Wood WORKS! Award Winners Announced: Wood design is Healthy, Sustainable, Supports Jobs

A select group of Ontario’s leading architects, engineers, and project teams received Wood Design Awards at the 12 th annual Wood WORKS! celebration in Toronto. The awards recognize people and organizations that, through design excellence, advocacy, and innovation, are advancing the use of wood in all types of construction across the province.

“These are exciting times for wood design,” says Marianne Berube, executive director of the Ontario Wood WORKS! project. “Ongoing technical advancement in the forest product and construction industries, alongside creative design thinking, is giving rise to an incredible new generation of wood buildings.”

“Design and construction solutions that incorporate sustainably sourced wood products support forest industry employment in the province, significantly lower the carbon footprint of any building, reduce our dependence on non-renewable materials and fossil fuels, and provide warm, beautiful, human-centered environments that people love,” added Berube. “It is our privilege to celebrate some of the best of these buildings each year through the awards program.”

Winning projects include an innovation center that took the concept of ‘locally-sourced materials’ to a new level, obtaining all wood materials within a 30km radius of the project; a residence whose strict indoor environment requirements were best met with wood, clearly illustrating the health benefits of wood buildings; an urban in-fill condo project that skillfully used the building code to maximize the building’s height; and a park revitalization that used trees killed by the emerald ash borer to produce a facility that the jury called ‘an extraordinary example in this typology of building.’

Twelve awards were presented at the event. “We are proud to honour people who, through their work, are creating beautiful, healthy, sustainable buildings with wood – a responsibly managed, renewable natural resource that is grown, harvested and manufactured right here in Ontario,” concluded Berube.

Interior Wood Design Award Sponsored by Tembec

Project: Metropolitan Pharmacy, Toronto Architect: JET Architecture Inc.

The challenge of this project was to fit a pharmacy and medical clinic into a compact area of 1500 ft2 with a ceiling height of 21ft and a level change. The pharmacy and medical clinic is a commercial typology that has traditionally been kept separate. This project presented a unique opportunity to define a brand for this new business venture.

The interior fit out combines traditional mill-working methods with leading edge industrial technologies. A building information model (BIM) was used to refine the form of the construction while computer numerically controlled (CNC) milling was used to cut out the components of the millwork. The idea is simple, consisting of a grid of product shelving used to form the space and its flow. The contoured grid of millwork guides the flow of space from entering the pharmacy, to waiting for a medical appointment or having a prescription ordered. The millwork components were kept to fit within an 8 ft maximum length to work with the standard plywood sheet dimension of 4x8 ft.

Click here for more information about Metropolitan Pharmacy