Full Description

George Brown College (GBC) in Toronto, Ontario held a design competition in 2018 to select a design and consulting team to create a new tenstorey, 20,358 m2 (219,000 square foot) building for their Waterfront Campus called The Arbour. The building program consist of lecture halls, computerlabs, classrooms, offices, meeting rooms, fitness area and a ground floor daycare facility. The building will have an occupancy of 3,400 occupants (staff andstudents).

The project objectives included constructing a Mass Timber structure to demonstrate reducing embodied carbon; a healthy, and productive learningenvironment, innovative building concepts and technologies; Zero Carbon emissions; future proofing and building resilience; and certification to sustainabilitystandards including LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) v4 minimum rating of Gold under the CaGBC (Canadian GreenBuilding Council) as per Waterfront Toronto requirements, Toronto Green Building Standard Version 3, Tier 4 (highest level) and Zero CarbonEmissions with no natural gas connection to the building, aiming to be one of the first Ontario post-secondary education facility to achieve these targets. Thedesign competition was awarded in 2019 to the architecture team of Moriyama Teshima Architects with Acton Ostry Architects.