NOVEMBER 2014
H
business elite canada
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the J.P. Morgan Chase Bank call centre in Van-
couver and the new Bell Canada Data Centre
facility in Gatineau, Quebec. It’s gratifying to
have made a mark on the country’s architec-
tural scene.
“That’s actually the most rewarding thing,
when you can drive by 10 years later and
point and go, ‘Hey, we built that’,” Barone said.
“When you sit back and look at how Toronto’s
landscape has changed and you’ve contributed
to that landscape change, it’s very exciting.”
And the winner is …
Urbacon is no stranger to accolades. They’ve
received numerous awards, including the re-
cent 2014 Canadian Green Building Award for
their work on the Goldcorp Mining Innovation
Suite in the Lassonde Mining Building at the
University of Toronto. The prestigious award
is handed out annually by the Canada Green
Building Council (CaGBC) and Sustainable Ar-
chitecture & Building magazine, and recogniz-
es excellence in sustainable, high-performance
building design, architectural merit and techni-
cal innovation.
Urbacon was the general contractor on the
project, working with Architects Baird Samp-
son Neuert to transform previously unused at-
tic space in the historically designated building
into a modern laboratory and design studio.
Luc Proulx, Senior Project Manager at Urba-
con, led the team through the conversion that
now houses working space for up to 125 un-
dergraduate and graduate students on U of T’s
downtown campus.
“It’s an old wood beam construction in that
attic and the roof is fairly heavy. The top mem-
bers of the truss were supported by columns
back to some load-bearing masonry partitions
within the building on the lower floors, and
once that was reinforced we took out the bot-
tom cord so it really opened up the spaces,”
Proulx explained. “We had to reinforce the
joists, add a new sub floor, new flooring, we
added some skylights, and added washrooms
“It’s all about our family approach to people that work here. If you can integrate
everyone into the family approach, you see that people have a vested interest in
the company growing, and the better the company does, the better they do.”
