A construction team led by Pomerleau has broken ground on a new 750-bed residence building at the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus.

The building, which will be located on Ellesmere Road just east of Military Trail, is scheduled to open in the fall of 2023.

“This state-of-the-art, innovative residence facility is designed to meet a major need at U of T Scarborough,” says U of T president Meric Gertler. “It will provide an outstanding environment for living and learning, a place where friendships are forged and memories are made. And it will be a hub of community and belonging in an increasingly vibrant part of this wonderful campus.”

The residential floors will include a mix of single- and double-occupancy bedrooms, fully accessible suites, study spaces and common areas including kitchen and lounge spaces. The building will also have a rooftop garden and terrace, a food servery and dining hall, event space and mixed-use spaces for workshop-style learning. It will also house the Office of Student Experience & Wellbeing as well as Student Housing & Residence Life.

The owner’s design team includes Core Architects and Handel Architects, while Pomerleau’s project team includes IBI Group (architecture), Exp (structural), MCW (electrical, mechanical) and RDH Building Science (enclosure).

At 265,000 square feet, the building will be one of the largest in North America designed to the Passive House standard for energy consumption. Features such as triple-glazed windows, walls with improved thermal performance and continuous insulation, mean the building will consume very little energy for heating and cooling—and not need conventional furnaces and air-conditioning systems.

As a result, the building is expected to achieve 40 to 60 percent improvements in heating and cooling-related energy use compared to conventional buildings.

“This is the largest passive house project of its kind in North America, meaning our students are living in a facility that provides the cutting-edge, sustainable technologies that our university is striving to model,” says Andrew Arifuzzaman, U of T Scarborough’s chief administrative officer.

The building’s U-shaped design, developed by Handel Architects in collaboration with Toronto-based Core Architects, complements the campus’s natural surroundings. It’s shaped so that the north side opens up to the tree grove located just north of the building. The large dining hall on the ground floor will offer views of the same tree grove. 

The project will also use Boston Dynamics’s robot dog, Spot, during construction to document work progress and support health, safety and quality standards.

“Students are at the core of everything we do at U of T Scarborough,” says Professor Wisdom Tettey, principal of U of T Scarborough. “Expanding our residence spaces will create opportunities and options for our students to ensure their wellbeing, to foster a vibrant and engaged community, to build school spirit and, most importantly, to promote a strong sense of belonging and lifelong affinity.”