RC125 JulyAug 2026 - Magazine - Page 20
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20—RENEW CANADA – JULY/AUGUST 2026
With the Temerty building, PCL is delivering a first-of-its-kind hybrid structural system
that combines mass timber and BubbleDeck technology.
panels via engineered kerf cuts and shear keys. Design-assist partner,
Element5, manufactured all the CLT components at its St. Thomas,
Ont. facility.
The BubbleDeck system embeds air-昀椀lled, recycled plastic spheres
within structural wire mesh cages before pouring the concrete. By
placing these bubbles in areas of low structural stress, the system eliminates up to 35 per cent of unnecessary concrete from the slab.
Because the air-昀椀lled plastic spheres naturally tend to 昀氀oat when
submerged in wet concrete, PCL developed a custom anchoring system to securely restrain the deck during pours.
“Through lots of testing and ensuring that our anchor system was
able to restrain the bubble deck, preventing it from 昀氀oating was one
of the main challenges that we overcame, along with performing any
site modi昀椀cations to the bubble deck panels, which involved removing any bubbles or modifying the wire mesh gages to allow for the
services of electrical or any rebar coordination with the bubble deck,”
said Jacob Fulkin, superintendent at the CAMH Project.
“The conduits that typically run throughout the slab need to weave
their way through bubbles, and the bubbles themselves need to be
carefully placed to not interrupt any load transfer into the slabs and
columns below, so it involved a lot of coordination up front and a lot
less room for error and a lot less 昀氀exibility in the 昀椀eld, so it was really
all about planning ahead and making sure that we had our layout
cemented before starting on site,” added Patel.
The Temerty Discovery Centre is named in recognition of a historic
$75-million gift from the Temerty Foundation and has been made possible through the generosity of many donors. This includes major gifts
from Orlando Corporation, whose $50-million contribution supported
the Centre’s construction, as well as multi-million-dollar gifts from the
Koerner Foundation, the Krembil Foundation and others. The Waverley House is named in recognition of historic support totaling $203
million from Bruce McKean and the Waverley House Foundation.
“We are thrilled to celebrate and recognize the capstone of our
historic 20-year campus transformation. Our campus redevelopment
is a key element of our strategic plan, turning what was once a walled
institution into a symbol of hope for the future of mental health care
in Ontario and Canada,” said Sarah Downey, president and CEO,
CAMH. “We are deeply grateful to the Ontario Government and our
donor community for their bold investments in the future of mental
health care, research, innovation, and recovery that made these two
buildings possible.”
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CAMH
the building’s overall carbon footprint. This structural approach enables
the seven-storey curvilinear building to meet the strict vibration and
acoustic requirements of a state-of-the-art research hospital. Once
completed, it will be Canada’s largest hybrid mass timber public facility.
In close collaboration with CAMH, KPMB Architects and project
partners, PCL’s in-house workforce is turning this complex design into
a real-world sustainable solution on an active hospital campus.
“The Discovery Centre will be one of the world’s most sustainable
lab and research facilities, going well beyond the standards set by
Leeds Platinum version four certi昀椀cation, and the use of mass timber,
which is a low-carbon building material, is an important reason why,”
explained Douglas Weaver, senior project director, PCL.
According to project coordinator Shreya Patel, with the experience
in mass timber construction through the Limberlost project, which is a
昀椀rst of its kind institutional building of mass timber in Ontario, PCL has
taken the experience and lessons learned from that project, along with a
lot of the same labor, and to translate that over to the CAMH project.
“The mechanical and electrical trades had a more challenging task
on this project, as compared to a typical slab,” said Patel. “The consultants anticipated a lot of questions as we were planning the execution
of this project, and we addressed those through a series of mock-ups,
which helped us to anticipate problems and 昀椀nd solutions before we
constructed the 昀椀nal build on site.”
Each level consists of a base mass timber decking layer, with the
specialized concrete bubble system sitting directly on top. The concrete
composite 昀氀oor assembly utilizes a proprietary version called BubbleLAM, attached to the underlying cross-laminated timber (CLT)
