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AUGUST 2017 | 61 Brock Commons Tallwood House – UBC PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY ACTON OSTRY ARCHITECTS INC. Brock Commons Tallwood House – UBC by NATALIE BRUCKNER-MENCHELLI W ith the new 18-storey Brock Commons Tallwood House student residence, the University of British Columbia (UBC) and UBC Properties Trust have taken the lead in a global movement to revitalize the way we view mass timber construction. When UBC submitted the original proposal to the Tall Wood Building Demonstration Initiative competition in 2013 (whose mandate it is to advance the design and production of wood products in Canada), they were taking a big picture approach. Rather than constructing a costly one-off feature project, they wanted to assist with advancing the use of engineered timber by demonstrating the viability of mass wood for high-rise applications. "The question we get asked the most is, 'why didn't you expose the wood structure?' The reason is simple: the objective was to develop a structural solution for mass wood that is truly economical and can help to lead the way to a future of more mass wood projects," explains Russell Acton from Acton Ostry Architects, who worked with tall wood advisor Architekten Hermann Kaufmann. Indeed, budget, time and safety were always front of mind for all the trades that worked on the building, and covering up the wood led to significant cost savings while enhancing aspects such as fire protection and acoustic performance. Today, Brock Commons is proud to hold the moniker of the tallest mass timber building in the world. The 53-metre-tall student residence building provides housing for 404 students with a mix of studio and quad units, as well as social and study amenity spaces. To pull off such an innovative project on time and on budget required intensive and extensive pre-planning and collaboration. "UBC from the very outset was willing to entertain an IPD-style process where we could bring trades in early and have their expert input into the design," says Brent Olund from Urban One Builders. With the design and logistical plans complete, ground was broken in November 2015. Brock Commons is a hybrid structural design with: a steel roof, reinforced concrete foundation, ground floor and stair/elevator cores; and a superstructure composed of cross-laminated timber (CLT) floor panels supported on parallel strand lumber (PSL) and glulam timber (GLT) columns with steel connections. Rob Brown at UBC Properties Trust adds that using CLT and glulam columns also helped the team complete the project on time. "The wood CLT and glulam columns were all fabricated at the Structurlam facility in Penticton, machined to the exact dimensions for mechanical and electrical services, and then flat packed from the shop for delivery to the UBC site as efficiently as possible. The actual erection of the 18-storey wood structure only took nine weeks," says Brown. Robert Jackson at Fast + Epp says that out of the 18 floors, 17 are mass timber. He adds, "There is a two- foot-thick concrete transfer slab [by Whitewater Concrete] at level two that allows for more of an open plan layout on the ground floor." Jackson explains that there are two key structural considerations: the lateral loads are taken up by the 3:17 PM 2:39 PM 10:32 AM 11:38 AM 3:30 PM

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