RD Lawrence Place Museum
Project Details
Project Name: RD Lawrence Place Museum
Project Name: RD Lawrence Place
Location: 174 Bobcaygeon Road, Box 648, Minden, Ontario, K0M 2K0
Year Completed: 2007
Program and Context:
Project Type: Museum
Project Site: Previously Undeveloped Land
Physical Context: Rural
Other Building Description: New
Statistics
Site Area: Approx. 43,435 SF [4,035 m2 ]
Building Gross Floor Area: 1700 SF [157.94 m2 ]
Energy Intensity = Designed for net zero energy consumption
Executive Summary
The RD Lawrence Place is a 1,700 SF public events building located in the small community of Minden Hills in the Halliburton Highlands area, Ontario. The project objective from the start was to create a structure that reduced immediate and future impact on the environment by using locally sourced and low processed materials and systems, while enhancing the social and cultural fabric of the town. The R.D. Lawrence Place employs many sustainable building methods, and makes use of non-toxic, low-embodied energy materials like hemp straw bales, milk paints and soy stains, and local earthen plasters. The completed project represents a significant advance in natural building technologies in Canada, and serves as a best practice example for Southern Ontario. The RD Lawrence Place project considers aspects of sustainable design that go beyond the current criteria for LEED platinum, and it represents the best available choices for building materials in our northern climate.
RD Lawrence Place Museum
1. Strategic Decisions
The octagonal-shaped Centre is a central gathering place for the people of Minden who not only enjoy the museum as patrons, but were included in many aspects of the design and erection of the building. The Centre includes an entry vestibule, a large open space for museum exhibits, an archival document storage room, a small mechanical closet, a storage room and an office. The building was designed specifically as a teaching tool for the Fleming College Sustainable Design and Construction program so that +24 students with no prior building experience could build all it at the same time over a period of 5 months.
Core fossil-fuel-free energy systems featured in the project include composting toilets, a passive fresh air ventilation system, greywater wetland demonstration and radiant floor heating.
2. Community
The RD Lawrence Place is an addition to the already existing Minden Hills Cultural Centre. A high profile tourist attraction in the Haliburton area, the Cultural Centre preserves the memory of historical figures of significant cultural relevance to the Haliburton Highlands and Canada for educational purposes. The Minden Hills Cultural Centre is a community gathering place where arts, heritage, literacy and environment are celebrated and shared through education, exhibitions, programs, performances, collections, research and preservation. It is an inclusive tourist destination, a local jewel, attracting thousands of visitors and school children annually. It is comprised of a library, a significant art gallery, a unique collection of old historical buildings that were re-located to this site, as well as an outdoor performance space. It also has beautiful grounds' with easy access to walking trails, as well as an on-site Peace Labyrinth.
It is located in Minden, Haliburton County, 2.5 hours northeast of Toronto and just an hour from Peterborough, Lindsay, Huntsville or Orillia. Take the Bobcaygeon Road exit from Highway #35 (A) through town and over the Gull River bridge. Continue for 1/2 km to the corner of Parkside Drive (B). There is free parking on site as well as on the street.
The intention of the building is to provide an interactive learning centre with a mandate to foster a love of reading, promote the art of writing, and deepen respect for our natural heritage. This is done through the documentation of the work of the naturalist and award-winning Author RD Lawrence who lived 82 years of adventures into the wildest corners of Canada. Books, manuscripts, mementos, photos, and maps where donated by Sharon Lawrence, the widow of RD Lawrence in 2006, to the Township of Minden Hills. The building is barrier-free, fully handicapped assessable and was also designed to be rented out for possible future seminar or workshops. The museum is also intended as an educational centre on sustainable building methods that compliments the author’s passions. The purpose was to create a building that captures Rd Lawrence’s love of nature by striving to protect it.
As the building was created as part of the Fleming College Sustainable Building and Design and Construction course (2007), the community only needed to pay for the materials. All of the labour was provided for free by the students as part of their training. Thus the final cost to the community was half that of a typical building – and it was entirely sustainable.
3. Site Ecology
In preparation for the site, no harm or disruption to ecology or natural habitat was necessary. The location chosen for the building was directly on top of an existing dirt parking lot, beside a rural open area. Upon excavation for the foundation, the ground beneath the parking lot was found to be a peat bog. To reduce impact of building on peat bog, a non-intrusive foundation system was used. Helical piers, steel rods with an auger on the bottom end, are turned into the ground until they reach a layer of solid bearing – this avoids excavation and removal of the bog material. A thin slab and grade beam system was used to minimize the amount of concrete rather than using a traditional thick slab. The foundation was surrounded by a skirt of rigid insulation so that is could remain shallow and have less of an impact on the peat bog. The foundation systems were also made with a high content supplementary cementing materials in all concrete (50% slag displaced cement).
Lime plaster was used on the exterior. This avoids the use of cement which has 3x the amount of green house gases as lime production. Also, transportation impact, pollution & the mining impact was further completely avoided by the use of earth plaster on interior produces. The clay content of the earthen plaster was found locally. This was used to seal and create the exterior layer of the bales.
The strawbale walls are used a shear walls for the buildings lateral structural system. Furthermore, no plastics or man-made products are used in wall systems at all.
The future benefits of the site’s ecology in comparison to a conventional building were the highest in consideration on this project. During the course of the buildings life, there will be a 0% of toxic chemicals leeching from the building in the ground or water stream, or carbon emissions created from energy that is not renewable. Most importantly, when the building’s lifetime has expired in the distant future, most of the materials used can either be safely returned into the ground, or have been designed to be removed and recycled for life is cyclical in nature, such as aluminum, future production and reproduction.
4. Light and Air
As the main space is intended as a museum, there was some concern that the natural light would not deteriorate some of the historical artifacts. Natural windows where carefully placed so as to provide natural lighting evenly, but not too much, limiting direct south sunlight somewhat.
The lighting for installed into this main space consisted of 10 Par 38 warm white screw base retrofits, with 5W consumption, and 16 Par 30 warm white screw base retrofits, with 5W consumption.
For the other areas, which include an office, document archive and washroom, 9 x 9W and 2 x 26W compact fluorescent lights were used. The lights in the bathroom were on censors, and the other areas received relatively low overall traffic and usage. If all lights were operating at any given moment, only 1.36W/ m2 would be consumed for lighting power .
For emergency lighting systems, a conventional battery backup low voltage system was used, consisting of a battery pack large enough to accommodate six individual heads.
Outdoor lighting a solar powered motion sensor security lights, and seven (7) par 38 cool white screw base retrofits, with 5W consumption. Power from phantom loads such as exit signs was saved using Lumonall, which is a photo-luminescent material used for emergency egress signage. It requires no wiring, bulbs or electricity to operate, thus reducing manufacturing waste, pollution due to manufacturing and distribution, and saves valuable energy.
Energy savings in the bathroom included using LEED approved & GreenSpec listed, GXT ExtremeAir. This product has automatic sensors and uses 88% less energy than a conventional hand dryer.
For ventilation, 100% of the building was within seven (7) metres access to an operable window.
5. Water Conservation
In total, as a museum and as part of the cultural centre, the existing public toilets in the nearby library were allowed to be used as part of the building code requirements. The internal washroom is intended for staff use and has two (2) compost toilets, side by side. The toilets have a system of dry composting that controls the smell radically. 2 toilets where utilized to allow one to always be in a state of composition while the other was being used daily.
As a means of water management, an indoor wetland was constructed for waste water treatment. The grey water from the sink was recycled into a demonstration mini-wetland garden plant box filtration system on the outside of the washroom in the main museum central space for demonstration purposes. A goldfish tank was placed at the end of this cycle to emphasize the clean water that is produced through this system.
6. Energy Present and Future
The main source of electrical power for the building was supplied by the existing site services provided by the Minden Cultural Centre. There was no extra budget for the initial building to include it. Future expansion could add that at a later date and Bullfrog power may be purchased to offset this use. However a demonstration PV panels was build beside the building rather than on top of it in order to be used for demonstration purposes both for the Fleming College students as well as for the museums sustainability educational programs. On the ground, the panel is carefully oriented in the direction of solar south.
To provide hot water in the bathrooms, a solar thermal hot water system was installed.
For heating and cooling, hydronic radiant in-floor system tubing was installed under a concrete floor slab throughout the entire space.
Ultimately, the building is free of fossil fuels and polluting emissions and has a net zero energy factor.
7. Materials and Resources
R.D. Lawrence Place was designed to use the most sustainable methods and materials to create a healthy, beautiful, functional, and environmentally-responsible building. Some of its sustainable features include:
- Passive solar design
- Straw bale and slipstraw construction with earthen and lime plasters
- Locally-milled and reclaimed windfall lumber
- Composting toilets
- Roof truss system with galvanized metal sheathing
- Soy based floor stain
- Solar hot water system
- Radiant floor heating
- Renewable electricity generation and demonstration
- Milk paint finished board and batten sheathing
- Non-toxic finishes and interior surfaces
- Cordwood interior walls with recycled materials
- Indoor constructed wetland for waste water treatment
- Extensive use of local and recycled materials to keep the overall embodied energy as low as possible
Structural Systems
The building is supported structurally with standard FSC certified wood framing with an octagonal box beam ‘ring’ to tie it all together at the top. A truss based roofing system is used with steel sheathing which comes from a 100% recycled source. Cellulose insulation was blown into the ceiling space.
The framework for windows and doors was a standard stick frame, with rectangular hemp straw bale infill, which was provided by a local hemp farmer.
All wood and lumber used during the building process was FSC certified, including the roof trusses and plywood. Steel roofing was used which avoids the use of plywood sheathing.
Inside the larger octagonal museum space is a replica log cabin, imitating the solitary small log cabin that RD Lawrence used to live in. The log cabin was wood framed on the interior to house a humidity controlled archive document storage room a mechanical room and a staff washroom. The exterior was clad in natural round wood sections, sliced to be attached to the wall and then plastered in-between each log. The roof is wood shingled with special inspirational words applied to the chimney – which housed the washroom and document storage room ventilation stacks to the roof.
Hemp Straw Bales, Clay and Plaster
The wall sections are filled with regular, rectangular hemp-straw bales. Hemp was preferred as it is a stronger, more durable fibre than any other type of straw. Clay plastered straw bale walls are one of the most environmentally friendly building systems available. The combination of locally-grown, minimally-processed straw and locally harvested clay means that the embodied energy in the wall system is a tiny fraction of any other wall system. Combined with excellent thermal performance over the lifetime of the building, this system saves energy in every possible way, and is comparable in time and cost to most conventional building systems.
To create the finished skin layer on the strawbale biofibre insulation, (which also provides significant structural benefit), a one (1) inch thickness, comprising of three (3) layers of earthen plaster on the interior and exterior walls was applied and then was air dried to cure. The entry vestibule developed the opportunity to do a more artistic sculptural treatment of the plaster to showcase some of the plaster layering.
A straw/clay, slipstraw, wall was construction for the entry vestibule portion of the building and a chordwood wall was construction for the wall between the vestibule and the main space. The chordwood wall has recycled bottles in a decorative pattern as a feature of this unusual textured wall surface. A unique natural stone top bench with natural round wooden logs supports was built into this wall on the large museum space side.
Flooring
The concrete floor is intended as a thermal mass to not only hold the passive heat of the sun through the windows, but to also house the radiant water heating housed in plastic tubing. This type of floor material combined with the heating methods allows the heat to radiate evenly throughout the space. The concrete floor was patterned with 3D plastic insects molds, pressed into the surface. For the final finish, it was painted in various leaf or stone patterns with a soy based paint.
The combination of the floor material and radiant heating systems along with the thermal mass within the natural earthen plaster of the walls creates a superior indoor air quality that is unmatched with conventional construction. As the strawbale walls ‘breathe’ or rather, ‘respire’, through minute water vapour molecules, the cold or heat is slowed down dramatically as it travels through the dense, 21” thick (+/- R 35) biofibre hemp/straw bales. The interior earthen plaster becomes a heat absorber in the winter and a cool absorber in the summer, slowly radiating from all the surfaces, evenly, in the space of all the rooms. Thus the air quality is greatly enhanced in this type of building.
Finishes
Off-gassing and VOC’s in new buildings caused by synthetic chemical compounds used in things such as paints and lacquers, vinyl materials and furnishings, etc are a major concern with poor air quality. As the performance arts centre used only natural material without chemical alteration, off-gassing due to volatile organic compounds was non-existent. In addition, clay minerals in the plaster finishes are known to have an ion exchange capacity, enabling them to absorb ions for cations or anion, in turn creating healthier air and energy in whatever environment they occupy.
The interior plaster walls were painted with a natural white milk paint as the art gallery client wanted a neutral colour to display various artwork on the walls. The exterior plaster walls where also painted with a natural white milk paint and the exterior walls where clad in vertical wood board and batten, stained with a dark blue milk paint as well.
Ceramic mosaic tile was used for the baseboards and a very beautiful artistic broken mosaic tile feature was used in the staff washroom sink backsplash and mirror surround.
Compressed clay with a black natural pigment was used for the countertop and desk in the reception/office room. The clay top was carefully hand compressed with 14 layers of linseed oil between each press. A mosaic tile was used for the return edge.
During construction of the building 85% of the waste produced on-site was diverted form a landfill and either recycled or re-used. We are also proud to say that 90% of the building materials were sourced and shipped from a 80km radius of the building location.
8. Life Cycle Considerations
With proper care and maintenance, the oldest bale houses currently are standing with over a 100 years of service. The number of years of service required by the RD Lawrence Centre are undetermined, and completely dependant on the towns development and growth. However, because the space is an open design with no partitions throughout the major part of the space its adaptability is vast, should the function of the building change.
The building consists of no.. materials that are capable of returning safely back into the earth (such as the earth bags, earth floor, hempbale walls, etc.) unless they are products used from a recycled source and ready to be demounted and sent back for recycling once again, or resold and reused.
9. Education and Information Sharing
This building was part of the Fleming College's Sustainable Building Design and Construction course (2007). This course trains +2 dozen students each year how to conceive and construct buildings using materials and methods with the least possible environmental impact. They develop strategies to design and build beautiful, healthy, and ecologically sound homes and public buildings. Every participant in the construction of the performing arts centre has been a receptacle of knowledge for sustainable construction and has become a conduit for further expansion of the knowledge they’ve obtained throughout the course. Whether it’s through family members, friends, current employers or future work endeavors, the education received throughout the building course becomes a form of paradigm shift reality that is very contagious and which the students pass on with great enthusiasm and passion. The course is extremely popular and the waiting lists to get in get longer each year.
During construction, the Fleming students invite the public to come watch them build using sustainable methods. They also hosted free guided tours each Thursday at 5:30 pm.
Every year that the course has a graduating class, the more sustainable design and building advocates are introduced into the world who are able to give a first-hand account of the power and benefits that sustainability possesses as well as become potential natural builders to further build and promote future sustainable buildings.
The initiative to include this building into the LEED standard of buildings was discussed and considered. Though in the end, it was decided to not participate in the program for the following reasons;
- This 2000 SF building was designed as a teaching project for the Flemming College, Sustainable Design Program. There was a preliminary investigation to see if LEED certification would be possible.
- The costs to assess for LEED were estimated at $20 - $25,000.
- There would need to be a LEED certified consultant as well as other consultants to test the heating, ventilation, etc, at about $5 – 7,000 each, to see how the building’s components would meet the assessment criteria.
- As the City of Minden, did not need a LEED certification for any marketing promotion, it was decided to not spend the extra money to go through this process.
- Additionally, the building has a number of unique sustainable components that in our opinion, goes further than a typical LEED project, which would not be able to be included. For example, LEED gives points for proximity to public transport, but has no criteria for the number of components that where chosen to be virtually fossil fuel free in it’s manufacturing or transportation (e.g. lowest embodied energy). Or points are credited for being energy efficient, but then no points are allowed for using local clay or no concrete for the floor.
- Also, it costs the same amount of money for a huge Walmart store to go through LEED certification as it does for a small building. There is no consideration for the size of project, or for small projects for that matter, to cost less to go through this process on a pro-rated scale.
As the RD Lawrence Place is a museum, it is open to the public and available for weekly free guided tours. There were various fund raising programs within the community that encouraged interest, personal involvement as well as educational opportunities to be a part of this project. One program was the ‘Buying a Bale’ Program, where a donation of $10 to buy a strawbale was promoted, assuring their name would be in a commemorative book on display at the museum. Another program was the ‘Raising the Roof’ Program, where a donation of $10 to buy a piece of steel was promoted, where their name would be in the commemorative book as well.
Project
Name: Minden Hills Cultural Centre/RD Lawrence Place
Address: 174-176 Bobcaygeon Road, Box 648, Minden, Ontario, K0M 2K0
Telephone: 705-286-2808& 705-286-2298
Email: culturalcentre@mindenhills.ca & rdlawrenceplace@mindenhills.ca
Website: www.mindenculturalcentre.com/rd.php
General Contractor
Name: Fleming College Sustainable Design and Construction Program, Chris Magwood, Lead Instructor
Address: PO BOX 839, Halliburton ON K0M 1S0
Telephone: 705-457-1680
Email: cmagwood@flemingc.on.ca
Program & Building Design
Name: Chris Magwood
Address: 41 Edgewater Blvd., Peterborough, ON K9H 1A1
Telephone: 705-876-0569
Email: cmagwood@KOS.net
Website: www.chrismagwood.ca
Project Architect
Name: soma earth ARCHITECT_Oleson Worland Architect in joint venture
Address: 248 Benson Ave. , Toronto, Ontario, M6G 2J6
Telephone: 416-656-4444
Email: info@somaearth.com
Website: www.somaearth.com
Owner/Developer
Name: City of Minden
Website: www.mindenhills.ca
Structural Engineer
Name: Blackwell Bowick, Anthony Spic, P Eng.
Address: 19 Duncan St, suite 405, Toronto-ON
Telephone: 416 593 5300
Email: info@blackwellbowick.com
Other contributors
Name: Havencraft Natural Homes (Radiant Floor Heating)
Telephone: 613 332 5872
Email: info@havencraft.ca
Website: www.havencraft.ca
Name: Inline Fiberglass Ltd.
Address: 30 Constellation Court, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M9W 1K1
Telephone: (416) 679-1171
Email: info@inlinefiberglass.com
Website: www.inlinefiberglass.com/commercial
Name: Ian Smith, D2S Lighting (Lighting)
Address: 65 International Blvd. Suite 205 Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M9W 6L9
Telephone: 416-674-0327
Email: info@d2s.ca
Website: www.d2s.ca
Photographer/Use of photos
Name: soma earth ARCHITECT, Ingrid Cryns
Telephone: 416-656-4444
Email: info@somaearth.com
Website: www.somaearth.com