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AUGUST 2016 | 81 Emerald Hills Leisure Centre RENDERINGS COURTESY MARSHALL TITTEMORE ARCHITECTS & MACLENNAN JAUNKALNS MILLER ARCHITECTS Emerald Hills Leisure Centre by JESSICA KIRBY E merald Hills Leisure Centre brings new recreational possibility to Strathcona County, Alberta, with a stunning new facility designed with beauty, functionality and community engagement at the forefront. It features a six-lane, 25-metre lap pool, a four-lane, 25-metre pool with an adjustable floor, a children's learning pool, a whirlpool, steam room and change facilities. The project's development was the result of an aquatic study performed for all of Strathcona County, by the architectural collaboration of Mta+MJMA, which resulted in a great deal of community input. Brian Wilson, manager, facility asset management for Strathcona County, says the overall vision was to meet the needs of the community while creating an innovative health and wellness centre to serve the population. "We wanted to create an innovative facility," he says. "It is attached to a school and so acts as a model for partnerships between schools and health facilities to promote indoor and outdoor recreation and health." Behind the facility lies an artificial turf field, baseball diamonds and a change house, making the site ideal for mixed-use wellness, Wilson adds. The County intends to improve utilization of both the pool and the school with joint use agreements, and sees potential to connect for rehabilitation and therapy given the close proximity of a hospital. "I think one challenge with this project was that it needed a couple of different iterations before finalizing the plans because there are a lot of wants and needs to meet," says Wilson. "The challenge was how to lay it all out." Accessibility goals were paramount. All the pools have ramps and the teaching pool has a movable floor. Another key feature is the pools' filtration system – a Wapotec system from Germany that has a lower than normal chlorine requirement because it uses salt water and CO2. "This creates a nicer environment for users and staff as well as for the building components, such as lights; it also gives excellent clarity," says Wilson. Bringing the filtration system and movable floor from Germany, as well as other building components from China and the U.K., meant the team had to work hard at co-ordination, logistics and managing long lead times. "The limited space we had to build the facility required good co-ordination," says Wilson. "We needed so many change rooms to meet the size of the facility so we maximized space and used every square inch we could." The change room configuration is 50 per cent split between men's and women's and 50 per cent family oriented, which makes the facility open to future implementation of universal change areas. The facility design was led by MJMA principals Ted Watson and Viktors Jaunkalns. The project nestles easily into the adjacent property's context while adding a bright, adventurous esthetic to the site with bold, irregular geometry and a striking mix of curtainwall and metal cladding on the exterior. Graham Construction senior project co-ordinator Ryan Cusveller says the two-storey, steel-framed building was arranged in a series of large triangular panels. One of the more challenging parts of the build was lining up the building envelope components, given the irregularity of the building's geometry. "It was challenging getting the triangular panels co-ordinated at the interfaces," Cusveller says. "The curtainwall, cladding and roof all converge at control points around the building. These control points are 3D and therefore difficult to measure because they are floating in space. Subcontractors utilized AutoCAD and a large spreadsheet to make it work." The pool basin concrete required a plus/minus five-millimetre (mm) tolerance and a 72-hour leak test, which tested the efficacy of its waterproofing additive against a water loss standard of no more than 10mm/24 hours. Because the ceilings were installed over the pool basins, the crew required spider lifts – small lifts that fit through doorways but have an aggressive reach. "The northwest corner of the building was especially hard to reach because it comes to a point, so reaching it from the pool deck required a spider crane," Cusveller says. "The machine is quite small with high-lifting capacity and was also used for the installation of large pieces of glass in the viewing wall." Fran Yungwirth, project engineer for Read Jones Christoffersen, says the building's main floor is a mix of concrete slab-on-grade and structural slab, and the main aquatic area including pool deck and pool basins are concrete structural slab supported on pile foundations. The superstructure includes a steel skeleton forming the primary frame of the main and second storey. The architectural facets of the exterior walls and the interior occupied spaces meant there was a strong need to provide secondary interior and exterior framing using structural steel and gauge metal framing. "To accomplish the architectural vision of the main aquatic hall it was necessary to design triangular structural steel trusses spanning the width of the space and serving as the primary structural members for the roof," says Yungwirth. "Five unique trusses of varying length were designed to suit the geometry of the area." The exterior curtainwall often projects above the roof structure to a fine edge. As a result, the structural team had to determine ways to laterally support the glass using steel that is hidden from view and that does not conflict with the architectural components. Complex geometry of the building challenged the structural team with irregularities and more than four metres of slope difference between the roof's highest and lowest points. "Distribution of gravity and lateral loads through the steel skeleton was done using 3D analysis software," says Yungwirth. "The concrete substructure, which in many areas includes a much different framing scheme than the steel, was also modelled to accomplish an efficient concrete design that met the requirements of the basement mechanical area." Mta project manager Bill Vance, who has overseen the project from early conception to construction completion, says: "The facility is innovative in all respects from master planning, functional programming, technical system integration and architectural expression." The two year build was turned over to the County in July and a grand opening is planned for October. "We are very happy with the design and outcome," says Wilson. "It is something the community will be very proud of." A LOCATION 355 Emerald Drive, Sherwood Park, Alberta OWNER/DEVELOPER Strathcona County ARCHITECTS Marshall Tittemore Architects (Mta) MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects (MJMA) GENERAL CONTRACTOR Graham Construction STRUCTURAL CONSULTANT Read Jones Christoffersen Consulting Engineers MECHANICAL/ ELECTRICAL CONSULTANT Smith + Andersen LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT/ CIVIL CONSULTANT ISL Engineering and Land Services TOTAL SIZE 52,850 square feet TOTAL COST $28.8 million 3:14 PM 9:32 AM 1:40 PM 9:59 AM

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