By Joel McKay
Not sure what building material should be featured in your next development? The province wants you to choose wood.
More than a year has passed since the province introduced its Wood First Act, which requires all provincially funded buildings to use wood as the primary construction material.
And architects are signing on in droves to make use of one of B.C.’s most storied resources.
“What isn’t good about it?” said Russell Acton, principal of Acton Ostry Architects, who frequently uses wood in his designs.
Earlier this year, Acton received a green building award from the Canadian Wood Council for the Salt Building in Vancouver’s Olympic Village.
The project required Acton and his team to restore the landmark 1930s-era building.
“It’s really about transforming the use of a building but being sympathetic to the original materials,” described Acton.
His company rehabilitated the building’s existing wood beams and added new ones to create a “patchwork quilt” design for the ceiling that’s pleasing to the eye.
The firm also managed to divert 98% of the project construction waste away from landfills, and sourced 10% of its materials regionally.
But the Salt Building wasn’t the first time Acton had featured wood in his designs.
In 2007, the firm received an institutional wood design award from the Canadian Wood Council for its King David High School project in Vancouver.
“We’re certainly recognized as being champions of wood in B.C.,” said Acton.
And he’s not the only one.
“We could really see wood was having a renaissance before the Wood First Act came in … architects are really into wood,” said Mary Tracey, executive director of Wood WORKS! BC.
But all that support for wood threatened to come tumbling down in May when a six-storey wood-frame building went up in flames.
On May 3, a fire engulfed the Remy in Richmond, a 188-unit condo development that was supposed to be B.C.’s first six-storey wood-framed building.
The Remy was the result of building code changes that took effect in 2009, allowing developers to build structures up to six storeys high using wood instead of concrete.
Opponents of the province’s wood-first initiatives immediately lashed out, questioning the safety of taller wood-frame buildings.
But architects, engineers and wood proponents shot down the criticism, saying the Remy fire was a freak construction accident.
“The Remy fire occurred while the building was under construction,” commented Michael Giroux, president of the Canadian Wood Council. “This meant that fire safety features such as sprinklers and gypsum board protection, as well as fire doors in firewalls, all required in the completed building, had not yet been installed.”
Len Garis, Surrey’s fire chief, said the concerns people have about fire safety in taller wood-frame buildings stem from a lack of information.
“There’s more fire protection in a mid-rise wood -frame building than in most buildings already in the community,” Garis said. “The Remy fire should not become a six-storey fire issue – Remy was a construction fire.”
Vancouver architect Michael Green believes tall wood buildings can be just as fire-safe as their concrete counterparts.
Green said large-scale, engineered wood panels, which are thicker than traditional light timber construction, could safely build fire-resistant towers 20 storeys high.
“People automatically think of wood as a combustible building material, but it’s just not that black and white,” said Green, an architect with mgb Architecture + Design. “Mass wood with thickness may burn on its outside, but not all the way through.”
Fire issues aside, the province and municipal governments are forging ahead with wood-first initiatives – championing a variety of buildings made with B.C. wood.
More than 30 local governments have already committed to the Wood First Act, and the 2009 changes to the building code have resulted in more than 50 new projects that use wood in five- or six-storey buildings. And the wood craze has even caught on south of the border.
In March, the state of Oregon introduced its own Wood First Bill.
“Government on both sides of the border can lead by example by making wood its preferred choice for public buildings,” Jobs Minister Pat Bell said at the time. “With use in just 15% of commercial and institution construction … we have a major opportunity to expand the market for wood products.”