A three-storey podium along St. George Street maintains the scale of the adjacent Koffler Centre for Student Services (at left).
The Bahen Centre's three storey atrium provides a grandly scaled civic space and assists with ventilation and daylighting.
A glass-enclosed curved stair provides a dramatic focal point for the eight-storey atrium at the building's west end.
A cylindrical tower terminates a vista between the Fields Institute (at left) and the Koffler Centre.
The Bahen Centre wraps around an existing Victorian house on St. George Street that has been incorporated into the project.
An interior view of one of the lecture halls, with a glass partition on the right.
The building's south façade is fitted out with brises-soleil contained within a system of concrete frames.
Green Giant
A large academic building represents a complex interweaving of urbanity, public space and sustainability.
Diamond and Schmitt Architects Incorporated
Architects are increasingly called upon to generate solutions to ever more complex design briefs. Multi-faceted programs and user groups, tight budgets and schedules, ever-evolving technologies and, increasingly, a demand for energy efficiency are among the new challenges facing contemporary practice.
The recently opened Bahen Centre for Information Technology at the University of Toronto (U of T) is a textbook example of a project required to address a variety of demands, each one challenging in its own right, the more so in combination.
At over half a million square feet in total area (400,000 above grade and 165,000 below), Diamond and Schmitt Architects' Bahen Centre is among the largest academic buildings on U of T's downtown St. George campus. The scale and complexity of the building reflect its programmatic raison d'être, which is to bring together the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering and the Faculty of Arts & Sciences in a multidisciplinary facility that accommodates teaching and research in computer science, electrical engineering, engineering science, mechanical and industrial engineering. The Centre also houses a variety of industry-related research institutes, including the Nortel Institute for Telecommunications, Bell University Research Labs, Computer Systems Research Group and Knowledge Media Design Institute.
As part of the Government of Ontario's Superbuild program--in part intended to address the need for additional academic space to accommodate next September's onslaught of students resulting from the elimination of Grade 13 in that province--the Bahen Centre was subject to an extremely demanding schedule. With ground broken only five months after the architects were initially appointed, design was fast-tracked throughout construction in a number of sequential tenders in order to meet the project deadline, which, partner-in-charge Donald Schmitt points out, was met several months ahead of schedule.
The Bahen Centre also embodies a "green" agenda, inspired in part by the fact that a computer science facility requires an enormous amount of energy both to power equipment and to cool it. This involved the deployment of both passive and active strategies, including the provision of extensive daylight to minimize the need for artificial illumination, sun shading devices to reduce the cooling load, natural ventilation including the use of the atrium as a thermal chimney, and careful zoning of building uses to maximize the benefits of various orientations. Large computer labs, which need to minimize glare and tend to generate a significant amount of ambient heat, are located on the building's sparingly glazed and heavily insulated north side, while lounges and faculty offices face south and east, benefiting from solar gain in winter but shielded against high summer sun by a system of louvered shading devices. Schmitt notes that the sun shades, which represent a capital cost of approximately $250,000, reduce the air conditioning load by 100 tons, resulting in capital savings of $800,000 and operating savings, based on current energy costs, of $60,000 per annum.
Other strategies used at the Bahen Centre include the retention and recycling of storm water, the use of low water consumption plumbing fixtures, and a raised floor plenum that allows for maximum flexibility and highly efficient displacement ventilation, also freeing the exposed concrete ceiling slabs for use as thermal mass for heat retention. The Bahen Centre also benefits from its serendipitous location next to U of T's central steam plant, the chimney stack of which now reads, from certain angles, as part of the new building's formal composition. This reading is a fitting interpretation of the intimate relationship between the two: a heat exchanger is used to divert the chimney's waste heat to provide 92% of the Bahen Centre's calculated heating requirements. These various strategies combine to bring the project's energy consumption to 60% of the standard set by ASHRAE 90.1, and 53% of the Model National Energy Code of Canada (MNECB).
The majority of these strategies are quickly becoming staples of green design, and while it is rare to see them employed in a project as large and complex as the Bahen Centre, they are hardly unique to this building. The Centre's most significant contribution to sustainable design has more to do with its relationship to site and its attitude toward the city and traditions of high density urbanism. The project replaces an asphalt-paved parking lot and service yard with half a million square feet of usable space and three distinct landscaped courtyards, and it accommodates its large program on an idiosyncratic site bounded by several existing buildings.
The term "infill project" typically conjures images of delicate insertions into existing urban fabric, interventions that are modest in scale if not necessarily in architectural ambition. This perception has been reinforced by a steady stream of residential infill projects that transcend the limitations of marginal sites to create sophisticated essays in the possibilities of urban living. In this context it might seem out of place to consider the Bahen Centre as an infill project, but in large measure that is precisely what its tight and irregular urban site demanded.
The Bahen Centre is nestled--to the extent that a building of this scale can be said to nestle--among an eclectic collection of smaller existing buildings near the southwest corner of the campus: the Beaux-Arts Koffler Centre for Student Services (originally the City of Toronto's main library branch, designed by Chapman Oxley in 1909), the Fields Institute (designed by KPMB; see CA June 1996), the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the corner of College and Huron Streets, an administration and service building on Huron, and the University's central steam plant. In addition, the Bahen Centre's construction involved the demolition of Victorian houses on St. George Street; public opposition resulted in the retention of the most historically significant of these, which further complicated the already constrained site. The house has been incorporated into the Bahen Centre, providing a unique identity within the complex for the Professional Experience Year (PEY) Program.
The nature of the site prevents a clear reading of the project as a single entity, resulting in a variety of conditions at the building's exterior. As a result the complex reveals at least three distinct public faces: one to the east on St. George Street, a second to the north on Russell Street and a third facing College Street to the south. An animated three-storey brick podium punctuated by projecting glass bays along St. George Street respects the scale of the neighbouring Koffler Centre, wraps discreetly around the historic house, and rises to five storeys at the corner before tucking back in behind the central steam plant on Russell Street. An eight-storey block is set back from but clearly visible on the St. George elevation, its regular façade of academic offices revealing the scale and institutional significance of the building beyond.
Along College Street, a cylindrical tower terminates a pedestrian path (previously a service driveway) between the Fields Institute and the Koffler Centre. The walkway has been accentuated with the addition of landscaping and a water trough that leads to a forecourt at the building's south side. Here, the building's large scale and institutional nature are unapologetically revealed, presenting a regular grid of offices punctuated by tightly spaced sun-shading devices layered over curtain wall glazing, which is in turn contained within a system of pre-cast concrete frames that provide depth and shadow to the façade. Existing site conditions result in the expressive tower and its formal approach being slightly offset from the city street grid; looking north along Ross Street, the view terminates instead on the adjacent Koffler Centre. The scale and formal treatment of the tower seem more appropriate to a longer axial vista than what is actually available.
If the site condition results in a fragmented and incremental reading of the Bahen Centre's exterior, the building's interior organization serves to knit together its various elements by means of a series of grandly scaled public spaces. A primary east-west axis is defined by the project's main atrium, three storeys high at the east end, rising to a full eight storeys at the west, where it intersects with a secondary north-south axis and, more importantly, with a vertical axis defined by a dramatic glazed curved stair punctuated by fibre optic lighting. The stair offers an exhilarating (for some, vertiginous) spatial thrust, a sort of secular axis mundi that links the undergraduate lecture halls and labs on the three lower floors to the more elevated realms of faculty offices and graduate and industry research housed above.
The east-west atrium is bounded to the south by the north wall of the Koffler Centre, which looks into the skylit interior street. The north side of the atrium accommodates generous circulation spaces related to the undergraduate lecture halls, ensuring constant activity. The atrium continues west of the stair, but loses some of its clarity as an axis, terminating as it does on a single-storey service building immediately beyond the Bahen Centre's west face. Given the University's ongoing evolution, it seems inevitable that the single-storey building will be replaced with subsequent development that should take its cues from the new building's efforts to create a cross-site link between St. George and Huron Streets.
The atrium constitutes a microcosm of the building's complex multiple agendas, serving not only as a device for orientation and circulation, a civic space and a potential link between various components of the University, but also as an important contributor to the Bahen Centre's green ambitions. In terms of ventilation, it serves as a return air plenum and, in case of fire, as a smoke evacuation chimney. It brings light into the heart of the building's deep floor plate, and many of the spaces that face into the atrium have floor-to-ceiling glass partitions which allow light to penetrate into spaces that would not otherwise have access to daylight. These partitions, along with the expressive glazed stair, endow the interior with a lightness and transparency that help to soften and animate a building type that often comes across as institutional and ponderous.
According to Donald Schmitt, a desire to avoid this ponderousness also informed the choice of light-coloured brick at the building's exterior. The light brick mediates between the existing finishes on surrounding buildings, matching the scale and texture of the brick buildings and the lighter colour of those clad in pre-cast concrete. Barely-contrasting concrete details result in the building's monochromatic character, sparingly punctuated by granite-clad exterior columns and a pattern of intense blue squares of glass in the office windows. A more varied interior palette includes dark-stained wood, stucco walls in a variety of rich colours and the ubiquitous green-blue of the glass partitions.
Viewed in the larger context of Diamond and Schmitt's body of work, the Bahen Centre represents an extension of many familiar concerns, especially with respect to the symbiotic relationship between architecture and the city. Confronted with the observation that the project seems to be working with themes that were also evident in the firm's Metro Central YMCA of 1984 (like the YMCA, the Bahen Centre reconciles a variety of program elements on an idiosyncratic urban site, resulting in a fragmented exterior expression that is unified on the interior by simple organizing elements), Schmitt jokes that the office has been doing the same thing for the past 20 years. Several of the firm's projects for U of T in the immediate vicinity of the Bahen Centre reveal that in fact this is not the case: the Earth Sciences Building of 1990, recently completed additions to the John and Edna Davenport Chemical Research Building and the nearly complete Morrison Pavilion--an addition to the Gerstein Library--represent quite distinct solutions to particular issues.
At the same time, there is truth to the statement; through its various incarnations, the firm has worked consistently with a series of preoccupations related to urban architecture. This is significant because Canadian architecture has often displayed a tentative, if not tenuous, relationship to the city. Many of the notions that inform North American practice are rooted in 19th century Romanticism, whose underlying philosophy was never particularly sympathetic to the city. Despite the fact that Canada's population is overwhelmingly concentrated in urban areas, much of our cultural identity remains bound up in Romantic notions of wilderness and landscape, of the Sublime and the Picturesque. Some architectural manifestations of this phenomenon include a fascination with free-standing pavilions in the landscape over urban fabric buildings and the prizing of individual inspiration over a systematic and collaborative design process. Contemporary work that draws on 19th century Romantic traditions may have shed its stylistic trappings, but remains philosophically indebted to its neo-Gothic and Arts and Crafts progenitors.
In this context, the Bahen Centre--as does much of the work of Diamond and Schmitt--allies itself with another historic tradition, that of the Beaux-Arts. International rather than local, urban rather than landscape-related, Beaux-Arts buildings like Toronto's Union Station--designed by John Lyle, Ross & MacDonald and Hugh Jones early in the 20th century--are among the most potent examples of Canadian urban architecture. Like its Romantic counterparts, the contemporary version has shed the stylistic veneer of classicism, but continues to work with principles of Beaux-Arts design--the establishment of clear axes, an interest in monumental vistas, the provision of generous public spaces--that have come to define important elements of civic architecture.
This distinction may have important implications beyond its historical interest and contribute to the discourse on sustainability. There is a case to be made for the value of high-density, highly integrated urban architecture that makes the most of underdeveloped marginal sites and improves the efficiency of existing infrastructure. Beyond these pragmatic considerations, the Bahen Centre's emphatic urbanity reminds us that sustainability is about more than making energy efficient buildings and that as we embark on Canada's recently ratified national commitment to the Kyoto Protocol, our long-term success will require the fostering of civic responsibility and collective purpose.
Client: University of Toronto, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering Faculty of Arts and Science
Competition team: Donald Schmitt, Thom Pratt, Pat Hanson, Greg Colucci, Frank Mazzulla, Dale McDowell, Suzanne Graham, Sybil Wa, Michael Leckman, Rebecca Ott, Sydney Browne, Steve Bauer
Architect team: Donald Schmitt, Thom Pratt, Michael Leckman, David Dow, Dale McDowell, Matthew Lella, Cecilia Chen, Sony Rai, Desmond Gregg, James Blendick, Terry Cecil, Leo Mieles, Dan Klinck, Edward Kim, Michael Gross, Agnes Kazmierczak, Dominique Morazain, Kirsten Douglas, Ian Douglas, Steve Bauer, Diana Saragossa, Frank Mazzulla, Jennifer Trost, Natalie Drago
Structural: Read Jones Christoffersen Ltd.
Mechanical: Keen Engineering Co. Ltd.
Electrical: Crossey Engineering Ltd.
Interiors: Diamond and Schmitt Architects Incorporated
Construction manager: PCL Constructors Canada
Cost consultants: Helyar and Associates, Arencon
Landscape: Ian Gray & Associates/Diamond and Schmitt Architects Incorporated
Area: above grade 37,000 m2; below grade 10,500m2
Budget: $88,000,000
Completion: April 2002
Photography: Steven Evans
