Scarborough, 1925 Victoria Park Avenue, Toronto, ON, Canada

1925 Victoria Park represents a new development model, integrating holistic sustainability strategies with long-term affordable rental housing and prefab hybrid heavy timber construction. It emphasizes larger family-style units, future adaptability, and community-mindedness, and will be the first Toronto Green Standard Tier 4 (TGS4), near-net-zero hybrid mass timber development in Toronto.

Throughout the design process, Transsolar has advised the Partisans Architectural Firm design team and client Well Grounded
Real Estate to provide on the highest standards for sustainability solutions. The project targets Toronto Green Standard Version 3 Tier 4 High-Performance Low Carbon Pathway for TGS Compliance.

The project is a new 152,000 SF, 12-story residential rental building with pre-fabricated, hybrid concrete and mass-timber construction and single-load exterior corridors and a central open-air courtyard. There are two levels of underground parking, 9,850 SF of retail space on the ground floor, and 5,180 SF of interior service space on level two. The roofs will be free of mechanical systems to be used as green roofs and for the implementation of solar panels.

In addition to using materials with low embodied carbon, the building leverages the exterior corridors to on the east and west facades to provide shading and reduce solar loads in summer. The living spaces also have exterior openings on both primary facades, allowing for cross ventilation, a rarity in many modern multi-family
buildings.

To further reduce energy use the building uses a prefabricated radiant slab system that is integrated in the mass timber ceilings for heating and cooling. This is well suited for use with a ground-source heat pump, an all-electric source of heated and chilled water, which operates most efficiently with large heat emitters and modest supply temperatures.