Toronto Alexandra Park Revitalization | 53.48m | 15s | TCHC | SvN

Wonderful news. The Tridel buildings closer to Queen have been great. Piece by piece, this whole area is getting activated again and re-introduced back into the downtown urban fabric.
 
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Toronto Community Housing embraces the Passive House

JOHN LORINC
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Over the coming year, The Globe and Mail will track the evolution of the Alexandra Park pilot project as it moves from the drawing board to ground-breaking. The series aims to inform the GTA development world about how to deliver such novel projects and allow the partners in this venture – TCHC, Deltera Construction Management, DSAI and RDH, an energy modelling consultancy, among others – with an opportunity to share the lessons they’ve learned along the way.

Originally conceived in Germany 30 years ago, passive-house buildings are characterized by a handful of core traits, according to Deborah Byrne, Kearns Mancini Architects chief operating officer and chair of Passive House Canada: very thick insulation, thoroughly sealed building envelopes that allow no energy leakage, internal heat recovery devices and triple-glazed windows, which tend to be far smaller than the curtain wall windows so common in newer Toronto condos. Where possible, she adds, they’re oriented toward the sun. “It’s designed using science,” Ms. Byrne says.

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In the case of the Alexandra Park project, Michael Lam, an architect and TCHC’s senior construction manager, said agency officials realized they should look at much more energy-efficient designs after Toronto council in 2018 approved a new version of the city’s “green standard,” which not only set out tough energy performance standards on new construction, but is designed to become increasingly demanding over the next five or six years.

“When the city starts saying, we want a net zero carbon building, technically, that’s very difficult to build,” he said. “We’ve got to figure that out now.”

TCHC, he added, decided to learn with a relatively modest project – the townhouses. After putting out a call for proposals and then asking Alexandra Park residents to vote on the two finalists, TCHC selected Tridel and its construction arm, Deltera. Tridel has been TCHC’s development partner on earlier phases of the revitalization, which involves replacing a warren of townhouses with a mix of market and rent-geared-to-income units.

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Typically, on relatively straightforward projects such as townhouses, the architects develop the design and hand it off to the structural engineers and the constructors. But as Fred Foo, Deltera’s senior project manager, points out, the key to creating successful passive-house projects is to involve all the professional partners (including energy modelling consultants) from the very beginning so as to head off design decisions that will undermine the building’s performance. Says Mr. Lam, “You can deliver a building with no surprises.”

Indeed, the group got an early lesson in why this kind of integrated process makes such a difference at its very first session. As one of the architects presented a series of what are called massing studies – basically, 3-D diagrams showing the shapes and set-backs of the two sets of townhouses, including some that proposed a staggered configuration – a passive house energy modelling expert spoke up. The optimal shape, the consultant said, is a straightforward box and no articulation. The reason? Minimizing the area of exposed exterior wall means minimizing energy loss.

“It was a really interesting conversation,” Mr. Lam says. But the decision raised questions about how to make a row of townhouses feel differentiated instead of monolithic. “Architecturally,” he muses, “how do you make these rectilinear buildings attractive?” (The city’s design review panel will offer its view of the proposed layout and façade treatment later this month.)
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www.theglobeandmail.com

Toronto Community Housing embraces the Passive House

The energy-sipping structures can slash usage by over 90 per cent
www.theglobeandmail.com www.theglobeandmail.com
 
Regarding the tower and podium, and condo buildings referenced in the two posts above, those buildings have a dedicated thread here. The post that held them in this thread was eliminated in favour of keeping discussion of those buildings in their dedicated thread.

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Toronto design review panel seeks tweaks to Passive House plans

John Lorinc
June 5, 2020

The renderings showed a pair of townhouse complexes, with blocks of mid-rise apartments directly behind. One block contains five three-storey units with both front and rear entrances; the other, 16 back-to-back units, with rooftop terraces. The most distinguishing feature: trapezoid-shaped metal panels on the front brick façade, punctuated by modest vertically oriented windows and tapering to an entrance canopy that tilts a bit like the visor of a baseball cap.

In late May, members of Toronto Community Housing’s design review panel (DRP) convened by video-conference for their first review of the plans, which represent a small but closely watched element of the broader revitalization of Alexandra Park, a partnership between TCHC and Tridel that’s been underway for more than a decade.

The townhouses, designed by Diamond Schmitt Architects Inc. (DSAI), are a pilot project to test an aggressive low-carbon design philosophy known as “Passive House” that can slash 90 per cent of a building’s energy consumption and, in some cases, produce structures that actually supply energy into the grid. Unlike the vast majority of residential dwellings in Toronto, the 21 affordable townhouse units that will go up in Alexandra Park won’t use any natural gas for heating, relying instead on hydro and a proposed geothermal system to be located on site.

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Anticipating that the City of Toronto’s green building code requirements will soon contain extremely demanding low-carbon benchmarks as Toronto aims to meet its 2030 emission reduction targets, TCHC officials decided they should first develop a smaller scale Passive House project so the agency is ready to build much larger ones as its long-term revitalization program rolls out.

The DRP members were enthusiastic about TCHC’s decision. “This makes me so happy,” said vice-chair Antoine Belaieff, who also is on the Atmospheric Fund board. Others agreed, but expressed concerns about the metal panels that dominate the façade design and the brick work. “There seems to be a disconnect between those two [materials],” observed Carol Philips, a partner at Moriyama & Teshima.
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www.theglobeandmail.com

Toronto design review panel seeks tweaks to Passive House plans

The city panel has asked for further refinements to the façade design and materials because the building envelope needs to be as airtight as possible and highly insulated, with triple-glazed windows
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I guess this part explains why the townhomes look like your typical, horrid looking TCHC styled townhouse:

The townhouses, designed by Diamond Schmitt Architects Inc. (DSAI), are a pilot project to test an aggressive low-carbon design philosophy known as “Passive House” that can slash 90 per cent of a building’s energy consumption and, in some cases, produce structures that actually supply energy into the grid.
 
Glad to see this getting started. On a related note, they really need to narrow these car lanes, either by adding bike lanes or widening the sidewalks. This stretch of Dundas is 40Km/hr but drivers routinely speed through here @ 50/60Km/hr or more (there's a radar sign). Between Spadina and Bathurst, it feels like a bit of a highway in the middle of the city. Narrowing the lanes would force drivers to instinctively moderate their speed. Tall buildings here might have a beneficial effect.
 
MetroMan said:
Glad to see this getting started. On a related note, they really need to narrow these car lanes, either by adding bike lanes or widening the sidewalks. This stretch of Dundas is 40Km/hr but drivers routinely speed through here @ 50/60Km/hr or more (there's a radar sign). Between Spadina and Bathurst, it feels like a bit of a highway in the middle of the city. Narrowing the lanes would force drivers to instinctively moderate their speed. Tall buildings here might have a beneficial effect.
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Did a quick look, and measured.

Not as wide as you think.

Though, I still support the idea of bike lanes and/or widened sidewalks.

But, curb lanes measured on the north and south range from 3.25m - 3.5m

Not really much bigger than normal, and definitely not enough to support a bike lane if parking and the travel lanes stay.

To reconfirm, I looked at one spot w/parking and measured from the edge of the car to painted line at the streetcar tracks. ~.1.2M which would not work for a bike lane.

That said

I'd be happy to see parking prohibited, and split the curb lane between cycle tracks and sidewalk widening.

You could have 2M for a cycle track and still have 1M and change leftover for widened sidewalks.

As this section of Dundas has very little commercial/retail; it seems well suited to parking removal.

However, this would need to be supported by ensuring no left-turns in front of streetcars in the affected section.
 
MetroMan said:
Glad to see this getting started. On a related note, they really need to narrow these car lanes, either by adding bike lanes or widening the sidewalks. This stretch of Dundas is 40Km/hr but drivers routinely speed through here @ 50/60Km/hr or more (there's a radar sign). Between Spadina and Bathurst, it feels like a bit of a highway in the middle of the city. Narrowing the lanes would force drivers to instinctively moderate their speed. Tall buildings here might have a beneficial effect.
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Even more than tall buildings, I think the reinstatement of Augusta Avenue through to the south will have a big effect on slowing things down here. I assume a traffic light will go in when it opens. It would be good to see a crosswalk go in at Kensington Avenue too across to the new Vanauley Walk.

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I'm not really impressed with Site 3 & 16 with the placement and design.

Site 3 seems somewhat a strange placement for 5 units, the apartment complex adjacent should have just gotten bought out by the developer and make rental replacement units to revitalize the entire block. It's a shame because that apartment has seen its days and will look out of place in 10 years from now.

I believe this is the first time they're starting the project with 3 bedroom units. They seem to be an afterthought and attempting to utilize as much space as possible for site 16 by not providing backyards. An odd setup to give them terraces. After seeing the floorplan, it seems like there's a couple of 4 bedroom and 3 bedroom that will be build. I'm guessing the 3 bedroom will have one master bedroom with a lot more space on the second or third floor.
 
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