Wood Preparation

The first step in the building process was to count and sort the wood. We also precut as much of the wood as possible at the greenhouse, taking advantage of the level, covered space and power source. Luckily, the greenhouse poly is slated for replacement in the coming year, with funding from the Walmart-Evergreen Green Grants program, so we were able to remove the end walls of the greenhouse and create a nice cross-draft through the space.


Jon helps to set up a cutting station in the greenhouse.

Jeff carts some skids on which to stack the cut wood.

John and Sidney devised a scheme of stacking 2x2's in within the frames of skids, to minimize warping.

This is our friendly, neighbourhood giant garter snake, with whom we share the greenhouse space.

Jack, Vincent, Dave and Laura work away to prepare the wood for use in framing.


These lengths of white cedar, cut carefully to different lengths, will create a curved form in the pavilion.


Nick helps to peel back the cardboard from the cured foundation piers.


Father and son team Allister and Sidney assemble a temporary frame to be used for construction staging.

Foundation Installation

The pavilion is supported on 10 reinforced concrete piers, each 20 inches in diameter and extending 4 feet below grade. If this seems to you like a very a substantial structure, you're quite right. The building is classified "assembly", meaning it is designed to hold public gatherings. Think about the sort of weight that would need to be supported if, for instance, a school class were gathered inside, and jumping up and down in unison! This is why these piers look a lot more serious than the ones you might see under your back deck.

Some of the reinforcing bar was donated from another building project in town. Here is a photo of volunteers Darryl and Andrew sending up sparks as they chop the 16 foot lengths of 20M (3/4") bar down to size for our foundation piers.



The contractors arrived early in the morning on Thursday, June 16th, and they worked into the evening to finish the concrete pour. Thank goodness for the long summer light!


Marking out the foundations

The digging begins.


Site visit by geotechnical engineer.


Setting the sonotubes.



A laser level is used to set the pier heights.

An uncommon juxtaposition: the concrete truck passing along the farm road beside the community gardens.


The concrete piers are poured.


... and the metal beam seats are set in place.

The excavator returned to site the next morning to finish backfilling around the piers. Volunteer Dave helped to take care of the finer leveling and backfilling.

The Cedar Arrives

White cedar samples: rough-sawn (left) and dressed (right)

The main construction material for the pavilion is white cedar. White cedar is not a terrifically well-known material, so here is some information about it (and about cedar wood in general).

White cedar grows locally.
If you see cedar trees growing in Ontario, they are probably Eastern White Cedar. Western Red Cedar grows mainly out in British Columbia. Although Red Cedar is an excellent natural building material, choosing to use it here means importing and therefore carries a greater carbon footprint when used in our locale. White Cedar production as a building material is limited, seeming to occur mostly throughout Eastern Ontario and the Northeastern States. Our cedar was sourced from Loyalist Forest in Erinsville (just north of Belleville), a sustainably-managed timber operation. You can learn more about the forest and its practices on their website.

Cedar has a history.
Cedar has a long history of use in exposed outdoor applications such as shake roofs, split-rail fences, decks and docks. In our region, the grey patina of aged white cedar is a familiar texture in our agrarian landscapes. On the west coast, where the climate is very damp and red cedar very available, cedar is a significant material in indigenous architectures.

Cedars are naturally rot-resistant.
Cedar contains naturally-occuring chemicals that make it rot-resistant and best able to withstand weathering. Unlike pressure-treated wood, it does not need to be impregnated with harsh synthetic chemicals (which then leach out over time, and eventually pose a disposal problem). Think of it this way: cedar-planked salmon is tasty, but pressure-treated-planked salmon would be toxic.

Cedar smells amazing.
Being outdoors engages all of our senses; it's fantastic if our architecture can do this as well!

If you're still with me after that brief, nerdy digression, here are some photos of the arrival of the wood. Although we were expecting it to come by transport truck, we were a little surprised to be confronted with a double-length flatbed looking to pull into the Springbank parking lot. (Apparently the driver had just unloaded a much larger supply of wood elsewhere in our region.) I'm always amazed how drivers can manoeuvre these rigs; he had no trouble sliding right up the gravel drive without any disturbance to the surrounding landscape.



When arranging the delivery, the man at the mill had asked hopefully if we had a forklift to use to take the wood off the truck. When I told him that, instead, we had a crew of volunteers who would be unloading the wood, he sounded nervous. "Well, you'd better have a bunch of them. It's a lot of wood, will they be able to handle it? And what if it rains, will they still show up?" the man inquired. Fair questions, I suppose. He's never met the volunteers around here.



Thankfully, the weather was excellent. It was a big job, but we had an excellent assembly line of people transferring wood off the truck, and then into pickups and up the hill. Finally, the wood was restacked, ready for cutting.





Many thanks to John, Dave, Todd, Lexie, Allister, Nick, Jan, Pat, Bob, and Laura for lending their hands!

Pavilion Location

The pavilion site is accessed from Springbank at 681 Blair Road. You can check it out on google maps (however, the location is a bit farther east along Blair Road than shown). Look for a sign for "Springbank", a stone house and a gravel parking lot to the south of the Blair Road. Park, and walk up the cart track at the left edge of the lot, which winds behind the stone house, and up past the community gardens to the pavilion site.

Here is a location map that will help you find your way to the pavilion site. (It is the wee rectangle marked "proposed education pavilion".)

Wednesday, May 18: first volunteer meeting

We held our first volunteer meeting at Springbank on Wednesday, May 18th. After some discussion and introductions indoors, we went out to survey the building site. Here is the crew clustered inside the building footprint.



The image above is a view across the building site, with the building footprint superimposed on the ground...



... and here are a couple of pans, showing the views one will see from the two open ends of the building: one view is enclosed by hedgerows, the other opens up over valley.



The fields and hedgerows around the Springbank property were alive with wildlife (and more interesting creatures than the ubiquitous urban squirrels and sparrows). There were a couple of bright orange orioles in the hedgerows, and lots of toads, including this one, who was trying to hide from the camera in the deeply-plowed furrows of the field alongside the community garden.

A little more history: Design Seminar 2

Further conversations between the seminar groups and the staff and board at rare brought some changes to the design imperatives; these are reflected in the work of the second master's seminar group.The pavilion was lifted off the ground and storage was incorporated; an impermeable roof was added. Alongside these changes came a formal evolution. The slatted structure and notion of a changing section remained, but the structure was broken into two interweaving elements: a rectilinear frame, and an articulated frame inserted into it like clasped fingers. (Apart from a few small changes, the finished pavilion will look a lot like these perspectives.)

This seminar class also considered details and engineering, and produced preliminary working drawings and a project budget.You can best understand the pavilion from its cross-section (above). A plan and some details follow.



A list of seminar participants can be found in the "Pavilion Team" description in the right sidebar. All seminar images copyright University of Waterloo School of Architecture 2009.

A little history: Design Seminar 1

The idea of a pavilion at rare was first conjured up some years ago. As with many projects of this nature, the project's place and form, and the means that would bring it into being, followed gradually.
The pavilion was substantially designed by two master's seminar classes held at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture, led by Andrew Hunter and Farid Noufaily.

I recently chatted about the early pavilion days with Liam, a participant in the first architecture seminar. As I understand, the seminar was exciting, explorative, and an intense effort. The work produced stands as testament; only a fraction is presented here.

The drawings investigate a deep relationship between the building and the landscape: where structure, flora, fauna, seasons, light and wind are embedded and intertwined.

Below is one sample of the many "cyclical plant evolution" studies that were produced to consider the seasonal textures and habitats of the surrounding landscape.

It was also during this seminar that the pavilion's siting was established: on a high point of land that affords an impressive and didactic view over the diverse land uses that sprawl below. This wasn’t the site anticipated originally, but at closer range, the site will also be an excellent place to view wildlife in the restored fields and hedgerows nearby. Care was taken to consult various people and groups – the staff team of rare, the organizations Environmental Advisory Committee, archaeologists, educators, and so on, provided input into the consideration and study which ensured that no habitats, rare plants, or cultural history would be disturbed by the construction process. It also affords incredible additions to the programs run at Springbank. Teachers loved the walking journey students would take up to the pavilion!

A list of seminar participants can be found in the "Pavilion Team" description in the right sidebar. All seminar images copyright University of Waterloo School of Architecture 2009.