I would say that perhaps the most sustainable building is the building that already exists. If we can adaptively reuse some of our assets and improve upon them, expand them and change their function, that is probably the most direct approach to achieving our most sustainable approaches in buildings.
While of course we want to innovate and build new, and our standards have obviously changed, when we have quality construction that already exists, if we can adaptively reuse that construction, that is one of the most important things that we should be looking at first, rather than demolishing and filling our landfills with more debris.
In the case of the project that I'm involved in right now, this is a federal post office that has good bones. It has a steel structure. Because of the use of timber, we are able to add to it without improving upon the foundations. There's a little bit of strategic work that needs to be done to reinforce some of those foundations, but it is actually quite limited. The lightness of timber allows us to actually build on top.
I think this has huge potential. Certainly, I am from Toronto and I can look down main streets that have two-storey buildings and I have to wonder whether or not those can take another two or four storeys on top of them to intensify our city, so that we have more of a six- or eight-storey fabric all through our main streets rather than having two storeys and then 40 storeys. I think that there is what I call a missing middle and the project that I'm working on right now has that potential.
I also think that when we take away our built heritage, we take away the history of those communities. We take away the fabric that was there that gave those communities identity. When we have heritage buildings that actually help to give identity to a community, but because we can't find a way to reuse them we end up taking them down, we erase something of our history.
Certainly, in this day there are parts of our history that we really need to relook at, but I don't think that a post office is necessarily one of those areas that we need to completely rethink. If it gives character and if it gives history of the people who worked and lived in those communities—there are stories embedded in that community—it gives identity and a sense of pride to communities if you can continue to keep that built heritage and continue to grow upon it while providing needs for others.
We have learned that by using innovative technologies, such as not only mass timber, but also prefabricated wall panels, we are able to come in close to heritage buildings and be able to actually adaptively reuse them. We have quality control that is built off-site and then just simply craned into place.
One of the projects that I'm working on in Toronto is a 225,000-square-foot building. Its entire structure was erected by seven people and one crane at a rate of about 10,000 square feet a week. That doesn't mean that's reducing jobs because those jobs have just moved to safer environments. They're now in the factory. They're not out in the weather and in the wind. You're actually producing things in controlled environments. It speaks to quality and safety, and then a much cleaner and easier erection of the structure. It doesn't plug up the city and it doesn't act—
I'm done. Thank you.