Surrey’s newest multi-purpose community centre surrounded by parkland combines four aspects of the City of Surrey’s community services (Arts, Library, Parks, and Recreation) amenities into a sustainable hybrid structure that combines concrete, steel, and mass timber material. Surrey’s Clayton Center leaf-like heavy timber structure is designed with a series of large-scale modular interlocking pinwheel units that creates a two-way wood structure spanning along the largest building spaces.
The interlocking mass timber members create an aesthetic tree canopy interior, which highlights an impressive balance between the traditional “Zollinger System” and modern massive timber solutions. The historic “Zollinger System” was driven by the idea to enable large roof spans with short timber planks and encourages for a thoughtful resource management. The traditional design strategy offers great potential to face modern building challenges and receives with the Community Center an urban stage. The pre-engineered MEGANT beam hangers from MTC Solutions enabled designers to implement the strategy in a contemporary solution and allow for architecturally appealing & fully concealed connections, while answering fire resistance demands of high-performance timber structures.
The Clayton Community Center Serves as an example for environmental sustainability, with its Passive House Certification. The building’s exterior insulation is superimposed on the glulam structure, creating a Passive House thermal envelope, while the addition of a passive ventilation system combined with strategic solar shading, brings the required cooling loads to conform with Passive House requirements.
Register for a Technical Learning Session
Sign up for MTC Newsletter and keep up to date with all our progress.