August 3, 2023

British Columbia – The Government of British Columbia has announced that it is providing more than $4 million to the province’s Mass Timber Demonstration Program (MTDP). The funding is for incremental costs in the design and construction of buildings that showcase emerging or new mass timber and mass timber hybrid building systems and construction processes. It builds on B.C.’s global leadership in this area, developing and utilizing mass-timber products, technologies, and services to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Two of Diamond Schmitt’s projects are among the list of eight demonstration buildings, and four research projects to receive grants. The Cameron Community Centre and Library in Burnaby and Marpole Community Centre in Vancouver have been awarded funding of up to $500,000 each to help build more resilient, and climate-smart communities in the Province.

The Cameron Community Centre and Library is a multi-purpose recreational hub that will provide fitness, aquatic, and community programming to the fast-growing region of Lougheed in Burnaby. Responding to the city-wide climate-crisis declaration, the project will use a hybrid mass-timber and steel structural system to support the reduction of embodied emissions. The project is the first-of-its-kind for the City with a fully exposed hybrid mass timber and steel structural system using CLT-panels that form an undulating curvilinear roof. The approach demonstrates new architectural possibilities that go beyond the more typical planar structures of mass timber construction.

The Marpole Community Centre is a comprehensive mass-timber-based development in South Vancouver that will replace and double the size of the existing centre built in 1949. The project will use exposed glue-laminated timber and cross-laminated timber panels as a part of a comprehensive carbon reduction strategy for the facility. The low-carbon, high-performance facility is set to meet Passive House certification, targets LEED Gold, and a 40 percent reduction in embodied carbon, below the 2018 baseline, to comply with the City of Vancouver’s mandate.  

“Mass timber advances the construction of climate-smart buildings built with a renewable and sustainable product that helps grow our province’s clean economy,” said Brenda Bailey, Minister of Jobs, Economic Development and Innovation. “Investing in B.C.’s mass-timber sector allows us to get more value from every tree harvested, while supporting good jobs for people throughout B.C.”

“As we move forward to build a strong, sustainability-managed forest sector, we are making sure to support the people and communities who have built B.C. forestry into the world-class industry it is today. Modernizing our forestry sector means retrofitting forestry operations to get more value from every part of the tree, while strengthening our economy and ensuring good-paying, family-supporting jobs for generations to come,” says Bruce Ralston, Minister of Forests.

The Government’s support of mass-timber construction, brings the Province closer to its goal of building a more sustainable, inclusive and innovative economy for people, businesses and communities throughout B.C.

Read the full release here.