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St. Elias Church Wins the Institutional-Commercial Wood Design Award!



We’re pleased to announce our project, St. Elias Ukrainian Catholic Church, has won the Ontario Wood WORKS! Institutional-Commercial Wood Design Award < $10M.

Canadian Architect writes:

A select group of Ontario’s leading architects, engineers, and project teams received Wood Design Awards at the 16th annual Wood WORKS! celebration in Toronto. The awards honour people and organizations that, through design excellence, advocacy, and innovation, are advancing the use of wood in all types of construction.

“The winning projects of this year’s program showcase the many benefits of wood construction such as sustainability, versatility, and cost-effectiveness,” said Marianne Berube, executive director of the Ontario Wood WORKS! program.

Ontario Wood WORKS! presented 13 awards at the event. Ten awards went to specific wood projects and three were given to professionals for contributions to the building industry that advance the case for wood design and construction.

“Wood use is definitely increasing in the province and around the world, and not just because codes now permit its use in a wider range of buildings,” said Berube. “Wood has significant environmental advantages over competing materials and, with construction professionals and designers seeking lower carbon building alternatives and renewable materials, they are increasingly motivated to build with wood.”

Prefabrication is also creating interesting new opportunities for wood construction, demonstrating that wood can outpace even its own relatively quick construction speed. In many applications, designers and developers are reporting significant time and cost savings.

Today’s wood products are more technologically advanced than ever and project teams are using these high-performance building materials in exciting ways, actively and imaginatively exploring wood’s expanding potential.

Wood WORKS! is a national, industry-led initiative of the Canadian Wood Council that promotes and supports the use of wood in all types of construction. Working with the design community, Wood WORKS! connects practitioners with resources related to the use of wood in commercial, industrial, institutional and multi-unit residential construction, assists in product sourcing, and delivers educational seminars and training opportunities to existing and future practitioners.




St. Elias Ukrainian Catholic Church
, Brampton, ON


Architect: Zimmerman Workshop Architecture + Design


Engineer: Moses Structural Engineers


Institutional-Commercial Wood Design Award < $10 M | Sponsored by Carpenters & Allied Workers Local 27

This heavy timber church is modeled after the architectural style known as “Boyko,” from the western part of Ukraine. This distinctive style features iconic copper clad domes visible from a great distance.

The heavy timber (glulam) and wood construction on a concrete and stone base comprises the entirety of the building, including each of the five domes.

The timber construction portion of the building measures over 75 feet in height (approximately a 7 storey building) from the base up to the foot of the highest cross.

The dramatic copper-clad domes are built from a hybrid of glulam, stick frame, and curved plywood. The largest of the five domes weighs over 18,000 kg (just under 20 tons) and bears directly on a 13 meter by 13-meter-long span glulam space-frame truss. Domes and copper were constructed on the ground and lifted with a 260-ton crane into position.




Read the full article here.