Brent Reist of J.L. Richards and Associates. "We chose contrasting glass spandrel colours and aluminum panels to express the various connecting bridges interlinking the buildings, and new structural framing elements." The effect, he explains, is to help these contemporary facades blend into the historical environment by reflecting the existing browns and greys of the stone buildings, and the green of the oxidized copper roof on the nearby Mackenzie building. The two renovated buildings (Sawyer and Girouard) total 493,000 square feet of space. The project began with work on the Sawyer building. It houses the undergraduate and post-graduate teaching spaces for mechanical, electrical, civil and chemical engineering. While considered one building, it's actually a series of five interconnected cubes, or "mods." More than just classrooms and offices, these mods contain wet and dry laboratories (including a civil engineering lab with heavy equipment) as well as a range of specialty support facilities like an engine test facility and even a small nuclear reactor (used for teaching and for conducting imaging tests on aircraft parts). Consultations on the project started in 2004 when a review of the buildings' mechanical HVAC systems revealed deficiencies, which prompted an examination of the precast and ribbon window envelope that found significant air leakage. The decision was made to replace mechanical systems and the building envelopes, and that prompted the Department of National Defence to bring the structures up to other standards, such as structural seismic requirements as well as to incorporate barrier-free upgrades. The project also saw the upgrade of the mechanical HVAC systems, electrical power distribution and lighting, and new centralized communications IT rooms. It was a major undertaking whose project team, the Department of National Defence, EllisDon, and Defence Construction Canada, was charged with the complex task of co-ordinating the work while enabling the university's undergrad program to function without interruption. It was a challenge whose solution called for the use of a swing space and a carefully arranged series of moves timed to suit the academic schedule. The 57,000-square-foot swing space campus was built on an adjacent soccer field and comprises three buildings. The "hard space" is a one- storey prefab building set atop a 25-centimetre slab strengthened with rebar and supported by 108 piles. It served predominantly as a lab building – including, at one point, a structural lab with lathes, lasers and other heavy equipment for the civil engineering program. Arranged next to it is the "soft space," two buildings each made of eighteen 18-metre trailers. These serve principally as office space and classrooms. Each section of the Sawyer building's five mods, spent an academic year in the swing space while their permanent home was refaced and refitted. It was extremely unforgiving as a schedule, says EllisDon's project manager Mike Ralph. Thorough planning, scheduling and move co-ordination with users of the Royal Military College were key to ensuring a successful transition from the mods to the swing space, he explains. The challenge to the swing space was that each new academic department, along with their furnishings/equipment and overall program requirements brought with it new space requirements. The renovations to the swing space then, had to be completed through each summer and ready for the new group to move in by August. But it wasn't simply a matter of reconfiguring a few walls. Refitting the swing space for the chemical engineers, for example, meant relocating 50 fume hoods and re-routing exhaust runs. Even just fitting a classroom with 30 computers required renovations to the swing space to manage power, communications and associated HVAC modifications. Temporary accommodations aside, the work on the buildings itself presented its own set of challenges. Most of the structural seismic upgrades in the Sawyer building came in the form of buckling resistance braces, encased steel members designed to resist lateral loading and limit lateral deflection. This worked for all the building's mods except the one housing the nuclear reactor. There, designers added two outrigger 'wings' on the north and south walls to provide the needed seismic resistance without having to work on the foundation near the reactor. For the Girouard building, explains John Moore, J.L. Richards' chief of building science, rather than adding buckling resistant braces they increased the shear wall widths, added rock anchors to resist overturn and added groups of reinforced concrete caissons and link slabs around the perimeter to increase the lateral resistance of the foundation systems. Now into its final project year, the renovation, scheduled for completion this winter, stands as one of the longest running projects for the architecture firm, which started designing the solution in 2005. With work onsite beginning in 2010, it would seem as many as four cohorts of undergraduate students have passed through the arches of the main gate to be greeted by the site of construction upon arrival. While it undoubtedly caused its share of challenges, major undertakings such as this also serve to remind users that change doesn't come easily. But with co-ordinated effort and ability, it can make a place ready for the future without overshadowing its history. A LOCATION 13 General Crerar Crescent, Kingston, Ontario AGENCY RESPONSIBLE Defence Construction Canada CLIENT Royal Military College of Canada ARCHITECT/ STRUCTURAL/MECHANICAL/ ELECTRICAL CONSULTANT J.L. Richards & Associates Limited GENERAL CONTRACTOR EllisDon TOTAL SIZE 493,000 square feet TOTAL COST $130 million 2:02 PM 1:49 PM