Z Building rises to the top

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Fanshawe’s Z building features a rooftop garden.

The City of London makes it a point to recognize the city's remarkably designed buildings, and last year, Fanshawe's Centre for Applied Transportation Technologies (CATT), or Z Building as it's known to most of us, received an honourable mention at the ceremony in December.

Have you seen it? It's gorgeous.

Project co-ordinator of Project and Construction Management Denise Luksys said that going to the awards was “interesting.”

“I questioned again what ‘honourable mention' really was,” she said. “But there [were] so many entries into these awards that to get an honourable mention is good for the College and good for the architect as well.”

Steve Done from architects Tillman Ruth Robinson (aTRR), who worked on the building, wanted to create a new identity for the building while ensuring that it still read “Fanshawe College.”

“You can see a lot of the materials are the same — the brick and the glass — but we did give its unique spin on it,” he said. “This is an automotive building, so one of the spins had to be a little creative ... some things that had to do with automotive.”

“The circle [in the canopy] — the wheel. The columns are spokes, and at the bottom of the structure, there's a concrete step, we call it the gear ... gear is from the automotive and engine type of thing.”

aTRR has had a long-standing relationship with Fanshawe, spanning back to the late '90s, so Done said the nice thing about the partnership is that the firm (aTRR) knows the owner and knows the College.

“Not only do we know what they expect in the level of quality, the image that they want to project for themselves but for the community and also trying to encourage and entice students from across the country to Fanshawe,” he said. “There's always an importance on buildings as well in education.”

Some features Z Building has are sustainable, said Done, such as skylights and reflectors in the automotive repair area that are operated by GPS, tracking the sun's movements to bring light in. “On the energy side, why do I need to turn lights on when I'm bringing light into the building?” asked Done.

But Luksys' favourite feature is the green roof over top the automotive repair shop, a room without air conditioning.

“It's not possible to cool a space like that because it's so large and so open,” said Luksys. “But by putting plantings [that] absorb that heat ... by having water and soil there — it also keeps the temperatures down on the roof.”

Done said he'd like people to remember the building. “[But] more importantly, I hope that the users — whether it's automotive or other persons at the College who have programs down there — feel comfortable.”

“If it makes you, a student, feel better, feel more positive in a nicer building, that's a plus for us,” he said. “If it makes you come back, it's a plus for us.”

Luksys echoed Done's enthusiasm.

“It was a really fun project to work on and I think considering it's an automotive building, the architects did a great job in making it something better than that.”

Visit the Z Building on 1764 Oxford St. E. and see for yourself.