Main Floor Layout

The owner wanted the Building to be designed in a manner that can resemble the company's home office. The building has steel and concrete construction. The responsibility to design the building within the parameters of climatic conditions and the fact that a part of the building was to be leased, the requirements from the third party were to be accommodated.

Second Floor Layout

The major challenge while designing was to stay in compliance with the Building code and by-laws as a portion of the building falls under Group D and another portion falls under Group F of the Part 3 Building code. Both groups have different fire separation and wall assembly requirements, and satisfying the city with our response for the same was challenging. After several attempts, being able to crack an option that satisfies both requirements, definitely felt like victory.

Elevations

The other challenge was to secure the server room which consist of the company's private data and connection to the home office. In order to achieve that the server room is separated with 2 hr fire rating and has an Inert Gas system rather than sprinklers to ensure data is secured in case of fire. Also, all the services were coordinated twice to ensure no water line running above the server room.

Elevations

The Front Office portion of the building has Aluminum Panel cladding along with Timber columns in front to achieve the aesthetic expected by the owner. On the other hand, the Back Warehouse portion has metal cladding in order to cut down costs by $200,000.

Construction Phase

As this project was steel and concrete construction, unlike the company's standard wood construction design, many details were unknown, and due to this many RFI's were generated during construction. Due to extensive experience in concrete construction, I was able to provide structured responses to avoid confusion and in addition, made sure we were not missing out on generating details for the ease of the construction team.