The new head office for Vancouver structural engineering firm, Fast + Epp, is being recognized by the Canadian Wood Council for its innovation and ingenuity in wood design and building, and for being selected for funding support under Natural Resources Canada’s Green Construction through Wood (GC Wood) Program.
The hybrid mass timber building, located near downtown Vancouver on Yukon Street, is among the first office buildings in Vancouver to use mass timber as a structural material, and will showcase the same structural innovations and technologies that are at the forefront of their consulting practice. The GCWood Program aims to broaden the awareness of wood as a sustainable and renewable construction material and to increase the domestic capacity for wood in Canadian construction.
It’s a really special moment in our Fast + Epp company history to have the opportunity to move into a custom-built mass timber office building. It features a robust, sustainable structure, warm exposed wood interiors and the latest in seismic technology using self-centering, energy absorbing connectors,” explained Paul Fast, partner at Fast + Epp.
“The building will serve as living lab with ongoing thermal, moisture and vibration monitoring. It will also house Fast + Epp’s Concept Lab where physical testing of mass timber components and software development will take place.”
The Fast + Epp home office will showcase how a well-designed mass timber building can be constructed quickly, efficiently and cost effectively. It will feature an exposed hybrid mass timber structure and leading-edge seismic design technology, and will provide the broader construction and design industry with learning opportunities through monitoring performance results.
“This project is an excellent example of an innovative, sustainable and high-performance wood building. It showcases technologically advanced wood products and systems, and how mass timber components work together for optimal designs that can be easily replicated,” said Lynn Embury-Williams, executive director of Wood WORKS! BC. “Projects such as this will address today’s urgent demand for more efficient construction using sustainable building materials, toward a goal of carbon neutral structures that will positively transform our built environment.”
The project received $648,250 under the GCWood program, which was announced as part of the Government of Canada’s Budget 2017 with $39.8 million in funding. The funds support projects and activities that increase the use of wood as a green building material in infrastructure projects.
