Limberlost Place at George Brown College

The winner of an international design competition, the $150M Limberlost Place will be a 10-storey, 16,250 square-meter, exposed tall wood structure located on George Brown College’s waterfront campus in Toronto. The project will serve as an educational hub for George Brown College, housing a Tall Wood Research Institute and a childcare centre in addition to a significant amount of teaching and social spaces. The College describes the building as being a "flexible and future-proof facility...designed to adjust to changing academic uses and a changing climate." 

Working in collaboration with Moriyama & Teshima Architects and Acton Ostry Architects, Fast + Epp developed an innovative large span beamless structural system that is comprised of timber-concrete-composite CLT slab bands with perpendicular CLT infill panels, all supported on glulam columns. This long span flat plate system allows for flexibility in architectural programming and unobstructed mechanical distribution.

The timber concrete composite slab bands underwent small-scale, half-scale, and full-scale testing at the University of Northern British Columbia in 2020, which will provide valuable engineering information back to the design community for future tall wood projects and composite systems.

As the first building of its kind in Ontario, Limberlost Place will be an important step in the development of large span mass wood structures in assembly occupancies. Fast + Epp considers this a pioneering project that will continue to inform the design and construction movement towards mass timber.