Not only will it be a distinctive landmark on the Toronto skyline when it opens in three years, the new $419 million Sick Children’s Hospital Research Tower will be a showcase example of how building envelope design is meeting the demands of modern research methods.
Designed by Diamond + Schmitt Architects in joint venture with HDR and now being built by general contractor EllisDon, the 708,000-square-foot, 22-storey building will allow the hospital to consolidate and enlarge its clinical and research capabilities.
Approximately 2,200 researchers will work in the facility, which will include 17 floors of open lab space, a 250-seat tele-education auditorium, plus meeting and conference rooms.
Designed to achieve a 33 per cent energy improvement over the Model Energy Code, the building has been targeted to obtain LEED Gold certification.
The researchers will be conducting their work in an environment filled with natural light and offering full views of the surrounding area, says Diamond + Schmitt partner Donald Schmitt. “Most days they won’t have to turn on the lights.”
That environment will be facilitated through a floor-to-ceiling high-performance curtain cladding wall with more than 20 per cent more vision glass than a comparable office building. “It will provide maximum access to daylight, while still providing excellent thermal performance.”
The curtain wall will be a unitized system to speed construction and minimize traffic disruption near the buildings site at the corner of Bay and Elm streets in Toronto’s downtown, says Schmitt.
The curtain wall “will be erected straight from delivery trucks.”
At one time medical, scientific and other research work was carried out in often dark gloomy and windowless offices, he says. “It was similar to the theory that children would study harder if there were no windows in the classrooms.”
But that’s no longer the case, says Schmitt, whose firm designed the University of Toronto’s Earth Sciences Centre in the late 1980s.
“The centre pulled labs out of dark, dingy basements,” he says.
The Hospital for Sick Children research tower is a continuation of that trend and the decision that it be built with a curtain wall was made early in the design process.
But that was only the first half of a two-stage design challenge, says Joseph Troppmann, the firm’s building envelope specialist.
“The main challenge of the curtain wall design was to find the right balance between maximizing views and daylight penetration, and providing appropriate thermal and shading requirements to minimize energy consumption and maintain occupant comfort.”
To achieve that goal, the design team developed a graduated ceramic frit pattern on the curtain wall, which consists of 60 per cent vision glass and 40 per cent solid glass.
Applied during the glass manufacturing process, the subtle frit patterns will create an effect that might be roughly compared to a window blind, says Troppmann.
“This design solution permits a tall expanse of vision glazing which allows daylight to permeate the inner core of the labs.”
Another important use of the frit patterns is their utility as an identification system. As the laboratories in towers will be clustered in related research themes or “neighborhoods,” different colors will be used to identify the floors where that research will be carried out, he says.
