Precast Panels Respect Neighborhood’s Past

Above. Le Griffix, constructed atop the location’s original one-story brick building, has a clean, contemporary façade combining 380 floor-to-floor-height precast panels.

Right. The building rises 20 stories above the corner of Peel and Wellington Streets in the Griffintown neighborhood of Montreal and contains 175 residential units, as well as commercial space on the ground floor.

Precast Panels Respect Neighborhood’s Past Hybrid cladding combines modern design, insulation, and light weight.

Urban revitalization is a major trend throughout North America and, although each individual development brings its own specific obstacles, certain challenges are more universal. How can a new building respect the past of the existing neighborhood while also looking to the future? How can it be constructed with the newest green-building technologies and the most desired amenities at a reasonable cost? With the aid of SlenderWall, Midland, VA, the Griffix condominium project in Montreal offers a compelling answer to these questions.

Opened in the fall of 2013, Le Griffix reaches 20 stories above the corner of Peel and

Wellington Streets in the Griffintown neighborhood and houses 175 units of between 545 and 1,245 sq. ft., as well as commercial space on the ground floor. The building, constructed atop the location’s original one-story brick building, has a clean, contemporary-finish façade combining 380 floor-to-floor-height SlenderWall panels—for a total of 50,000 sq. ft. of cladding—with a fully glazed curtain wall.

A variety of benefits led the project team to consider and employ the cladding for this major project. Among those was the cladding’s high R-value and its relatively lightweight, easy-to-assembly nature. Its hybrid construction—a lightweight 2-in.-thick precast panel fixed to a heavy-gauge steel frame—provides both the exterior insulated envelope and an interior stud wall ready to receive gypsum board.

The cladding’s weight advantages over traditional precast panels—28 lb./sq. ft. versus close to 85 lb./sq. ft.—also made it an ideal specification. For example, the contractors could use smaller, lower-cost construction equipment and build the structural frame with smaller members. This helped reduce steel tonnage and associated first costs as well as contributing to lower construction-phase expenses for the owner. In addition, the ability of the system to be pre-manufactured off-site also helped boost the speed of construction scheduling.

This proved critical for the developer, who could get the condominiums on the market before competitors in this rapidly changing neighborhood.

COST NOT THE ONLY CONSIDERATION Yet cost was not the only consideration. The new development also demanded a finish quality and permanence that was truly modern in look yet could also be adapted to the context. The gray, sandblast-finished panels provide a simulated-stone exterior seen as trendy yet also true to the area’s history and aesthetic.

A century ago, Griffintown was the beating heart of Montreal’s waterfront industrial life. Located on the Lachine Canal in the southeast corner of the city, “the Griff,” as it has been affectionately known, gave a home to factories, breweries, shipping companies, the Port of Montreal, and other operations needing easy access to waterways or transportation. But in 1959, the opening of the St. Lawrence Expressway meant the closing of the Lachine Canal and a drop in Griffintown’s economic importance. Less than a decade later, the Bonaventure Expressway was opened, severing Griffintown from the rest of Montreal.

Starting in the 1990s, artists began to gravitate toward the neighborhood, slowly turning it into one of Montreal’s cultural centers. In early 2012, the city of Montreal unveiled its new urban plan for downtown, including Griffintown.

Seeking to attract an urban clientele, Griffix was conceived by Diamond Trust and In

vestissement Poirier, Montreal, along with their lead design firm, Geiger Huot Architects, Montreal, as a lifestyle choice with a long list of amenities including a balcony for each unit, a furnished roof terrace with stunning views of Montreal and its surroundings, highly energy-efficient HVAC systems and windows, and of course, its location. The compatibility of all these needs with the lightweight, flexible hybrid system of SlenderWall panels, created an instant appeal for the developers, architect, fabricators, and contractors.

Nearby, Griffintown began to show signs of being a highly livable, walkable neighborhood. Along with six new public green spaces and $93 million of public investment, city planners enacted a residential rezoning for much of Griffintown, opening the door for redevelopment of the area as a desirable waterfront location for mixed-use towers such as Griffix. Young professionals, drawn by the interesting historical atmosphere and easy access to Montreal’s new cultural corridor of art galleries, restaurants, shopping, parks, and transportation, came to Griffix to get a feel for the building and locale.

A NOVEL DESIGN The revitalization presented an ideal building scenario for the developers Diamond Trust and Investissement Poirier. Yet for the architects and construction team, it added certain challenges, including the rush to get to market fi rst. On top of that, for a neighborhood where visual appeal derives in large part from its historical low-rise brick and warehouse buildings, the architects needed the high-rise to maintain the local character while standing on its own merit. The cladding chosen was an essential part of answering these questions.

For Eric Huot, a principal in the Montreal-based architectural firm of Geiger + Huot and the primary architect involved in the Le Griffix design, his main mission was, “incorporating the existing façade of the historic building, recreating the arcade along Wellington Street, and marrying these to a new high-rise building.” From a site planning standpoint, the solution was to locate the high-rise tower at the eastern edge of the site and leave the corner of Peel Street to the existing building, “in an effort to maintain the streetscape as it had been for most of the last century,” Huot said.

To emphasize the tower’s distinct expression in relation to the original building, Huot used precast panels and recessed windows to create a cladding design that combines solid masses with punched openings and a, “lighter, airy counterpoint of glass curtain wall.”

The exterior system also had to be adaptable and cost effective to meet these and other design needs. From the start, Geiger + Huot looked to SlenderWall for Le Griffix, preferring the pre-manufactured, panelized exterior approach. Familiar with the system and its benefits from their 400 Sherbrooke Ouest hotel project, the firm took advantage of the design freedom offered by the cladding. The interplay of solids and voids that formed the basis of Le Griffix design depended on the façade’s concrete cladding being attached to the edge of the floor slabs in the building, a standard feature of the material, which also adds a small amount of bonus square footage to the building’s interior footprint.

ADAPTABLE, EFFICIENT, AND LIGHTWEIGHT It wasn’t only the architects who advocated the use of precast panels on Le Griffi x, said Guy Tremblay, the technical director at precasting fi rm Béton Préfabriqué du Lac (BPDL), Alma, Quebec. Tremblay

adds that the structural engineers for Le Griffi x advocated for the cladding’s use based on its suitability for the project and their experience with the system on previous multifamily projects in the United States and Canada. Construction advantages added to their case. For example, with the balcony panels in-set from the main exterior of the building, crane access presented a potential design challenge. The reduced weight of the panels, compared with standard precast, combined with a user-friendly erection method, eliminated this concern by allowing the use of smaller cranes that saved time and money.

Beyond weight, SlenderWall offered other benefits that attracted Le Griffix’s builders. “The panel already comes to the building with insulation,” noted Tremblay, which helped designers and contractors. Also, he stated, with its pre-insulated panels and built-in interior framing, “The cladding also speeds up the construction process, whereas usually with a precast panel, you set the panel in place and have to waterproof, enclose, and then do the insulation and the interior stud wall framing.”

“So we had an advantage,” said Tremblay. Indeed, it made it simple to achieve the tight thermal envelope and highly energy-efficient environment that the developers sought for Le Griffix as one of its major selling points.

Although Le Griffix has been open for only a short time, the neighborhood has embraced it and the Montreal press has already described it as “spectacular,” “hip,” and “urbane.” The Montreal Online said the building, “captured the collective imagination of many purchasers” even before completion. The latest and greatest addition to the growing Griffintown scene, Le Griffix is notable not only for its high design and amenities, but also for the cutting-edge construction elements that allowed vision to become reality. CBP

The hybrid construction of the SlenderWall panels—a lightweight 2-in.-thick precast panel fi xed to a heavy-gauge steel frame—provides the exterior insulated envelope and an interior stud wall, ready to receive gypsum board.

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