Stacked room with a VÜ
TheStar.com - Athome - Stacked room with a VÜ
Aspen Ridge Homes worked with residents, businesses and city to come up with layered look on tight site
April 07, 2007
Stephen Weir
special to the star
It is Jenga time at the corner of Jarvis and Adelaide Sts. in downtown Toronto.
On a city block that once housed a Goodwill Industries outlet, a workforce of up to 200 people will soon perform a high-stakes adult version of the children's block tower building game. In this real-life Jenga (the name comes from the Swahili verb for "to build") deep holes will be dug, street lanes will be closed and three highrise cranes will lift glass panels and concrete slabs into a constricted site.
If all goes well, in a year and a half, the city will have a new VÜ, a massive condominium project, which includes two glass towers and a connecting eight-floor loft-filled podium.
Aspen Ridge Homes, the builders of VÜ, have worked with local residents, business groups and the city to come up with a design that fits this part of old Toronto. Agreement has been reached that the new complex will have a layered look.
The earth-toned brick and limestone compound will be lowest at the tree-lined street level and work its way up, through 21 different terraces (most projects have a maximum of six terraces) to two contemporary glass exterior towers of 15 and 24 storeys.
According to Aspen Ridge, the buildings will look très chic when completed. But the design and construction materials are standard fare: brick, glass, concrete and aluminum. What sets this project apart from most others is just how the company plans to stack 537 condominiums in 18 months without bringing the busy city district to a standstill.
It is so tight downtown that for every beam of steel brought into the site, something has to be moved out or up, and that's what created the Jenga challenge.
"Everything has to be built at once. We don't have the luxury to do it any other way," says project manager Darius Rybak. "Most multi-building projects get put up in phases. We can't do that – it looks as though there are three separate buildings, but they aren't, they are totally integrated. The eight-storey podium connecting the highrises is an integral part of both towers."
At this project, it all begins with a hole in the ground. The steam shovels will dig for four months until the only structures left on the block are four 19th-century buildings, (including the old Jarvis House tavern), which will stay standing because they are not part of the VÜ.
"The Goodwill demolition was straightforward. The buildings were collapsed and that rubble and steel was dropped into the basements," says Rybak. "Now, as we move onto the site, we are going to have to dig through that rubble before we start removing any dirt."
"The VÜ is going to be LEED-certified (a high standard of environmental commitment). That means we will try to recycle everything we pull out of the ground," he explained. "The old steel, concrete and brick will be loaded on trucks and taken off-site to be processed. The steel and aluminum will be sold to recyclers, the concrete will be pulverized and brought back and we will use it as road bedding in and out of the excavation area."
This will necessitate a constant convoy of trucks hauling dirt out of the hole, while others will be bringing in the concrete and steel.
The east lane of George St. will be blocked off by city officials and used exclusively for the equipment chugging in and out of the construction zone.
"We will keep the site clean – every truck leaving the grounds will pass through a tire wash before driving on the streets of Toronto."
The Big Hole will live up to its moniker. Aside from the existing buildings in the northwest corner of the block, Aspen Ridge plans to create a 10-metre hole along Adelaide St. from Jarvis to George Sts., and north to Richmond St.
The trouble is that nature doesn't like vacuums, it works hard through erosion and run-off to fill empty spaces.
So, as the dirt goes out, the soldier piles and lagging must go in. Soldier piles are two-thirds-metre-wide steel beams (some as long as 15 metres) that are sunk deep into the ground around the perimetre of the hole.
There will be 137 steel piles rammed into the ground to keep the nearby sidewalks and street from collapsing into the void.
Lagging – wooden planks – are placed between the piles to make sure that nothing slips by.
"We also shore up the (dirt) walls with a series of tie-bucks (long steel lances that are skewered downwards into the vertical dirt walls)," explains the 36-year-old project manager.
Once the concrete has been poured for the three-storey underground garage, the danger of an urban landslide ends – there is no room left for the ground to move.
"We will start off with a small crew – 50 or so," says Rybak. "It won't take long before we have, I estimate, over 200 people working on the site."
After the foundations have been poured, a trio of highrise cranes will be moved on site.
On almost any other project, Aspen Ridge could get away with just two cranes. Even though the build area is large, the surrounding city makes for very tight quarters.
"Three cranes rather than two will cut construction time by up to 10 months," explains a member of the builder's marketing team.
"About 90 per cent of materials will be delivered to and hoisted from one of the quiet sides ... George Street ... to minimize traffic disruption."
At street level, the VÜ is, for the most part, concrete, brick and glass. At higher stepped levels, the amount of brick lessens and more glass is used to allow maximum light into the condo units.
"We do use brick all the way to the top of the 24-storey building, but the overall effect is our floor-to-ceiling double-glazed, argon-filled, tinted windows," says Rybak.
"The brick is Roman sized – it is wide but not high. It will have a brown-shaded colour, in keeping with the older buildings around it. For obvious environmental reasons, we are attempting to source all of our building material locally, it will be probably be a Toronto-area brick."
All three building features – the 24-storey highrise at the corner of Jarvis and Adelaide, the 15-floor tower at Richmond and George and the badly bent, banana-shaped podium that unites the two, will be built at the same time.
However, because of the economy of scale, the heavy construction will end at different times.
The exterior of the podium will finish first, but work crews will spend hundreds of hours preparing the flat top of the eight-storey structure.
The whole expanse of the roof will be taken up with indoor/outdoor lounges, barbecues, a billiard room and even a lawn (irrigated by collected rainwater) with facilities for bocce ball and lawn bowling.
"This is huge area will be a social focal point for the three buildings, says Rybak. "Our biggest worry is leakage. To make sure it is watertight we will put a layer of waterproofing directly over the concrete roof.
"Next, there is a layer of insulation. On top of that is fine sand screening and, finally, 30.4- by 30.4-centimetre paving stones. This will keep both water and sound out of the units below."
The hot water boilers for the condominiums, lofts, townhouses and street-level businesses will be built on top of the two towers.
Condo owners will control their own heating and air conditioning, and each suite will be billed separately for energy usage.
When Jenga time ends in 2009, the project will be home to about 1,000 people, within walking distance of the historic St Lawrence Market.
About 70 per cent of the condos have already been sold.
