By Glenn Matteson

Official department of labor statistics claim a 25% unemployment rate in the construction industry. Reuters cites nonresidential construction spending has dropped over 20% in 2011. Office construction is down 29%, hotels, 43% and the recovery is expected to be slow and meager. Construction, being a mature industry in the U.S., has always been competitive but there is a new fundamental shift in all contractors’ market perspectives. Experts agree, this is a “new normal” with smaller volumes, tighter margins and even more cautious owners.

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B.C. is moving ahead with plans to build what is expected to be the tallest wood building in North America and possibly the world, Jobs Minister Pat Bell said Wednesday.

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The construction industry has long been judged on its quality of work and ability to complete projects on schedule. Construction managers, general contractors and sub-contractors who must meet tight timetables and warranty the work feel the most heat. One challenge often faced:  a concrete slab with elevated moisture levels.

Frequently, the construction schedule won’t allow the luxury of waiting for the natural hydration process. As a result, the long time it takes for concrete slabs to dry can create delays. Unless the specifications for moisture content in the concrete are met, sealers can’t be applied, flooring sub-contractors cannot proceed and, certainly, manufacturer’s warrantees won’t be honored.

Of the various building materials, concrete can be one of the most vexing sources of moisture. While a slab may appear to be dry, even to the point of walking on it soon after it was poured, the appearance can be misleading. Under average ambient conditions, a concrete slab poured within an enclosed building will dry at a rate of about one inch per month. But even that is a generalization. The actual rate will differ based on the concrete batch ingredients (the mix design), curing procedures and ambient conditions — indoor and outdoor temperature, humidity and weather.

Unless the excess moisture is dried, several problems may result:

• Moisture migration to the surface, which can result in failure of adhesives, discoloration of flooring materials and blisters in coatings.
• Growth of mold in other materials as high ambient moisture remains.
• Poor initial adhesion of flooring installed on the slab.

Why flooring fails

The reasons for failure of an installation of flooring materials onto a slab vary based on the specifications of the product being applied. Some materials readily absorb or wick water. Others contain adhesive compounds that are damaged by moisture. For example, low volatile organic compounds (VOC) adhesives for carpet and resilient flooring are environmentally friendly, but can be compromised by excess moisture and high pH.  Some examples of how various materials react:

• Hardwood flooring and millwork will absorb moisture, resulting in warping and swelling of the wood or wood composite materials.
• Moisture-sensitive adhesives used to install vinyl composition tile (VCT), rubberized high performance sports floors and fiber-backed carpet often are compromised when the slab is too moist.
• Moisture can stain and discolor resilient flooring and coatings.
• If the water-based adhesive on rubber-backed carpet tiles becomes wet, it often will wick upward in the joints and stain the carpet.

Amount of excess moisture

Concrete cures by hydration when water reacts with the cement powder, giving concrete its great strength. But the mix always contains more water than the hydration reaction requires. This has become even more so prevalent with the use of light weight aggregate which tends to retain moisture.

In typical commercial floor slabs, there’s likely to be about 50 gallons of extra water in every cubic yard of the pour. This surplus must be removed after the concrete has cured, or it will interfere with flooring adhesion, warp wooden floors, or help grow mold in the leveling compound or in gypsum board.

Relative humidity and weather, in the form of snow and rain, are major contributors of additional moisture. Also, the materials used to construct the building retain moisture. Fire roofing, laden with water when applied, dries slowly inside enclosed areas. Large amounts of water can be trapped in concrete wall blocks. Joint compound and paint emit large volumes of water as they dry.

A combination of these factors can create exceptionally high humidity levels inside a building. If the conditions are right, the interior atmosphere can even create fog and condensation that drips onto the slab.

In addition to slowing the construction schedule, excess moisture represents another major threat – the potential for mold. In order to grow, mold requires a food source, suitable temperatures and moisture. Of those, moisture is the only factor that is controllable.

A facility’s HVAC system is inadequate

Optimum indoor drying conditions require low relative humidity, regardless of temperature, with constant airflow over the slab surface. The use of a building’s HVAC system to establish low relative humidity is inadequate for several reasons:

• HVAC systems are engineered for temperature control and not moisture removal capacity.
• Running the system can spread dust and mold spores throughout the ventilation system and even cause damage to the HVAC equipment, coils or filters.
• Many openings between the structure and the outdoors, as well as between various areas of the building, make controlling temperature and humidity uniformly nearly impossible.
• Running the system prior to commissioning the building can lead to warranty issues and concerns.

Desiccant dehumidification

The more efficient, reliable and faster method of moisture abatement is aggressive drying through desiccant dehumidification. Desiccant dehumidifiers will create low relative humidity and dew points when drying air at a condition far from saturation or at low temperatures. 

This approach uses portable, inflatable plastic ducts as part of the airflow system, precluding any reliance upon the HVAC distribution system. Also, the temporary ducts can be moved easily as work progresses into other areas of the construction site.

Other methods such as heating and cooling are commonly utilized at construction sites to control the ambient environment. These processes, however, are not effective at significant moisture removal. In fact, heating the space with standard direct fired construction heaters often will add moisture through combustion. Cooling equipment will make the space more comfortable during warm periods, but cannot provide the conditions necessary to provide significant concrete drying results.

The drying process

The process to remove excess moisture is dependent upon lowering the moisture vapor pressure between the slab and the ambient conditions above it.  The desiccant dehumidifier will provide the dry air capable of both reducing the threat of condensation on the surface (liquid moisture), and decreasing the overall vapor pressure in the space.  Moisture will travel from areas of high vapor pressure (within the slab) to the areas of lower vapor pressure which are being mechanically created (ambient condition).  The moisture vapor will be desorbed from the concrete into the air and will be pushed out of the space by air movement.

The number of hourly air changes to be effective can vary greatly depending on the amount of moisture to be removed and the conditions present. Air change rates can fluctuate based on ceiling height, thickness of slab, tightness of envelope, type of vapor barrier (or lack of one), outside weather conditions and a host of other variables.

One added benefit to using desiccant dehumidifiers:  materials other than the slab will dry more quickly. Drywall compound can be ready for sanding the day after dehumidification begins in any climate. Fireproofing has been dried to industry standards in a matter of a few days rather than weeks.  And, mold growth on construction materials will remain in check.

The use of sealers

Although the use of dehumidifiers for drying concrete slabs is growing quickly, it still may be some time before it surpasses the popularity of the common concrete sealer.  The decision to use a sealer or a dehumidification system to prepare the slab for installing floor coverings is based on several factors including budget, deadlines, severity of the problem, warranties and more. If one expects to install flooring in a few days, the use of a sealer is an option, as the dehumidification process requires more time.

However, the mechanical drying of the floor might be a better long-term and cost-effective solution. Most sealers provide a barrier to trap the moisture vapor inside the slab, limiting the amount of emissions that can affect the adhesives installed on the concrete.  The free moisture remains trapped or searches to find an avenue to escape leading to the possibility of future flooring failures. Dehumidification systems are designed to remove the moisture rather then divert it. This technique will reduce the chance of excess moisture vapor to permeate the adhesive and create future problems. 

Measuring moisture in a slab

Once a dehumidification program is implemented, it’s important to measure the moisture content in the slab to confirm when flooring installation can proceed, based on the manufacturer’s specifications. Several qualitative and quantitative testing methods determine moisture content during the drying process. The most commonly used techniques are:

• Relative Humidity Probe Test (ASTM F-2170) – The U.S. construction market is just beginning to be comfortable with the quantitative method, popular in Europe, which measures relative humidity by drilling a hole in the concrete and inserting a probe into it for three days.
• Calcium Chloride (ASTM F-1869) – This widely used quantitative test measures moisture in only a thin upper layer of the slab (about ½-inch). The test is based on the rate of absorption of moisture by the calcium chloride. Results are subject to temperature and humidity levels the day before the test results are viewed, which can produce different readings.
• Electronic Meters – A variety of meters, including some based on radio frequencies and others that require pins to be inserted into the concrete, measure conductivity. The wood industry developed the method, which measures to depths of about ½- to ¾-inch. It is best used to obtain qualitative readings over an entire floor, followed up with a quantitative test.  

In every use of measurement methods, the guiding principle is to refer to the manufacturer’s recommendations for expected moisture levels and the desired methods for monitoring. To obtain the most accurate results, two or more methods should be employed to cross check readings. Relying on the drying contractor’s experience with testing procedures is the best guarantee of reliable results.

In summary

Water is an essential element in concrete. But excess moisture, in the form of water in the concrete or humidity in the air, will slow the drying process. In turn, schedules for applying flooring materials to the slab will be delayed. Moving ahead without adhering to the flooring manufacturer’s specifications for moisture content will compromise warrantees. Further, excess moisture creates the risk that mold will form.

The solution is to establish and maintain optimum indoor environment conditions through a desiccant dehumidification system. The drying process compresses the time for achieving acceptable moisture levels in the slab and other building materials.

David Simkins is director of industrial services with Polygon, a leader in water and fire damage restoration and remediation, and for temporary climate control in construction and industrial applications, with 23 offices in North America.  Simkins can be reached at david.simkins@polygongroup.com or 800-686-8377.

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By Christopher Curtland

A common practice in the retail industry involves contrast – increased illumination is designed to emphasize featured merchandise against general light levels. An increasingly efficient and feasible way of providing contrast is with LEDs.

“The key is to highlight,” says John Dombrowski, director of retail corporate accounts at provider Acuity Brands Lighting. “Highlighting certain merchandise with special lighting makes the merchandise pop. A lot of that is being done today with LED track lighting or LED directional downlights of some sort.”

However, LEDs can now be used to replace fluorescent tubing for general light, says Gary Trott, vice president of market development at Cree Inc., a major provider of LED technology.

“If you want to be ahead of the curve and ahead of your competition, now is the time to consider LED lighting for your ambient lighting,” Trott says. “Downlights were the pioneers. If you’re not doing those, you’re actually behind the industry and leaving a lot of money on the table.”

Savings and Payback
Downlighting and track-lighting have typically been done with halogen or metal halide lamps. However, David Mullane, vice president and general manager of Capitol Light, a national lighting supplier, has already seen a significant shift to LEDs.

“Halogens are the cheapest light source you can initially purchase,” Mullane says. “But over the long haul, they’re more expensive because of how often they burn out. We’re replacing a lot of halogens right now with LEDs.”

The 3,000-hour burn life of halogens requires that they be changed about every eight months, Mullane adds, since the average burn in most retail environments is 4,500 hours per year.

LED burn life can last up to 50,000 hours, he notes, resulting in substantial maintenance savings. The payback tends to happen in two years or less, Trott says.

“We’ve been doing a lot of retrofits and conversions to LEDs these last 12 months, and we have a lot of projects in the works,” Mullane says, adding that Capitol Light has converted over 200 Yankee Candle stores. “There’s quite an ROI for it.”

Technology and Cost
Many retailers are still wary of converting to LEDs because of their higher upfront costs, but the savings from LEDs are more dramatic in later years when you’re not only saving energy but also the cost of a bulb change, Dombrowski notes.

LEDs also offer aesthetic improvements in terms of the color rendering index (CRI) compared to fluorescents, says Trott. These advancements provide quality lighting design, Dombrowski adds.

“All of the important factors of lighting are either duplicated or enhanced with LED technology,” he says. And as performance and technology increase, cost will continue decreasing, adds Dombrowski.

“A lot of times the industry looks too much at initial cost and sacrifices,” he says. “But the savings potential they could take advantage of is so huge, it just makes sense to go in this direction.”

Dombrowski helped the Chestnut Hill Star Market in Newton, MA, to become one of the first grocery stores entirely lit with LEDs.

Cree Inc. worked with a Wal-Mart in Wichita, KS, to develop the first Wal-Mart nationwide to feature all-LED interior lighting, with an expected 40% savings in energy.

As more and more stores employ LED technology, there is potential for enormous reward, says Erin Pedersen, chief operating officer of Illumetek Corp, a lighting and energy management company that assists with retrofits for all types of lighting.

“There is an opportunity for LED in your location right now, and you should take that opportunity,” Pedersen says. “The more demand there is, the more feedback we have. The more we all get on the bandwagon, the more we will collectively drive down price and bring a wider array of solutions to the table. This is the next energy-saving wave of the future,” she adds.

Chris Curtland (christopher.curtland@buildings.com) is assistant editor of BUILDINGS.

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By Christopher Curtland

Bob Cusumano, president of Coatings Consultants Inc. in Palm Beach Gardens, FL, has encountered many horror stories involving painting and coating failures. In some cases, these can cost building owners and facilities management professionals thousands of dollars. In extreme cases, they can cost folks their jobs.

Two building areas that can be particularly troublesome are exterior facades and exposed ceilings.

Cusumano was called in to determine why the heavy-duty textured coating on the exterior walls of a tilt-up concrete warehouse was failing. After performing 300 adhesion tests, he discovered the reason.

“The concrete was too hard and slick so no mechanical adhesion was obtained,” Cusumano says, adding that all sealants and primers had to be stripped. “It was a much more difficult situation than just doing it right the first time. The painting contractor went out of business over this.”

If the surface had been properly analyzed, prepared, and tested beforehand, Cusumano noted, the problem could have been sidestepped.

Painting professionals stress the importance of utilizing experts to avoid these issues before they happen. Remedial action can be much more expensive and time-consuming, says Karl Schmitt, vice president of research and design at Sherwin-Williams.

“The very, very best process is prevention,” Schmitt says. “When people are doing a painting project, they think about the color, the finished look, or the painting process. But, far and away, the most important part of a sound painting process is proper surface preparation.”

Analyze the Substrate
Preparation begins with study of the surface and how the coating adheres, says Cusumano.

“You need to have that specified well enough in order to get the result you need for longevity. Then do a benchmark sample,” Cusumano added. “Take a small area of the building, and do your surface prep, apply your coatings, allow them to cure, and then do adhesion tests.”

There are a variety of tests Cusumano conducts to determine what materials and application techniques should be used to ensure long-lasting results. If these tests had been performed in one case he saw, it could have saved thousands of dollars.

A new high school gymnasium in a Midwestern community featured interior exposed galvanized metal ceilings, structural steel, ductwork, and piping that were to be painted. Most of this metal was pre-treated to prevent corrosion.

Unfortunately, that treatment can interfere with paint adhesion, Cusumano notes, adding that testing can determine if the treatment is present and whether a special primer should be used.

However, the project team skipped these essential steps.

“The paint was just hanging off like cobwebs,” Cusumano says. “Sometimes when you attempt to save yourself a few dollars, you may cost yourself thousands.”

Execute the Plan
If a team is approaching a project that involves painting an entire building with a variety of surfaces, Schmitt and Cusumano agree that specialists and consultants can offer step-by-step guidance to complete the job. Cusumano’s checklist analyzes the current condition, including existing coatings.

“Many times you see an existing coating that is mostly fine without widespread peeling,” he says, “but when you put on additional coats, the added weight and stress cause delamination. The new coatings adhere to the existing coatings, and they start to lose their adhesion.”

Cusumano’s process also includes repairing or replacing any deteriorated substrate, determining the necessary primer, and using finish systems that provide the service life sought.

“People ask, ‘What’s the best paint?’ There’s no one answer to that,” he says. “You’re looking for different results on different substrates. Ensure the paint system is compatible with the intended use of that surface.”

For example, to avoid discoloration due to exterior leaching, the primary substrate and surrounding structures may require different primers, coatings, and sealants. A careful, professional method should be used.

“People think that anybody can paint. Everybody has painted his or her grandmother’s bedroom or the outside of her house,” Cusumano explains. “I’ve seen large-scale coatings failures with this approach.”

Chris Curtland (christopher.curtland@buildings.com) is assistant editor of BUILDINGS.

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Since only ergonomic offices enhance productivity and posture it’s important to create work stations that best equips your staff for success.

 

Healthy and comfortable workers can lead to healthy, productive buildings. From the moment workers sit down in the morning until they leave at the end of the day, it’s important to have them in a work station that best equips them for success.

A recent survey from Staples Advantage shows that one in two U.S. workers say they’d be more productive in a more comfortable and ergonomic workspace. Plus, with 86% of employees experiencing some discomfort from their office furniture and equipment, there’s room to make strides in providing a more ergonomic office environment.

Ergonomic enhancements don’t have to mean refurbishing offices with top-of-the-line, executive-level chairs or overhauling the technology set-up. In fact, high-impact ergonomic tweaks often come at a low (or no) cost. Building owners and facility managers can work with companies to promote employee education – spreading awareness of ergonomic best practices and providing tips for optimal equipment use.

Here are five no-cost tips from Staples Advantage – with ergonomic advice that can be provided to employees to help make your building a more comfortable and productive one:

Sit pretty.  Correct posture can help reduce shoulder, neck and back tension. The best seated position is a reclined posture of 100 to 110 degrees, with your neck and shoulders relaxed. Lower arms should be at right angles – or slightly more open – preferably resting on the chair’s armrests so that your wrists are straight when using the keyboard.

Chairs should also be adjusted correctly – for example, with the seat height at a level that enables your feet to be firmly planted on the floor, with your upper legs angled slightly downward. Your thighs should have sufficient clearance space to fit under the desk or keyboard tray.

Mind the monitor. Making tweaks to your monitor settings can help reduce eye strain and neck pain. For example, take time to adjust the brightness and contrast of your screen. Oftentimes, black characters against a light gray background are easiest on the eyes. You can also adjust screen resolution and use the zoom feature in programs to make sure characters are a comfortable and readable size. 

Monitor placement is also key. Monitors should be at eye height, an arm’s distance away (18 to 30 inches from your eyes) and positioned so that your eyes look forward and slightly downward. Also, make sure your monitor screen isn’t facing a bright window, which can make it difficult to read.

Consider keyboard placement. Regardless of whether you’re using an ergonomic or standard keyboard, it should be placed directly in front of you, so that your wrists and hands align with your forearms. Forearms should be horizontal – at right angles to your upper arm – and elbows should be kept in.

Use the mouse effectively. Keep the mouse at the same level as your keyboard, so you’re not contorting and twisting your hands and arms. In addition, don’t hold the mouse too tightly; holding it with a light grasp will alleviate hand and finger tension. During periods of heavy mouse use, keep the mouse in front of you; otherwise, if alternating between mouse use and typing, keep the mouse to the side of the keyboard. You can also customize mouse software – adjusting the speed, pointer size and response – to meet your needs.

Take breaks. It’s important to periodically change positions and take breaks from keyboard use and from staring at the screen. Try to do something active every 30 minutes – whether it’s filing papers, grabbing a glass of water, or taking/making a phone call.

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Many scientists believe that what appears to be a gradual warming of the earth’s surface and atmosphere may be the result of human activity and increasing urbanization around the globe. Many also believe this warming trend has the potential to destabilize weather patterns and increase the frequency and intensity of severe weather related events. For example 2005 was the warmest year on record and coincided with the most active hurricane season since record keeping began. In July of 2009, Hamilton, Ont. got 109 mm of rain in two hours, one of the biggest bursts of rain on record in Canada. Insurance losses were between $200 and $300 million. Following unprecedented rainfall in Peterborough, Ont. in 2004, floods swept through the downtown, causing more than $112 million in damage.

Whatever the reasons may be for changing climate conditions, according to research undertaken by Engineers Canada this phenomenon appears to be having an impact on Canada’s building stock and building occupants.  

To meet the climate change challenge, Engineers Canada has established four expert working groups under the auspice of the Engineering Vulnerability Committee (PIEVC), an initiative which involves all three levels of government together with private organizations to systematically examine the vulnerability of buildings and infrastructure to climate change.

The PIEVC defines climate change as: Any systematic change in the long-term statistics of climate elements sustained over several decades or longer. Climate change may be due to natural external forcings, such as changes in solar emission or slow changes in the earth’s orbital elements; natural internal processes of the climate system; or anthropogenic forcing.

Impact on Enclosure Systems

The building envelope is particularly vulnerable to changes in climactic conditions. These systems have become thinner and lighter with the evolving construction technology and materials and enclosure systems are especially susceptible to even minor changes in weather patterns as a result. For example, a 25 per cent increase in peak wind gusts could lead to a significant increase in damage caused by wind borne debris and wind loading in excess of the design loads.

As one would expect, cities with their high density of property, people, and services make urban areas particularly vulnerable when extreme weather or natural disasters strike or when weather patterns are altered.

Premature weathering and/or deterioration of building enclosure systems because of the stress on the building envelope caused by changes in the weather patterns is a serious concern and this phenomenon is, with good reason, quickly becoming the focus of a great deal of attention in many regions of Canada.

For buildings, the foremost concern involves the health, safety and well-being of the occupants and it is difficult to adequately judge the potential impact at this stage. We do know that Canadians spend approximately the 90 per cent of their time indoors. As one might expect, in addition to temperature extremes, occupants can be adversely affected by changes in humidity levels and other factors such as air quality and by the presence of chemicals, pollutants and/or mould.

The outside of the building enclosure system is also in direct contact with the elements. As such the envelope serves an important function as an environmental separator between the outside elements and interior conditions.

Impact of Climate Change on Building Performance

When it comes to existing buildings, the age and condition of the structure, the materials used in its construction and the type of building envelope system can influence the structures ability to resist the forces of climate change.

For example a 50-year-old masonry building constructed using a “face sealed” cladding system will, in most cases, have very little capacity to resist the impact of climate change because the “shell” of the building is directly exposed to the ever-changing and more hostile exterior environmental conditions. (For buildings which incorporate pressure equalized rainscreen walls, the primary environmental separators — i.e., seals, insulation, etc. — are concealed and are not generally exposed to the elements.)

The climate change factors that may have a direct impact on the building envelope include:

• A higher solar intensity resulting in higher exterior and interstitial surface temperatures and for the exposed components, higher levels of UV and resultant damage;
• A shift in the type, form, pattern, and intensity of precipitation, including an increase in the frequency of instances of      freeze – thaw cycling, melting permafrost, freezing rain and rain on snow;
• Shifts in precipitation patterns can also increase the number of times components may experience wetting and drying and increase frost penetration;
• Shifts in the peaks and frequency of high humidity levels;
• Changes in seasonal range of temperatures combined with increased frequency and longevity of heat waves or cold snaps;
• Increased frequency and intensity of wind and flooding events.

These changes in temperature, moisture levels and the forms of precipitation acting on the enclosure systems can lead to dimensional changes of materials which in turn can lead to cracking and fissuring in polymer-based materials such as vinyl cladding, window frames, sealants and gaskets. Similarly, thermal stress in the form of freeze-thaw cycles can lead to premature aging of porous materials such as stone, masonry and mortar.

Other environmental factors including any increase in dust, particulate matter, smoke and acid rain can also have significant implications for building envelopes. In addition to the effects of UV radiation, mechanical agents such as wind-driven dust or rain or rain loads themselves may act as structural loads and can contribute to premature or accelerated deterioration

Biological agents carried by the atmosphere can deposit fungi or moulds on surfaces while chemical agents transported by atmospheric moisture (e.g. rain or water vapour) or by direct deposition can lead to corrosion in metals or deterioration in concrete, stone, fenestration components, as well as roofing and cladding materials.

Another impact is related to the uncertainty caused by changing climactic conditions that may undermine the meteorological data we use to design our buildings and infrastructure.

Climate Change Testing and Computer Simulations

It is a relatively straight-forward building science exercise to simulate at least some of the impacts of various climate change scenarios on full-scale mock-ups of building envelope assemblies in laboratory settings. Computer simulation might also prove useful. Both of these strategies might assist in determining what changes in design, building codes and building practice may assist in mitigating the potential impact for new and existing buildings.

Some strategies are already being formulated that may enable structures to resist the effects of climate change. Engineers are also taking a similar approach with regard to infrastructure components such as roads, bridges, electrical distribution systems and our water distribution/marine infrastructure.

Given the size and importance of our building stock and infrastructure it’s important that we continue to monitor the issue of climate change and continue to support the efforts Engineers Canada and their Public Infrastructure Engineering Vulnerability Committees. It is also apparent that we also need to substantially increase the funding, research and general attention given to the topic as it is becoming increasingly obvious that the “political will’ to take any proactive measures is diminishing.

While the risks appear to be increasing, the potential impact has moved beyond what was once considered an environmental concern to include long-term political and financial issues that will eventually impact energy production, agriculture, industry and transportation.

On a somewhat smaller scale in the building sector, some professionals are suggesting these apparent changes will represent a huge long-term challenge for the people who deal with these components of modern buildings — architects, engineers, technologists and building scientists. In many ways adopting a proactive approach to the potential impact of climate change is also an opportunity for building professionals to take a leadership role.

Summary of Potential Impact and Risks

• Increasing health and safety risks for occupants caused by a reduction in the quality of the indoor environment;
• Premature or accelerated deterioration;
• Reduction of design safety margins;
• Reduced service life and functionality of components and systems;
• Increased risk for catastrophic failure;
• Increased repair, maintenance, reserve fund contingencies and energy costs;
• Increases in service disruptions and emergencies;
• Increased liability as a result of premature aging or deterioration.

Brian Burton is an R&D Specialist for exp as is a Certified CGSB/ICPI Construction Inspector. He can be reached at brian.burton@exp.com or visit www.exp.com

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During a lecture last fall, I asked my 200 undergraduate students to raise their hands if they believed they would someday own a home. Only about one in 10 thought they would. 

My reaction at that moment was shame. I am one of the lucky ones. Born in the great baby boom glut of the ’50s and ’60s, I and most of my peers own a home. 

But I fear this will not be the case for my students. Confronted with salaries that have stagnated for almost 20 years, they are faced with a housing market where the real cost of owning a home has increased by 300 per cent during the same time span. 

When housing affordability is measured against average family income, Vancouver is the second most expensive city in the world, with the average home costing over 10 times our average income. (The commonly accepted ratio between average family income and average house price is four. A ratio of six is doable but crushing. A ratio of ten is considered impossible.) By this measure, Vancouver is more expensive than New York, more expensive than Paris, more expensive than London. 

Vancouver baby boomers, on the other hand, are mostly sitting pretty. While our children struggle to pay high rents, never mind a mortgage, our net worth has risen to a million dollars or more just by sitting in our living rooms. And none of us want this gravy train to stop. City officials in Sydney, Australia, where similar price-to-earnings anomalies have emerged, recently clamped down on house purchases made by outside investors. In Vancouver, to even to mention such a thing is political suicide. Anyone who has bought into the system, however painful the entry fee and however long ago that payment was made, has a deep investment in ensuring that housing values continue their rapid rise. 

But what is the result for our children? Well, more of them are renting than they might like. On a square foot basis, renting an apartment is a lot cheaper than buying. In many of the gleaming tower districts downtown, over half of the condominium units are rented out by their actual owners — owners who are likely older and richer, likely living in other parts of the city, the region, the country, or the world. This disturbing inter-generational housing/affordability inequity seems even more distressing when you consider that up to 14 per cent of our downtown condos and seven per cent of other city homes sit empty, according to BC Hydro records and Statistics Canada data. Among the reasons for this vacancy is that well-heeled investors are often more interested in finding safe, simple and productive real estate investments than in the often comparatively less lucrative work of managing residential rental units. 

City of lost children

But not every trend is alarming. We are not seeing a dramatic drop in the number of Vancouver residents in their twenties and thirties, not yet. There are simply too many university slots, and too many good jobs in the city for that. What we are beginning to see are fewer children. For a long time, the city has seen a steady decline in the percentage of school-age residents. But the steady increase in our population disguised this proportionate decline, keeping absolute numbers of school-age children roughly steady and our neighbourhood schools full. But that changed between 2001 and 2010, when the number of children enrolled in Vancouver schools dropped by over five per cent. This trend seems to be accelerating, such that the Vancouver School Board recommended the permanent closing of five neighbourhood schools on the east side of the city. The hue and cry from area residents was so loud that the school board relented, proposing instead to repurpose the empty space and hope that enrollments might increase someday soon. But will they? Meanwhile the number of school-age children in Surrey continues to skyrocket, where schools are overcrowded but affordable family homes can still be found.

The east side of Vancouver, where the five schools proposed for closing by the Vancouver School Board are located, is particularly stressed. Why? The Dunbar area is even more unaffordable than the east, but its school-age children numbers are holding steady, likely because it is a preferred area for families at the higher income levels. But what is the income demographic of families who can and will spend over a million dollars for a home in other parts of the city? Why not move to Burnaby or Coquitlam instead? At this point it becomes all speculative, and we can only wait for more data from Statistics Canada. But the trends are unhappy. If the loss of school-age children is not reversed by 2050, should we expect to lose 5,000 more school-age kids? How many schools worth of kids is that? A dozen? More?

Meanwhile, for over 30 years the number of residents of the city over the age of 65 has not changed much, so we have experienced no pressure to find extra space for them. But, in the same 30 years the absolute and proportionate number of residents between the ages of 40 and 65 has more than doubled, correlating with the aging of the baby boom generation. Unless these 100,000 plus folks all move to Sun City Arizona, we can expect the absolute and proportionate number of elderly in our city to also double, and fast. 

When we put all of this information on the table it made for a depressing afternoon. But after a few days of conversation and careful study, we became increasingly more hopeful. What we discovered was that in each generation, Vancouver has rebuilt itself to respond to some huge demographic shift. Back in the 1890s, when the city was first getting started, the population was mostly young men. The housing? Small one-person one-room frame homes and rooming houses predominated: a city for lumberjacks. By 1920, when women finally arrived in large numbers, the Craftsman-style home predominated, each containing many bedrooms for all the children women of that generation would typically bear. After a lag for the great depression and the Second World War, the baby boom hit and the city took off again. This time the smaller, more affordable bungalow style predominated, a starter home with room to expand. After the baby boom ebbed, things got more complex. During the ’70s the “Vancouver Special” style predominated: a way to make housing more affordable for smaller families and to integrate new waves of immigrants. We are now in a period where the single family home is being broken down yet again, this time into three units, for the even smaller families now common. Now, parcels where five to seven people once lived in one family are home to five to seven people in three families. 

Seeking a home for all

So how do we understand these organic trends and take the next step forward? How do we find space for our kids and our elderly so our community stays a real place? We came up with four basic strategies.

Four units per typical lot. Under present economics, it is just barely possible for the average two-income family to purchase a million dollar home, but only if they have two units to rent out. In most parts of the city, current regulations prohibit subdividing these three units into strata units. This prevents two of the three families from sharing any equity benefits as home values rise. This should be changed as soon as possible. But this is only part of the solution. Given the average incomes in our city, the numbers work out much better if there could be four, not three, units per lot. Given current land prices, this would make it possible to purchase your own two or three bedroom home, with a small garden, in an established neighbourhood, close to schools, for under $500,000. There is a second important benefit as well. Permitting four strata units per lot would allow elderly single family home owners to stay in their home as it is renovated, while liquidating two-thirds or more of the equity they have accrued. Imagine what a benefit this could be to them or their children. 

Family-oriented mid-rise housing. A second opportunity for family housing is in the mid-rise category. Certain forms of mid-rise housing can be extremely family friendly, with individual access to protected exterior space, close to existing schools and services — and, importantly, purchasable for under $400,000. Mid-rise structures at the Arbutus walk project already give an indication of how well this form can accommodate families. Many existing four-storey mixed-use buildings lining our arterial streets already hint at these same possibilities, with elevated enclosed second-storey play areas, private terraces and gardens a feature of better projects. The current cost of land is making it difficult for developers to profitably provide this type however, probably requiring allowances for higher than four stories in some parts of the city. 

Shift elderly into nearby homes on arterials or age in place. In addition to the possibilities for aging in place in renovated single family homes, the elderly might also move their equity into a new nearby home. The students recognized that transit served arterials are never more than a five minute walk from any part of the city, and are already the locations for most clinics, cafes, and social clubs. Given the equity available to this cohort, there is a huge opportunity to induce a downsizing move to nearby locations, thus freeing up over large homes for use by sons and daughters or other young families. 

Flexible schools. It was noted that schools are the centre of every community. Yet in many areas these schools are presently threatened with closings. Hopefully the measures suggested above, or others that are equally robust, would stem the flow of young families from Vancouver. But no matter what happens,our city will change, with many more elderly in our districts than we have now. Given this, the class suggested that schools might evolve. Entire neighbourhoods might be reconceived almost as “assisted care” districts, with the schools taking on a new function of providing daily meals and as a base for home care services, as well as keeping electronic watch on neighbourhood residents to avert medical catastrophe. 

In the end, we had to conclude that, for the foreseeable future, high housing prices would be a fact of life. For those of us over 50, that is generally a good thing. For those of us under 35, it is currently a very bad thing indeed. We tried to figure out a way to make high home prices an advantage for everyone. We needed to find a way for current homeowners to be able to access their equity should they want to, and for entry level homeowners to start capturing some equity of their own. The only way we could see this happening was to change current policies yet again, upzoning all R-1 parcels currently approved for three units (one principal ownership and two rentals) to an allowed four units per parcel (four strata units or three rental units or some combination).

This would allow seniors to age in place if they chose but capture their equity in a way they now can’t. With this cash in hand, they can either bank it or use part of their gains to purchase a new unit still within their neighbourhoods. For a variety of reasons we felt that the most obvious location for that smaller home was on or close to the city’s many arterials, where services were abundant but families were still close by. Finally, a relatively new type of affordable family home might emerge, also on or near the arterials but designed in such a way to have protected play areas incorporated into the architecture. 

The post Four Strategies To Diffuse Vancouver’s Demographic Time Bomb was published by Suite Space Projects in our blog on commercial design and construction. It may be republished if this byline remains in the post and the content is not modified.

Full-time workers, part-time workers and remote workers. What we need to properly accommodate their needs are office designs for flex workers.

 

As technology increasingly enables employees to work from anywhere, the face of the modern workforce is undoubtedly changing. According to the ‘U.S. Telecommuting Forecast, 2009 to 2016’ report from Forrester Research, by 2016, more than 63 million Americans will telecommute – working from home at least one day per week.

Consequently, corporate offices are increasingly accommodating multiple working populations – full-time workers, part-time workers and remote workers who come to the office on both a scheduled and sporadic basis. But as workforce dynamics change, are physical office spaces keeping pace?

In many cases, by adhering to traditional office set-ups, buildings are becoming less effective at meeting employees’ needs and failing to maximize real estate investments. But by applying creative, innovative and – in many cases – cost-effective furniture and design elements, facilities can improve worker productivity, team-based communications and space utilization.

Business Interiors by Staples has provided five tips for optimizing building design to support flex-working populations:

Assess employee populations and needs. Prior to implementing any type of redesign or reconfiguration, take inventory of your employee base. How many employees use the office on a full-time vs. part-time basis? How many employees come in sporadically? And how do all these employees use their time in the office – for conference calls, team meetings, collaborative activities, etc.? Having a thorough understanding of your employee base and its needs is important in optimizing your office space. Be sure to collect employee feedback before and after design changes to make sure your spaces are helping them be as productive as possible.

Offer a combination of workspaces. By designing offices to meet the needs of multiple working populations, you can ensure there’s something for everyone. Increasingly, to accommodate flex-working populations, offices are adopting “hoteling” systems – where employees can make online reservations for select work areas, such as offices. By also providing spaces for small, spontaneous meetings; areas for team-wide collaboration; and “project rooms” that accommodate larger groups and include whiteboards and videoconferencing equipment, you can cater to the varying needs of workers.

Go multipurpose. In many instances, it’s not possible to design offices with dedicated spaces for various activities. In these cases, multipurpose rooms – that can be used by one person or group one day, and used another way by different individuals the following day – can help meet the needs of shifting demographics. Mobile and multipurpose furniture, as well as partitions on wheels, can help employees make dynamic and easy changes to rooms when they come into the office to support various work activities.

Leverage mobile furniture. On a similar note, incorporating mobile furniture across the office can help meet the needs of flex-working populations and support spontaneous collaboration sessions. “Mobile pedestals,” which are filing cabinets with plush tops that also transform into visitor seating, can be used to support various audiences. Companies are also incorporating other types of mobile furniture to support flex workers as well – including items that hold employees’ day-to-day work items and personal effects (photos, decorations, etc.), and can be “parked” in a general area when employees are not in the office.

Evaluate ergonomics. Implementing ergonomic standards throughout the office presents a special challenge when dealing with an employee base that is coming and going. What’s comfortable for one person in one workstation one day may not be comfortable for the subsequent day’s occupant. Still, by incorporating ergonomic furniture that is flexible – including adjustable-height desks and chairs with multiple points of adjustability – offices can support changing populations and keep workers as comfortable and productive as possible.

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The post Office Designs For Flex Workers was published by Suite Space Projects in our blog on commercial design and construction. It may be republished if this byline remains in the post and the content is not modified.

JESSICA KRIPPENDORF

correspondent

The Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of BC (APEGBC) is in the process of training engineers on its new guidelines governing the seismic retrofit of B.C. schools.

Adoption of the guidelines will mean consistent practice in pre-construction planning and changes to how the work is phased.

The Technical Guidelines, 1st Edition, for the Performance Based Seismic Assessment and Retrofit of BC Low Rise School Buildings (Seismic Retrofit Guidelines, 1st Edition) outline a performance-based methodology for the seismic assessment and retrofit of B.C. school buildings that accounts for seismicity by community, school construction types and structural elements at greatest risk during a seismic event.

The document was created in collaboration with the University of B.C.’s (UBC) Civil Engineering Department and the Ministry of Education in BC.

Prior to the development of the guidelines, nothing specifically addressed the retrofit of schools in B.C. for seismic performance, said Peter Mitchell, director of professional practice, standards and development for the association.

“There was no real consistent approach that the engineering community could agree upon,” he said.

“This has brought consistency to the assessments and a level of uniformity to the seismic upgrades.”

The B.C. Building Code is intended for new buildings and doesn’t provide parameters that older buildings can be expected to meet, said Graham Taylor, APEGBC member, principal with TBG Seismic Consulting and manager of the UBC research team performing the testing behind the guidelines.

“There is a range of outcomes and in the past as a profession we have used engineering judgement when dealing with the existing performance,” he said.

“Some engineers would use a percentage of the current building code and, for example, say they will bring a building to 60 per cent of seismic resistance of a new building. It was very subjective.”

Under the new guidelines, each building will be assessed by the probability of exceeding a specific performance limit at which it could result in collapse.

Non-linear dynamic analysis is used to generate a prototype of a typical construction and use it to analyse how a building will perform considering crustal, sub-crustal, and subduction earthquakes and exposure to different types of ground motions.

A web-based Seismic Performance Analyzer tool will allow practitioners to generate seismic resistance criteria for specific types of construction including steel framing, concrete, and masonry and study the data as it relates to specific locations and ground conditions.

For instance, wood frames typically don’t collapse in extreme events because there are so many vertical elements supporting the floors and roof.

In a moderate event, however, wood framed structures tend to sustain a great deal of damage that can be costly to repair.

“In old forms of construction, like clay brick construction, everyone realizes that parts of the building will not perform well if they are not upgraded appropriately,” said Taylor. “But, they can be upgraded in parts and show better performance.”

The guidelines introduce a ranking system to establish those elements that are marginally deficient, and those that make the building unsafe to be in during a seismic event.

Various components in a single building can achieve different rankings, making the system more flexible than the building code, which is limited by a pass or fail designation.

Depending on budgetary restrictions, retrofits could be phased over several years with major elements taking priority over those posing less of a risk.

The guidelines will also drive change in certain components used to complete the upgrades— roof to wall connections used in clay brick masonry, for instance.

“There are a lot of proprietary products we are leaning towards that do better than others because of the type of connection they provide,” said Taylor. “Some are too brittle.”

The research behind the guidelines also addresses misconceptions about how ground conditions affect building performance in a seismic event.

“There was a general feeling that soft soil amplified ground motion, but if it is deep and weak it is not strong enough to transmit lateral shaking with high intensity to the surface, so it actually decelerates,” said Taylor.

“From this, we know there is very little damage due to lateral forces (in these areas). The lateral shaking requirement (on a similar site) would be more modest than a building sitting on stiffer soil.”

Over the next two years, APEGBC intends to address post earthquake response and the design of structures, where building residents can take shelter and ride out the aftershock of a significant seismic event.

The new guidelines replace the interim 2006 Bridging Guidelines developed by APEGBC to assist the Ministry of Education with its seismic retrofit program.

The program earmarked $1.5 billion over 15 years for the seismic retrofit of more than 700 B.C. schools.

Original Post: http://www.joconl.com/article/id49010

The post New Rules For School Seismic Retrofits was published by Suite Space Projects in our blog on commercial design and construction. It may be republished if this byline remains in the post and the content is not modified.

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By Jennie Morton

The solution is to upgrade to an IP or GSM communicator, which uses either digital or cell phone communications to connect to the central station. The hybrid transceiver sends out alarms and confirms alerts and tests.

Rodger Reiswig, SimplexGrinnell’s director of industry relations, and Gene Pecora, marketing director for Honeywell Fire Systems, discuss the benefits of upgrading your fire alarm communications.

BUILDINGS: What are the benefits of IP/GSM communicators?
Reiswig: Traditional phone lines are simply going away. This is really driving the industry to migrate to new technologies for fire alarms. With an old phone modem, you have to supervise and check the phone lines every 24 hours. With IP or GSM, checks are done every few minutes and events are sent out instantaneously.

Pecora: Before you had points along the communication path that were monitored. Now if you have a problem, you may not know about it. With IP or GSM, you have two alternative paths. Each one can carry the signal, but when you put them together, you have the power of redundancy.

Reiswig: We’re also able to transfer more information to the remote station. Not only can it communicate that an alarm went off, but that the alarm is on the third floor in the electrical room. The firefighting community is also looking for this information so they can tailor their response better.

BUILDINGS: How will upgrading to a communicator save money?
Pecora: If you look at how much it costs to have a dedicated phone line for each fire alarm control panel, it’s around $50 per month. In a large facility with multiple control panels, the cost of phone lines really starts to add up. That’s also a cost you may not be able or willing to pass on to tenants. Switching to a communicator will permanently eliminate those lines.

Reiswig: The initial costs for the equipment can range from $400 to $800. By the time you add several hours for installation, you can safely budget $1,000 for the upgrade. When you factor in the cost of the phone lines though, your payback is typically less than a year.

BUILDINGS: Is there any preparation before installation?
Pecora: First talk to your fire alarm provider and express interest in an IP/GMS unit. Each installation will be different. The great thing is that the communicator is simply added to your existing alarm panel. You’re not ripping out wiring or replacing the fire alarm system.

Reiswig: You also need to keep your IT department in the loop. Many manufacturers have an installation sheet ready to give to IT because you’re involving IP addresses, a gateway, and system programming. You’re using their infrastructure so it’s a two-way street. They also need to ensure that upgrades or planned outages won’t interfere with the fire alarms.

BUILDINGS: Are there any downsides?
Pecora: There’s a common misconception that the communicator will eat up a lot of bandwidth. But the fire alarm test messages are very small in size, approximately 50 bytes.

Reiswig: It’s like sending out an email with a few lines of text. It may be every few minutes, but it’s a minuscule amount of data. We’re not sending large files, photos, or videos so the traffic won’t affect the bandwidth at all.Pecora: Make sure that the communicator has AES-256k encryption, even though you’re at a higher risk for someone physically cutting the phone lines than a hacking attempt. This is the same Internet standard that banks use for transferring money and will put your IT people at ease.

Jennie Morton (jennie.morton@buildings.com) is associate editor of BUILDINGS.

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The post Fire Alarms Now Use IP And Cellular Networks was published by Suite Space Projects in our blog on commercial design and construction. It may be republished if this byline remains in the post and the content is not modified.

The Canadian office market remains in good health with solid demand and the lowest vacancy level in 11 quarters, according to a new report by Jones Lang LaSalle.  At the end of last year, average vacancy rates dropped to 7.2 percent, and by the end of 2012, this figure is expected to fall to levels last seen in 2008.

“The strength of the market is a testament to Canada’s stable economy and strong business environment,” said Jim Becker, president of Jones Lang LaSalle Canada.  “Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto saw strong leasing activity while smaller markets such as Winnipeg, Halifax and Quebec City held their own with an uptick in leasing activity which reduced vacancy rates by 190 basis points in the aggregate.”

In 2011, more than 10.7 million square feet of office space was absorbed across the country, surpassing 2010’s total by 1.9 million square feet. Of the 3.6 million square feet of new supply delivered in 2011, less than a third is still available. “This year we are going to see a race for space as new supply, especially for large tenants, becomes increasingly scarce,” said Becker.  “The market will hold steady in the first half of the year but will pick up in the second half.”

In 2010, 60 percent of the markets tracked by Jones Lang LaSalle were landlord favourable; now all markets tip towards landlords’ favour. This could mean further rent hikes.  According to the firm, the most expensive rental rates for Class A downtown office space can be found in Calgary at $34.00 per square foot, followed by Vancouver at $33.65 and then $28.00 in Toronto.

“Space is at a premium in many Canadian cities which is not the case in most cities in the U.S., which posted a 17.6 percent average national vacancy,” said Becker.  “Limited new supply across Canada will insulate the office market from economic uncertainty in the U.S. and Europe.”

This year there are several cities with significant new offices under construction: Calgary tops the list with 3.4 million square feet, followed by Ottawa with 2.7 million square feet and then Vancouver with 1.5 million square feet. In addition, new development announcements are imminent in Toronto with a possible nine office projects looking for lead tenants.

Canada’s Top Office Markets 2012

Toronto: This year will be characterized by slow growth and an upward pressure on rents until new supply is announced. Lack of speculative development as well as the growing tech and media-related industries will drive space demand. Tenants will seek sustainable space options and Toronto’s diverse economy will protect it from external economic risks including the crisis in Europe.

Montréal: Tenant leverage is beginning to dwindle and asking rents will increase until new stock returns to the market.  Landlords will look seriously at LEED certification to remain competitive and former industrial buildings will continue to be converted into office space in Midtown.  Job growth in the natural resources industry as a result of Place du Nord will be another plus for the office sector.  Tenants requiring large space will look to the suburbs as vacant blocks of more than 200,000 square feet disappear from the downtown market.

Québec City: Demand will continue from the public and insurance sectors. Vacancy levels will increase as more than 350,000 square feet of office space comes to market in 2012, but asking rents will rise as the market is perceived as under-valued.

Ottawa: Leasing levels in 2012 are expected to dip as both the public and private sector shed jobs.  By 2013 more space should be available when new product returns to market and the federal government sells Class B office space to private and institutional landlords. The lack of public transport across Greater Ottawa will influence tenant decisions to relocate to the suburbs.

Calgary: With the expansion of the energy sector, Calgary is expected to outperform all other Canadian cities over 2012.  New office development is likely to be announced in the coming months.

Winnipeg: The market is in very good health with Class A office space demand set to rise along with rents which will go from $16.00 per square foot to more than $17.25.  Mixed-use development will continue and residential growth will fuel retail and employment expansion.

Vancouver: Current market conditions with low vacancy rates and high demand will prevail owing to a healthy economy and lack of new supply in downtown Vancouver.  Tenants can expect rising rents and moderate inducement packages.  Downtown space will diminish causing some tenants to move to suburban markets and the Broadway Corridor.  Landlord-favourable conditions will persist until at least 2014.

Original Post: http://www.building.ca/news/canadas-office-sector-forecast-for-a-buoyant-2012/1000930121

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NIC LEHOUX, COURTESY OF BING THOM ARCHITECTS
Surrey City Central Branch Library prominently features architectural concrete.

JEAN SORENSEN

correspondent

Concrete is as old as the Roman Colosseum, but B.C.’s construction industry is honing a skill of turning this old structural material into new exciting shapes and forms.

Known as architectural concrete, it is being used to express different colors, finishes, building shapes and sustainability objectives.

“In Vancouver, during the 60s, 70 and into the 80s, a lot more was done,” said Roland Haebler, president of Haebler Construction, which is known for working on challenging projects that involve architectural concrete.

“It’s a more difficult contract,” he said

“You often have to do a lot of mock-ups.”

Some of Haebler’s award-winning projects include Sunset Community Centre (Bing Thom Architects design), The Waterfall Building (Arthur Erickson/Nick Milkovich design), Erickson’s Liu Centre for Global Studies (first Canadian non-industrial application of high volume fly-ash (HVFA) concrete and the Lore Krill Housing Co-op (Henriquez Partners Architects).

Haebler pointed to Vancouver’s rich immigrant sectors – especially Italian and Portuguese tradesmen – who were the backbone of the concrete forming crews during construction of architectural concrete structures built in the 1960s-1980s.

He said that they brought much of Europe’s expertise in the use of concrete with them.

It was an enabling factor to bring forward many leading-edge architect designs, such as the MacMillan Bloedel (MB) building and Vancouver’s new courthouse by Erickson.

The 27-storey MB building, built in 1968-69, uses reinforced, cast in place concrete as the dominant finish inside and out.

It features a unique design for its time as the building tapers as it rises, much like a tree in the forest.

As the tradesmen retired and general contractors shed their forming crews, expertise has shifted to companies specializing in forming such as Whitewater Concrete, which is currently building the Coquitlam Sports Centre, and Best Choice Construction, which worked on the Surrey City Central Library.

Both firms are known for their expertise in the field.

New architects have also emerged to follow in the tradition of architectural concrete design in Vancouver.

“It is very much a team effort,” said Michael Heeney, a principal in Bing Thom Architects, which designed the Surrey City Central Library, which prominently features architectural concrete structure.

That team effort includes skilled carpenters for building the forms, craftsmen placing them to gain the right effect, crews able to skillfully place the rebar inside the concrete to achieve both strength and design, and crews able to place services inside the walls in cases.

It also takes a skilled contractor, who is able to monitor the work’s quality.

NIC LEHOUX, COURTESY OF BING THOM ARCHITECTS
The Sunset Community Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia also features architectural concrete.

When the forms are removed, there is a prescribed effect, albeit in the formation of a feature, the texture or color of the concrete or a smooth surface devoid of air pockets, pebbling or seams.

Kwantlen’s Cloverdale Trades and Technology Centre uses colored concrete and architect Bunting Coady Architects of Vancouver selected integral colored concrete to achieve colors that stain or paint would not.

The concrete also has the ability to change colors when wet from rain.

Achieving texture will be seen in the new York House Senior School, which begins construction by Haebler in April.

The central block area of the old school is being demolished and a new entrance and a new block of three levels of classrooms constructed to join several wings of the old school and the junior school.

The foyer area of the entrance will have concrete walls that are board formed. Architect Susan Ockwell of Acton Ostry Architects said forms are from boards that are spaced to allow small amounts of concrete to seep through.

“It gives the texture,” she said.

As well, large areas through the building will have exposed concrete in circulation spaces.

Associations have not ignored the rising interest in architectural concrete.

The Portland Cement Association offers several books for sale on the topic.

The Concrete Association of Canada released the CD Guide to Architectural Concrete in September 2007.

The guide is a resource for the architectural community that demonstrates concrete’s possible role in creating striking buildings.

Communications and education director Carolyn Campbell of the BC Ready-Mix Concrete Association said that while she has no hard statistics, she feels there is a growing interest in the community to use architectural concrete in building design.

One factor that may be driving the use of concrete is the greater focus on the life cycle of a building and permanence that concrete offers.

“The sustainability movement has influenced the demand for architectural concrete,” Campbell said.

She added that the ability to use exposed concrete on interiors has eliminated carpets and paint, and may enhance interior air quality.

Original Post: http://www.joconl.com/article/id48783

The post Architectural Concrete Gives New Shape To An Old Material was published by Suite Space Projects in our blog on commercial design and construction. It may be republished if this byline remains in the post and the content is not modified.

JEAN SORENSEN

correspondent

Vancouver architect Wing Leung calls it giving old concrete buildings new life.

Others call it renewing or recycling buildings.

While heritage buildings are often recycled, there is an emerging trend to reuse concrete buildings constructed in the 1960s and 70s.

“It will become more and more prominent in the future,” said Leung, who is spearheading the redesign of one of the largest such projects in Vancouver – the Pacific Palisades twin towers.

This trend is one that architects like Leung said he sees catching on as larger cities, such as Vancouver, become more concerned with sustainability and the environmental impact of removing large concrete structures from congested city areas.

It’s just not Vancouver that’s thinking this way.

In Toronto, the Mayor’s Tower Renewal project is a major effort looking at up to 1,000 buildings from that era and attempting to upgrade these older highrise residential concrete structures to become more sustainable.

A 2011 University of Toronto symposium on tower recycling focused on the Mayor’s project and the worldwide impact of this kind of activity.

The Pacific Palisades Hotel twin towers started out as apartments in 1966, but then became a 233-unit hotel and apartment complex.

They were recently acquired by Austeville Properties for conversion back to rental units.

“This is a very enlightened client,” said Leung, adding the work could have been phased in.

But, Austeville decided to strip the exterior and gut the interiors.

“It was also an interesting project,” he said.

Removing some finishes restored the era’s post-modernist design on exterior lower faces.

The construction work is being done by Haebler Construction.

“The work has gone very well,” said senior project manager Peter Bazilewich.

They have avoided traffic problems and crews have attempted to mitigate noise impact on the surrounding buildings.

He said that originally the exterior stucco was only going to be resealed, but further examination found some fatigue at higher elevations.

The stucco has been removed.

New membrane and rails, to hold the new ceramic tile that will face the towers, are being installed.

Also, Starline 9000 series thermal windows were added, as were new balconies, railings and roofs.

“We gutted the inside completely, but left the core walls around the elevators,” he said.

The 22 storey Alberni tower was residential while the 19-storey Robson tower served the hotel.

The size of the Robson tower elevator increased when the laundry chute was removed. The 234 suites are 85 per cent finished.

“There is a bit of stone countertop to finish,” he said.

The same floor plate and floor plan is being used.

“We are just upgrading to code and then putting everything (new) back,” he added.

The Palisades towers are not the first Vancouver concrete structure to undergo a makeover.

Gastown’s 21 Doors is a 1980s concrete and steel structure that was also stripped and rebuilt.

“The concrete was in great shape,” said architect Craig Taylor, who maintains that by reusing it, tons of material was kept from landfill or recycling centres.

Concrete, he pointed out, is an energy-intensive product to make and transport, so it only makes sense that these structures be utilized longer.

“Concrete is pretty universal,” he said, adding that it lends itself to numerous treatments, which is useful in renovations.

On the project’s interior, Taylor said drywall was removed to expose the concrete, which was given a light sandblasting finish.

“We are doing quite a few of these buildings – they all have some concrete, to some degree,” he said.

“If we can use the concrete, we do. But in some, there is often a seismic consideration.”

He added that when possible, the concrete is reinforced to meet those new seismic standards.

“We supplement rather than knock it down,” he explained.

Taylor said that since municipalities and institutions have mandated more sustainability in construction, the adaptive reuse of buildings is becoming more appropriate rather than shipping materials over longer distances.

“It is both economically and socially responsible,” he said.

The durability of concrete is seen in the headquarters of Victoria-based Knappett Projects Inc., a general contractor that transformed a B.C. Electric trolley car maintenance building, considered a tear-down, into its headquarters two years ago.

The 1915 building was one of the first concrete structures in the city, said vice-president Roger Yager.

It featured cast-in-place concrete with infill masonry.

The two-storey high entrance, where trolleys rolled in, was divided to form two floor levels.

Offices are housed on the third level.

Seismic upgrading was carried out and the interior was refinished and upgraded.

Original Post: http://www.joconl.com/article/id48811

The post Redesign Concrete Buildings For Renewed Use was published by Suite Space Projects in our blog on commercial design and construction. It may be republished if this byline remains in the post and the content is not modified.

According to studies, 1.3 million tons of waste is generated annually throughout the Metro Vancouver region by construction, renovation and demolition activities. Last year, the City of Vancouver supported a pilot study in which two Vancouver homes were deconstructed, rather than demolished. It entailed the systematic disassembling of a building in order to maximize diversion of building materials. The result: 93% of the building materials were salvaged for reuse or recycling. To significantly reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfill, the city has now introduced an advanced permitting process to encourage deconstruction as an alternative to demolition of one- and two-family homes. Through this process, applicants can opt in to deconstruction as opposed to standard demolition on a voluntary basis. A permit to demolish by deconstruction will be granted to applicants who commit to diverting at least 75% of building materials, excluding materials which are hazardous or banned from disposal. Applicants will receive their permit to deconstruct roughly two weeks in advance of issuance of the combined development and building permit to construct, and can begin deconstruction and site preparation without having to wait for their (development/building) permits to be issued. For more information on eligibility and permit application, visit http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/developmentservices/subreq/pdf/DeconstructionRequirements.pdf.

Original Post: http://aibcenews.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/advanced-permitting-for-deconstruction/

The post Vancouver Issues Deconstruction Permit Over Demolition was published by Suite Space Projects in our blog on commercial design and construction. It may be republished if this byline remains in the post and the content is not modified.

By Nate Berg, The Atlantic Cities

February 13, 2012

For a guy whose name has lately been splashed all over the local media after being fired from his role as planning director of the city of Vancouver, Brent Toderian is eager to talk up his city. We met to talk and tour the city about a week after the news became official that Toderian’s contract had been ended “without cause,” a high profile change in city administration that has left some urbanist-types worried about the city’s future (and some developers in a state of relief or even celebration). Toderian had been a controversial figure for the past six years, but now, as we walk through the city and see some of its hallmark projects, it’s clear that the weight of municipal government is one he’s happy to have off his shoulders.

“I was shocked but not surprised, if that makes sense,” says Toderian. “The management-style challenges have been here for a while. Many of the people who I highly respected at the Hall had already left or had been pushed out.”

Toderian’s termination has been at least partly attributed to the preferences of City Manager Penny Ballem, who has lately been exerting more power over the internal operations of City Hall. Another story line is that the city wanted a different leader to help sell its push for affordable housing and an “end” to homelessness. At the same time, much of the local press coverage around Toderian’s departure cites his own personality and working style as being contentious. One article notes that there were “problems with how the planning department has been working with various groups in the community since Toderian was hired,” and another article cites colleagues referring to him as “brash, intelligent and at times difficult to work with.”

“It’s been interesting to watch the debates about why this happened,” Toderian says. He’s been very diplomatic in recent days, and remains so, with a detectable amount of effort. And yet he’s clearly on message. That may be just because he’s endured a week of press badgering at this point, but he’s also just clearly used to extolling the urban virtues of Vancouver.

Unlike many cities where the planning director is far down a list of decreasingly known (or even known about) bureaucrats, the position has a relatively high profile in Vancouver. It was front page news when Toderian’s contract was officially terminated by the city council, as it was six years ago when he was selected to take over the planning directorship at the notably youngish age of 36. The attention paid to the planning director – and urban planning, in general – is part of Vancouver’s growing identity as one of the most livable cities in the world.

Toderian is a member of the Congress for the New Urbanism, as well as the founding president of the Council for Canadian Urbanism, a slightly less dogmatic and certainly more Canadian version of the CNU. He’s been a regular on the urbanism ideas circuit, traveling the globe to talk to cities about what Vancouver does and how they can do it. All this is to say that Toderian has specific ideas about how cities can and could work, and has been aggressive in implementing policies to bring about the city he has in mind in Vancouver, itself a city known for its encouragement of forward-thinking urban planning.

Since being let go from the city, he is, for the moment, masterless. He says he’s been on the listening end of a number of what he calls “interesting discussions” with other cities looking to lure him into a new planning director position. He won’t say which cities he’s been in talks with, but given that both Toronto and his former city of Calgary are currently looking for new planning directors, it isn’t hard to guess that at least those two were intrigued to hear that Toderian’s services are suddenly available.

“I’d come from Calgary, where one of my roles there was to build a planning culture, not a developer culture,” Toderian says. “So I had people unhappy, developers unhappy with me in Calgary, and I found by the time I arrived [here], there were certain developers in Vancouver already saying nasty things.”

The narrative of an anti-developer planning director coming into town, coupled with the fact that Toderian was replacing two well-liked and well-established co-directors, Larry Beasley and Dr. Ann McAfee, made Toderian’s new job in the city in 2006 a challenge from before the start.

“The truth often can’t keep up with the narrative,” says Toderian. “That was a struggle for me.”

Inside the public courtyard of the Woodward’s project on Vancouver’s downtown east side is a large piece of art. It’s a 30′ by 50′ photographic recreation of the riots this neighborhood saw in 1971, by artist Stan Douglas. It was a sort of classic hippies-and-cops affair, with the police violently breaking up a marijuana “smoke-in,” leading to the notoriously un-mellow riots. It was an inauspicious moment for the city and especially for this neighborhood, which has historically been one of the poorest in all of Canada. A new sort of human rights battle is now underway on the downtown east side, where needle exchanges and drug addicts and the country’s poorest intermingle – and where developers see a chance for a cleaner, safer, and ultimately richer neighborhood.

The Woodward’s project is both part of that vision and an argument against it. The site is the former home of the city’s historic Woodward’s Department Store, a neighborhood staple for decades and then a highly visible sign of the east side’s decline after the company’s bankruptcy and the building’s abandonment in the early 1990s. The city saw the building as a key part of redeveloping the east side, but was wary about pricing out the neighborhood’s poorest and most vulnerable. The process started when the city bought the building in 2003, and eventually enabled the redevelopment of the site, including 43- and 32-story residential towers, a grocery store and drug store, office space, university space and a mix of 500 market-rate housing units and 200 social housing units when it opened in 2010.

It’s an interesting place for Toderian to start our tour this bright Sunday. This is not a project that Toderian played a major role in crafting, but he was around for its final years of development, and he regards it as one of the signature projects guiding the way for future development in the city. Toderian’s main impact at Woodward’s is actually in the neighborhood around it. Developers had wanted to replicate the success of the project and were proposing similarly tall residential towers to spike up this area of relatively low building heights. But Toderian argued that flooding the area with high-rises would drain it of its existing population, a classic example of gentrification.

“Although they may not be physically displaced, they’re quite correct to be concerned about being economically displaced if high end stores start to replace the kind of stores and services they need,” Toderian says. “It’s the greatest tension in this community.”

Preventing this type of development in this part of town, he says, is and will be a strong guiding point for the city’s future development and how what the city approves can affect or protect the populations it has and the ones it wants to grow.

The city is growing and changing. New transit built in time for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, and increasingly varied types of housing projects coming up on main and secondary corridors throughout its dense downtown and less dense but much bigger outer region are shifting the city’s population.

“The transformation in even the six years I’ve been here has been remarkable,” says Toderian.

And if there’s one word that embodies the transformation underway – and the contentious nature of the city’s changes – that word is density.

Density has often been the gateway condition to bringing about livable cities among urbanists and smart growth-types, Toderian included. It’s also led to numerous debates and bouts of NIMBYism in cities across North America, with worries about cramming cities full of people and using land use regulations to strip existing residents of their right to live with the space they prefer. Increasing density, however, rarely means bulldozing a city from border to border and throwing up hundreds of towers. In Vancouver, the shift toward a more dense city has been more focused on certain areas.

Policy-wise, some credit is due to EcoDensity – a trademarked term created by previous Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan that Toderian helped shape into a set of city policies aimed at making it easier and legal to build more housing in the city. Sullivan launched the idea in 2006, shortly before Toderian took over the planning director position.

“It was a great brand name but nobody knew what it meant. And the fear was that it would mean density everywhere and not particularly diverse forms of density,” Toderian says.

Critics were vocal as the idea took shape, but Toderian was able to craft the policy into something politically palatable that would also benefit the city’s built environment in terms of sustainability and affordability. It was approved in 2008, and has since been augmented and refined.

“People assumed the worst, and I came into that context with the challenge to define it and to implement it,” Toderian says.

Defining and implementing are key elements of the planning department in any city. In Vancouver, before Toderian took the reins, those two sides of the jobs were largely split between the two former co-directors of planning, Beasley and McAfee. Beasley mainly focused his energy downtown, working with developers to build more community amenities and ground-level placemaking in exchange for taller buildings, while McAfee focused more on a citywide agenda.

“He could focus on the developers, and she could focus on the vision and the policy. The developers immediately noticed that I wasn’t as available,” says Toderian. “I was replacing two people and immediately went through some challenging budget situations and cutbacks.”

Toderian says he wasn’t able to work as closely with each developer to hammer out the kinds of deals Beasley did, and the development community did not respond favorably.

“That was seen as ‘Brent doesn’t do what Larry did.’ And the truth is that I strategically delegated, which I had to to survive the workload,” Toderian says.

“It’s tough to follow Larry,” Toderian says.

When he first took the job he was told it would probably take at least five years to get the hang of it, and he thinks that’s about accurate. Being let go after six, though, means that just when he was coming into his own, the political tides changed. He worries that won’t bode well for whoever replaces him.

“If that five years thing is true, then you’ve got to let the person have the chance to start off on the right foot,” says Toderian. “I have nothing but respect for Larry, but I hope the comparisons to Larry stop with me and don’t dog my successor.”

No replacement has yet been chosen, but the Robertson administration is reportedly planning an international search.

“I predict the person will have a fair number of gray hairs,” he says. “I have many more gray hairs now than I did six years ago.”

That could be a sign of coming into a tough situation and implementing the plans of others, but it could also be telling of Toderian’s dedication to improving the city by making parts of it more dense, and all of it more livable.

“’Density done well’ has become part of the normal language here,” Toderian says. “Ultimately, if we overbuild sites because we feel the pressure to try to solve all the city’s problems with one building project, you’re going to turn people against density. And we’ve been able to show projects can be accessible and actually make the city better over generations.”

One example is the Athletes Village project, built for the Olympics and now a steadily populating mixed-use neighborhood just over the water from downtown and right next to a subway stop on the newly built Canada Line. The project has 1,110 housing units, 250 of them social, and a mix of retail and public spaces. With project-wide passive design and renewable energy integrated throughout, it’s been highly regarded in the green building community and hailed as the “greenest neighborhood in the world.”

As we walk through its housing blocks and tour its public spaces, Toderian says that “greenest in the world” may be going a bit far, but he argues it is one of the finest new projects built in North America. And he made sure to use it as a model the city would follow. The passive design requirements of the project have been added into the city’s bylaws, requiring new developments to have similarly energy efficient designs.

Another main element of Toderian’s work in recent years has been to champion more mid-rise development in the city, much like the buildings in the Athletes Village, with their heights typically in the 4-10 story range.

“We’ve got a large city, and high-rises are going to be wrong for most of the city. But we’ve still got many places for high rises,” Toderian says. “We’ve always embraced every form. I don’t buy into the debate of high rises being bad and mid rises being good.”

He’s also pursuing density at a much lower scale: in the back yards and alleys of what most cities would call their single-family neighborhoods. He’s helped implement a policy of allowing secondary suites and in 2009 ushered in a new policy allowing laneway housing on these low-density lots, a move that has helped increase housing access and affordability in the city. Its 500th laneway house was recently approved.

“My perspective is if you haven’t at least done secondary suites in single family houses, you’re not really serious yet about affordability and sustainability,” Toderian says. “In North America it’s an urban no-brainer.”

And in the coming years, along with these changes in density, the city can be expected to show some aesthetic changes as well. The city has long been criticized for having too much of the same glass tower architecture style, and Toderian had been focusing on bringing more diversity to the city’s buildings. One notable pending project recently leaked is a 49-story tower by the hot Bjarke Ingels Group architects.

“We’ve got some architecture that I’ve approved or negotiated that won’t be built for the next few years that will change the perception of Vancouver architecture,” Toderian says.

Looking over the water from the Athletes Village to downtown, a little architectural diversity seems like a welcome change.

But for all that Toderian has kept and put in motion, it will be up to someone else to keep things progressing. He says the staff he worked with in the planning department is well prepared for that task, calling them the best planners in North America. The feeling is seemingly mutual. As one commenter noted on the blog of Vancouver reporter Frances Bula, Toderian’s final address to his staff resulted in a 5-minute standing ovation. (Bula’s excellent 2009 profile of Toderian in Vancouver Magazine further explores his sometimes contentious tenure in the city’s government.)

“In a strange way it’s been one of the best weeks of my career. And that moment with my staff was probably the best moment of my career. It’s been an emotional week,” says Toderian. “As you could imagine, it was very hard because the announcement was made in the papers. And the one thing I wanted was to be able to tell my staff.”

And though his interactions with his own staff have been good, Toderian says the situation within the administration had become more difficult in recent years.

“There’s been a new management style that has either driven away or meant the loss of many of the best creative people at the Hall. It’s more of a centralized control,” Toderian says. “A planning director, though, has to be able to speak truth to power. A planning director has to always make their recommendations on the decisions based on integrity, professionalism and principle, and being able to say what needs to be said is a very important part of that.”

The first decade of Toderian’s career was in consulting. He says he planned to just give municipal work a try to understand the other side. A couple of years at the most, he thought. That was 12 years ago.

But now may be when Toderian gets out of the municipal game for good.

“I didn’t expect to be doing it this year, as you can imagine. When you get a director job at 36 you don’t imagine you’re going to retire at that position. I had always anticipated that this would likely be my last municipal job and then I would go back to the private sector,” Toderian says. “But as my wife and my mother remind me: take your time and make sure you think through all the options. Which is what a planner should do.”

Another part of what makes Toderian’s move to another city unlikely is his unabashed love for Vancouver. As we walk and train around the city and he highlights the possibilities and challenges, its clear that he’s still very passionate about the city’s future, and that he hopes he’ll be able to continue to guide the city in whatever role he next takes.

He’s specifically hoping to help continue the trends he helped start and contribute to, including the continued migration of families into downtown (about 7,000 in the last 20 years), the preservation of the city’s industrial lands, and the growth of jobs both downtown and beyond.

Toderian’s an admitted workaholic, and even though he now has more time on his hands, it’s not passing by idly. You can almost see the gears turning to figure out when and how best he’ll reemerge to do what he loves.

“I wake up every morning so far feeling nervous,” Toderian says. “And I’ve always heard from creative people if you’re not waking up in the morning feeling a little bit nervous, you’re probably not living on the creative edge.”

Photo credits: Nate Berg; portrait courtesy Brent Toderian

Nate Berg is staff writer at The Atlantic Cities. He lives in Los Angeles.

Original Post: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2012/02/exit-interview-brent-toderian-vancouvers-ousted-planning-director/1211/

The post Interview With Fired Vancouver Director Of Planning was published by Suite Space Projects in our blog on commercial design and construction. It may be republished if this byline remains in the post and the content is not modified.

A recent council candidate with Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver says she’s not yet sure how city planning director Brent Toderian’s exit from city hall will affect local planning in the near future.

The post Vancouver Director Of Planning Exits City Hall was published by Suite Space Projects in our blog on commercial design and construction. It may be republished if this byline remains in the post and the content is not modified.

By Adam Moore

What will our offices and classrooms look like in 10 years? What about in 20 years? It may seem counterproductive to muse on big-picture topics like that for long, but in the design industry, questions like these are our bread and butter. Designers are creating the future every day, so it makes sense to ask them just where they’re going.

So what does the future hold? After numerous interview with designers and tech experts, it seems that the workplaces and schools of tomorrow will be technological marvels, and not that much different from where we work now. It makes sense in a way—technology continues to burrow deeper and deeper into the fabric of our lives, but our basic needs as workers and students haven’t changed much. We’ll still need meeting spaces and furniture and computers, of some sort at least. We’ll still need café areas to make lunch and socialize—the only difference is that we will suddenly be able to socialize with co-workers in different locations and time zones in immersive, high-definition video environments. We’ll still have to attend those dreaded afternoon meetings, but the time formerly reserved for the leader trying to figure out a laptop connection will become productive brainstorming time.

This month, we’ve decided to look forward and give you a taste of what’s to come in the places where we work and live, as well as look at some useful tech-related products that are already hard at work, transforming the office of today into the office of tomorrow.

collaboration spaces
Perhaps no other place in the modern office inspires as many flights of fancy as the conference room—arguably because of the frustrating experiences people have trying to use the technology currently embedded within it.

“We joke around here about when a visitor comes in for a presentation and you’re trying to get the right adapter and plug them in, it gets kind of embarrassing sometimes—but I don’t think it’s unusual,” says John Hellwig, vice president of design strategy and research with Teknion.

For many designers, the thought of creating conferencing spaces that completely remove human error from the equation is tantalizing. Imagine working in a smart space where a chip in your work badge or an appointment on your calendar automatically sets up your desired conferencing space at the correct time, calibrating the video settings and connecting remote participants. Unfortunately, the technology to enable an all-encompassing network of this sort is still in its infancy; until it matures, the goal is to create technologies and spaces that provide users with a natural, instinctual conferencing experience.

“It used to be that only certain people went into the boardroom, and there was a person responsible for getting the Polycom system up and running for video conferencing,” says Bob Surman, product development manager with Nucraft. “Moving forward, everybody is going to be expected to walk into that room and turn on the technology.”

Part of that simplification will be accomplished by advances in wireless technology, eliminating the cords that tie us to existing systems, and part of that will be driven by the increasing presence of consumer electronics in the workplace, which will allow employees to use devices they are familiar with. But perhaps the biggest part of creating intuitive conferencing spaces will come from the ability to create immersive, naturalistic environments with large-scale video.

“Video is going to continue to be more attainable,” says Scott Sadler, product manager of media:scape with Steelcase. “With the progression in technology, it’s quite easy to imagine me being able to walk into a space that looks and feels as if I’m in the exact same room as you, even though I might be several thousand miles away.”

The increasing power of wireless technology will also allow for more mobile conferencing solutions. According to Larry Leete, new business development manager with Nucraft, new wireless internet standards, including WiGig—which will theoretically be able to move data at speeds of up to 7 gigabits per second, or more than 10 times the speed of traditional wireless networks—will enable secure, high-definition video conferencing to be set up quickly and easily within any space.

“The WiGig standard runs at 60 gigahertz, which is really cool for us, because at 60 gigahertz, the signal attenuates after 40 feet,” Leete notes. “The standard also doesn’t penetrate glass or walls, so it is entirely secure within a conferencing space.”

But while mobile telepresence-style environments remain a faint dream for the average business, existing video conferencing systems continue to add features and drop in price, making effective digital collaboration a reality now.

Steelcase recently introduced both media:scape mini and mobile platforms to the company’s flagship line, bringing the digital collaboration and conferencing tool to smaller groups and spaces. Mini can be set on top of any surface and requires no programming, while mobile is mounted on a cart for easy movement. Users connect to pucks designed to accommodate whatever digital device they are using and get to work.

Dialogue from Nucraft similarly enables collaboration and high-definition video and audio conferencing while combining the system with other pieces of furniture designed to create a focused, productive space, such as Nucraft’s circular-shaped Arena seating collection. Users can plug into power coves and nodes hidden in the furniture and press one button to share what’s on their screen.

powering up
As mobile devices proliferate in our daily lives, our need for electricity is exploding. From Wi-Fi to Bluetooth to 4G, we are sending more data wirelessly, and in turn, demanding more power from our batteries. That means that the offices, classrooms and public spaces of the future will need to accommodate our increasingly constant need to recharge.

For Mike Suomi, principal and director of design with Stonehill & Taylor, the reality of the situation became apparent after researching the typical user of extended stay properties for the design and launch of the Hyatt House hotel brand, along with a custom, high-tech chair (read more about Hyatt House and the chair here).

“People who are traveling and using lobbies often have more personal technology than four years ago,” Suomi says. “Four years ago, somebody might have had their smartphone or a laptop; these days, people will have one or two smartphones, they may have a separate mp3 player, they may have a tablet computer or a laptop, or sometimes even both. Their needs for power have doubled or tripled over the last couple of years.”

But a future filled with tangles of cords and cables doesn’t seem like much of a future at all. What if devices could power themselves, easily and without our intervention, from existing sources of energy in the room or special devices embedded in the walls? For Keith Metcalf, senior industrial designer with Kimball Office, it’s not far-fetched at all. “I see the wireless power and data being incorporated into the building. Whenever you set your laptop on a table and you’re not using it, it will be able to recharge off the lighting that’s in the room, for example.”

“To be totally untethered from outlets will open new doors to our work styles,” he adds.

That vision may not be far off. Wireless power technologies such as Powermat have been on the market for years now, enabling users with a special phone case to drop their devices onto a surface that wirelessly recharges their device. Applications of the technology have been shown at NeoCon since at least 2009, and innovative manufacturers like Bretford Manufacturing and Teknion have begun offering Powermat as an option in casegoods and furniture.

“Incorporating Powermat products into our EDU 2.0 line allows Bretford to fully support the use of technology in learning environments,” says Mikel Briggs, president of Bretford Manufacturing. “Not only is it convenient and universal for students and educators, but it truly allows them to have technology at their fingertips so the focus is on learning and collaborating instead of worrying about the electronic components.”

Unfortunately, as the creators of wireless technologies continue to compete for market dominance in much the same way the creators of Blu-Ray and HD DVD technologies battled (or VHS-Beta, depending on your frame of reference), the consumer electronics and furniture industries have been waiting for a mature, cohesive standard to emerge before diving in wholeheartedly.

Until then, furniture designers remain focused on bringing power directly to users and doing their best to camouflage the cords. For example, Kimball Office’s Villa lounge seating collection features a variety of pop-up power and USB outlets, while Coalesse’s PowerPod conceals a portable power source underneath a handy accessory tray. Products like Connectrac’s V-Series Towers and Smith System’s I~O Post bring power and data directly to students and workers, eliminating the hassle of locating outlets underneath desks.

“All of the mobile devices on your desk certainly open up desk space, but you’ve still got this mess of wires and chargers,” says Hellwig. “Aspects of the furniture that make that simpler to deal with are what we’re concentrating on.”

smart surfaces
Will we eventually get to the point where we will interact directly with our surfaces, using our desks, tables and walls to share our latest presentation, without needing to plug in a computer or tablet? For many designers, the next frontier is turning our spaces into responsive tools that can help us work faster, collaborate more intuitively and never get lost.

“I do think strongly that the future of office spaces are surfaces,” says Metcalf, noting that studies of 5-year-olds who are handed Blackberry phones find that their first impulse is to try and manipulate the screen directly, instead of using the buttons.

That future appears to be approaching quickly. New innovations, such as projection units in smartphones, and new materials, such as Bare Paint from Bare Conductive, which rolls on like a standard paint but can allow electrical signals to run across a variety of surfaces, promise to transform our walls and floors into interactive tools. Microsoft’s Surface 2 platform now allows designers to embed fully interactive digital surfaces in a variety of places.

“In terms of all surfaces now, including ceilings and walls, they’re getting more active,” says Bob Hutchinson, chief innovation strategist with Mannington Commercial. “You’re going to start seeing the headliners and panels inside of cars become active touch surfaces, and that’s going to telescope through to flooring.”

Mannington Commercial has already begun exploring the intersection of flooring and technology; the company’s QR carpeting collection, which features patterns inspired by QR code technologies, is capable of being mixed in with LVT tiles that feature actual QR codes on them, enabling wayfinding in public spaces or delivering coupons to shoppers in a particular area of a store, for example. Designers have also come up with clear carpets capable of being backlit, but according to Hutchinson and Natalie Jones, vice president, commercial brand development and creative product for Mannington, that’s just the beginning of what is possible. Flooring may one day be able to track people’s movements through a building and provide customized wayfinding, alert staff when there is a spill, or completely absorb the impact of a fall.

“It’s about the merging of the digital with the analog,” says Jones. “Technology is out there, but it really becomes practical when you can use that digital technology to connect with the analog world.”

Engineers and designers at Nucraft have also been experimenting with surfaces, albeit in a slightly different way. With the advent of what Leete calls “induction sound technology,” designers can turn entire conferencing tables into loudspeaker systems by connecting small induction drives to the bottom of the table. The effect is that callers sound as if they’re coming directly from the work surface, effectively banishing the three-legged conferencing phone from the room.

“The one thing about technology with architects and designers is that the aesthetic they are looking to achieve is often marred by technology,” says Leete. “Well, we’re talking to you in our conference space, and there’s no phone.”

Original Post: http://www.buildings.com/ArticleDetails/tabid/3334/ArticleID/13445/Default.aspx#top

The post Forward Thinking Office Technology was published by Suite Space Projects in our blog on commercial design and construction. It may be republished if this byline remains in the post and the content is not modified.

The world economy continues to wobble along, with the news poor in Europe, middling in the United States and fair here at home. If you want news of robust economic performance, you have to go to China or India, both of which appear to be booming.

Or not.

Barclays Capital, the big British investment banker, keeps track of how the world’s economies are doing, publishing a variety of reports during the year.

The latest, the Skyscraper Index, has been published annually since 1999 and the latest report, published late last year, shows some cause for concern.

There is, said the bank’s analysts, an “unhealthy correlation” between the building of skyscrapers and subsequent financial crashes.

It cites a number of examples.

The Empire State Building, in New York City, was built as the Great Depression was underway.

The Burj Khalifa, presently the tallest building in the world, was built in Dubai just as the emirate almost went broke. Funding from a friendly nearby emirate was needed to complete the project.

The world’s first skyscraper, the Equitable Life building in New York City, was finished in 1873, and coincided with a five-year recession. It was demolished in 1912.

Chicago’s Willis Tower (known at first as the Sears Tower) coincided with the oil shock of the early 1970s.

The Petronas Towers in Malaysia coincided with the 1997 Asian financial crisis. China is the biggest builder of skyscrapers, although India and countries in the Middle East are also building a lot of them.

Barclays’ analysts said that often the world’s tallest buildings are simply representative of a broader skyscraper building boom, and often “reflect a widespread misallocation of capital, and an impending economic correction.”

That could be a warning for China, India and the Middle East, which together are building by far the greatest share of skyscrapers.

The Barclay’s report isn’t the only warning.

J. P. Morgan Co., the American-based international financial giant, said the Chinese property market could drop by as much as 20 per cent in the country’s major cities within the next 12 to 18 months.

So, there is gloom on the horizon, carrying the threat that the deficit problems besetting Europe and North America, could turn into a global problem.

That, however, isn’t preventing the Chinese construction industry from doing some incredible things.

Just recently, the Broad Corporation, one of China’s biggest builders, built a 30-storey hotel prototype, using prefabricated elements, in just 360 hours. That’s 15 days.

The building is designed to withstand earthquakes measuring nine on the Richter scale.

It has all the latest energy-saving technologies built into it, leading Broad to claim that it’s five times more energy-efficient than a conventional building.

All the windows are quadruple glazed, for example. Indoor air quality is said to be superb, many times cleaner than one would usually expect.

The company once built a 15-storey building in a week, so this new structure raises the bar. What intrigues me is that the building is being called a prototype, which implies that there will be more to come. Of course, China has a history of inadequate building codes and non-compliance with those codes, so we’ll just have to wait to see how this new hotel performs. It could be a forerunner of systems designed to deliver projects faster and cheaper. It could also become lost in the rubble if the Chinese economy crumbles. In Beijing, prices for new apartments have been slashed by as much as a third on some projects and even at that, sales have plummeted.

The market for new office space is flat. And, now that Barclays has found a correlation between tall buildings and financial crashes, and brought it to public attention, investors could be looking hard at proposals for tall buildings in North America, as well.

Korky Koroluk is a regular freelance contributor to the Journal of Commerce. Send comments or questions to editor@journalofcommerce.com.

Original Post: http://www.joconl.com/article/id48447

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