In today’s commercial interiors, it is vital that spaces for workers, visitors, and suppliers exude a welcoming, vibrant, and ‘dressed for success’ ambiance. Living plants can be a much-needed component of any commercial building’s interior design, as they have the innate ability to transform the space naturally.
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Le Stade de Soccer de Montréal, completed in April 2015, is a new sustainable design icon for the city. However, the area was not always so appealing. Before being adapted into a sports facility, the land was used as a limestone quarry, and then as a dumping site. Throughout these transitions, the natural typography of the site was dramatically altered.
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The new Women’s Hospital in Winnipeg is part of the city’s Health Sciences Centre, the area’s largest hospital, which also serves residents of northwest Ontario and Nunavut. Construction on the hospital began in 2011, with the new state-of-the-art facility expected to open this fall after a total investment of $235 million. At over 27,870 m2 (300,000 sf), the new hospital will be more than three times the size of the current Women’s Pavilion.
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MasterFormat is the industry’s leading resource for organizing project manuals and specifications, construction project filing systems, construction product information, and cost estimates. The new, updated, improved edition is coming later this spring, and this article offers a sneak peak on what has changed from the previous edition.
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From Paris to provincial legislatures, big changes are coming in Canada’s greenhouse gas (GHG) regime, with Canadian companies—and large carbon-emitters across a range of industries—still determining what the impacts will be on their bottom lines. This includes design/construction companies. At the same time, the renewed public and private-sector focus on climate change will lead to increased opportunities for Canadian design professionals to implement and improve industry-leading solutions.
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With the advancement of technology and more stringent building regulations, today’s building product manufacturers and design/construction professionals require increasingly detailed schematics and blueprints. As a result, printing for the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industries has been growing for several consecutive quarters, and based on the International Reprographic Association (IRgA) index it is expected to continue.
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Last October, 12 countries—Canada, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam—concluded negotiations with respect to the draft text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). In February, each of these countries signed the legally verified text of the agreement. TPP is generally considered to be the most comprehensive regional trade agreement presently in existence. When it is eventually implemented into Canadian law and ratified, it may present significant benefits for Canada’s construction sector. Stakeholders, however, should be cognizant of some potential risks.
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Following three years of negotiations, Toronto’s iconic Guild Inn Estate is currently under construction by Dynamic Hospitality and Entertainment Group. Situated on the Scarborough Bluffs overlooking Lake Ontario, the project will feature a 3700-m2 (40,000-sf) estate on 88 landscaped acres (i.e. approximately 36 ha).
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The industrial-commercial-institutional (ICI) construction world is becoming increasingly competitive, with a massive pool of companies competing over a much smaller pool of high valued contracts. In the past, competitive advantage involved either maintaining a reputation for producing the highest quality of work or being the lowest bidder. Today, owners across Canada have begun revising their prequalification process and this has created a new competitive edge for ICI construction businesses: demonstrating best-in-class safety performance.
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A vital part of any interior designer’s job is finding the right product to suit the client and project. There is much to comprehend before a product can be confidently specified, as new products continually become available, manufacturing processes are upgraded by technology, and environmental concerns gain importance. Designers rely on manufacturer representatives to provide critical information to assist them when selecting a product. The relationship between an interior designer and a manufacturer representative should be mutually beneficial.
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