2020 CANADIAN CONSULTING ENGINEERING AWARDS
BUILDINGS
AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
West Block Rehabilitation
Photos by Richard Seck
Ojdrovic Engineering and John G. Cooke & Associates
The House of Commons now sits under a glazed roof.
“Excellent collaboration between architects and engineers—and government leading by example, investing major money in the conservation of a heritage building.” –Jury 26
www.canadianconsultingengineer.com
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The $863-milion restoration and redevelopment of Parliament’s West Block was one of the largest heritage building rehabilitation projects anywhere in North America. A new, temporary House of Commons now sits within a structural steel ‘forest’ and under a glazed roof, where parliamentarians and visitors enjoy a view of the restored and seismically strengthened 19th-century stone masonry building.
Accommodating Parliament The rehabilitation of Parliament’s Centre Block is expected to take at least 10 years. Many other projects have been undertaken across the National Capital Region to accommodate the disruption. Among these, the largest was the restoration and redevelopment of the West Block for a temporary House of Commons chamber. The project involved rehabilitation, modification and strengthening of the existing heritage masonry building and construction of several underground and aboveground levels within the existing courtyard. The stone building underwent a seismic upgrade to meet the requirements of today’s National Building Code (NBC), but the interventions were kept to a minimum by carefully including existing stone and brick masonry as lateral resisting elements and complementing them with only two new concrete shear walls and two concrete block elevator shafts. The University of Calgary performed tests that used large masonry panels to simulate the exterior walls of the building, so as to determine material property parameters for the analysis of existing walls. The layout of the structural system is defined by the footprint of the House of Commons chamber in the centre of the courtyard. Two double rows of five structural columns enclose it. The assembly of welded plates that forms the shaft of the columns and branches resembles the fluting of stone columns of Gothic structures and creates lines that extend visually into the branches and open up to distribute the support points. The branch tips support a threedimensional (3-D) space truss that forms the overall shape of the roof and ceiling, both glazed to provide natural light.
October/November 2020
2020-10-05 9:16 AM
CCE Adv
