Humaniti Project Honored at ACI’s Concrete Construction Excellence Awards

Here is a great recognition for our experts of the Building division! Our work on the Humaniti project, in partnership with Elema experts-conseils, has just won an award at the last ACI gala in the high-rise building category.

The American Concrete Institute (ACI) – Quebec and Eastern Ontario Chapter, offers an annual ceremony that honors the vision of the most creative projects in the concrete industry. This year, we were nominated in the high-rise category thanks to the remarkable involvement of our specialists in the Humaniti project. “The first advanced vertical community in Montreal”, this Cogir Immobilier project, designed by Lemay architects, has a total of 39 floors with various uses.

Featuring an avant-garde H-shaped architecture, this building located in downtown Montreal includes a 193-room high-end hotel, combined with 314 residential units, 150 condominiums, 57,000 sq. ft. of office space and 17,000 sq. ft. of commercial space. The multi-functional site is intended to be a unique extension of the magnificent Place Jean-Paul-Riopelle and is aiming for LEED® and WELL™ certifications, a first in Quebec for a building of this height.

A high-profile design

Our structural experts were involved in the project as early as 2016, in charge of the studies leading to the design of all the underpinning works, structure and civil engineering, to produce the plans and specifications and, eventually, to carry out the supervision and monitoring of the works for the construction of the building. Our teams were in charge of the design, digital modeling and preparation of deliverables up to the 2nd floor, while our partner Elema was responsible for deliverables from the 3rd floor to the roof.

At 120 m (394 ft) tall, the design of this tower required the optimal use of concrete. As a high-rise multi-use building, the superposition of the column grids in relation to the different functions required a great deal of coordination with the architectural and interior design team in order to minimize the costly transfer beams that could penalize the ceiling heights and the horizontal passage of the electromechanical elements.

The horizontal volume of the hotel, which joins the two vertical volumes of the Humaniti project, is composed of a single 3-storey transfer structure with a span of 27 m (90 ft) resting on 900mm square columns of 80MPa concrete. In order to minimize the loads on the transfer structure, the 9 concrete slabs of the floors were designed at a thickness of only 7″. In addition to the load savings, the minimized thickness of the floors allows for optimal structural tie-in with the concrete structure of the East Tower.

The concrete also allowed for the design of a seamless structural lateral load resisting system supported on two separate podiums. We also used the main stair and elevator cores as the sole bracing elements to optimize the lateral system. Finally, 9 post-tensioned beams are used on the first floor to allow efficient circulation in the parking lots. The columns use concrete strengths ranging from 25MPa to 80MPa. The footings are made of 55MPa concrete, allowing for thinning.

Congratulations to our building teams for this well-deserved recognition! Once again, we prove our ability to make our mark (literally!) on the Montreal landscape.