location
233 Kennedy St. Winnipeg, MB, Canada
client
Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries
consultants
S/ Crosier Kilgour & Partners
M&E/ SMS Engineering Ltd.
Energy/ Transsolar
ID/ Ideate Design Consulting
Envelope/ Crosier Kilgour & Partners
LEED/ Prairie Architects Inc.
Wind & Snow/ Novus Environmental
area
213,000 Square Feet
cost
$48.5 Million
status
Cancelled
In 2013, Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries (MBLL) engaged Prairie Architects Inc. to assess the feasibility for the newly merged crown corporation to consolidate into one centralized downtown headquarter office from four existing locations. Prairie Architects Inc. led a multi-disciplinary team through 4 phases of work including: feasibility, existing space analysis and inventory; site, building and fit analysis; due diligence on shortlisted buildings and sites; and finally, schematic design of the 213,000 sf facility, before the project was ultimately cancelled in 2016.
The project was broken into two parts: ~138,000 sf of existing building largely containing medical and dental tenants; and ~75,000 sf of a new 5-storey expansion for the MBLL office space. A number of significant challenges became evident early in the process, including: how to effectively tie into the existing building floorplates, which were only 11’-2” floor-to-floor, while still achieving daylighting and passive ventilation & HVAC strategies, which require greater floor-to-floor heights; how to achieve cost effective and energy efficient building infrastructure services working with existing challenging building servicing layout; how to carry out a significant addition to the first five floors, while maintaining on-going operations of health and dental businesses; how to bring existing medical tenancies up to current and significantly more stringent CSA Z317.2 code requirements; and how to address fundamental MBLL programming adjacencies and urban design issues in Winnipeg’s downtown.
Some key design solutions included a west-facing double facade with operable windows for natural ventilation; an atrium, positioned for optimal daylighting, acting as a solar chimney for passive exhaust of ventilation air; displacement ventilation; a combination of active concrete slabs and radiant panels for heating/cooling delivery and thermal mass; and a comprehensive phasing strategy for renovation to the existing building.