Single Stair Sessions, Day 1 – The 3 Ps: Pilot Projects and Prototypes

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Note to readers: This video session was transcribed using auto-transcribing software.  Questions or concerns with the transcription can be directed to citytalk@canurb.org with “transcription” in the subject line.

Single Stair Sessions Day 1 – The 3 Ps: Pilot Projects and Prototypes

March 18, 2025

Jennifer Barrett Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Jennifer Barrett, and I’m the Managing Director at the Canadian Urban Institute, and I am thrilled to be joining all of you today for this three-part series that we are hosting with our colleagues at LGA Architectural Partners, titled Design and Innovation for Middle Housing, The Single Stair Sessions. This work is supported by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, or CMHC. through their Housing Supply Challenge round four “Building for the Future” program and supported by the Government of Canada. I would like to begin by acknowledging that we are coming from hundreds of communities across Canada and abroad, and we at the Canadian Urban Institute acknowledge the diversity of Indigenous people, including First Nations, Inuit and Métis, who steward the places we call home, and reiterate our individual and collective responsibility to foster understanding, respect and appreciation for the traditional keepers of this land. I’m coming to you today from Ottawa, Ontario, the unceded territory of the Algonquin and Anishinaabe, and many of our staff are located in our head office in Toronto, where we recognise the Indigenous peoples of that city covered by Treaty 13, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. We honour their enduring connection to keeping this land and commit to an ongoing process of truth and reconciliation. Today will be day one of our three-part micro-conference titled “The Three P’s Prototypes and Pilot Projects,” which will feature the work of LGA Architectural Partners, Air Studio, mcCallumSather, and Office Ou. Tomorrow’s session, titled “Safety and Sustainability,” includes a more technical analysis of the issues around sustainability, including engineers and fire safety professionals to get at the safety and sustainability of design innovation. And day three will be CUI’s City Talk titled, “Addressing Canada’s Housing Supply: Can Regulations Drive Housing Innovation?” I’d like to turn it over now to Janna Levitt from LGA Architectural Partners to introduce the work and the projects featured in today’s session. We will complete the session after the four presentations with a Q&A to address your questions. Thank you all for being here.

Janna Levitt Thank you, Jennifer. And thank you everyone for being here today. I’m very excited to present the research and the pilot projects that we’ve been working on for the last year and a half as part of the CMHC Housing Supply Challenge. I’m just going to read the acknowledgement that we’re required to say at the beginning of each project that acknowledges really the fundamental investment that CMHC has done that’s allowed us to do this, has invested in us to allow us to this. So this knowledge mobilization event is supported by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, CMHC Housing Supply Challenge Round 4:  “Building for the Future,” which supports innovative solutions that remove barriers to increasing housing supply in Canada. So, LGA has been really interested in the Missing Middle Housing for quite a while now. And on the screen, you can see a couple of things that we’ve been working on more recently that’s allowed us to get a little bit deeper into the subject and to start to understand not only the value of this kind of work and what it can contribute, but also some of the challenges we’ve experienced in realizing the work. So on the far left, you can the National Housing Design Catalogue, the first phase of which is up on the CMHC website and there’ll be more to come. In the middle is rehousing. This is initiative between tuf lab, LGA and Daniels School of Architecture. We’re i year 4 and we have been looking initially at the conversion of single-family sites to multiplex housing and then more recently small apartments. And on the far right is Ulster House, which is the first. a purpose-built five unit condo, so a five unit multiplex on a former single family lot in downtown Toronto. So there’s been a lot of changes, really good changes, in the City of Toronto with respect to the zoning regulations and the liberalization of zoning to allow more housing on the former, what we would call in Toronto, yellow belt -single family zoning districts in the city. We have worked hard with EHON in a lot of ways to start to allow for this kind of gentle density which include multiplexes up to four stories or up to four units and now moving to up to 4 stories plus small apartment buildings up to six stories. The diagram that you see in front of you is from the City of Toronto, and it shows their goal to up zone existing single-family neighbourhoods to support more diversity in single-family neighbourhoods to introduce this conduct general density. So what does zoning reform and missing middle have to do with single staircase or even with building code reform? Well, you can see here is a diagram of a typical corridor and exit situation in multi-unit residential. Currently the Ontario Building Code requires two exits from every floor of a multi-unit residential building over two stories. What this leads to is a kind of a rollout of a building typology that’s quite limited. You only can have, except at the corners, single aspect apartments, which means you can only have windows on one side. Very difficult to get fresh air and ventilation, so the full passive ventilation strategies are very limited. And although it has certain efficiencies and you can argue greater efficiencies with large scale buildings, for small scale buildings it becomes very challenging to do something that’s cost effective. And so we started to see the relationship between allowing a single exit and developing an efficient and affordable small scale apartment building. So the idea of a single stair building, also known as a point access block is seen on the diagram here. One thing that you’ll notice right away is that it allows for two sides of each apartment to have fresh air and ventilation and natural light, which allows for more flexibility of the floor plan, more flexibility at the apartment, and we would argue better apartment design. The concept does not apply to large scale buildings. This is really for small scale buildings, so what does that mean? That means a maximum building height of six stories, a maximum of four dwelling units per floor, a limited occupancy load per story and a short travel distance to the exit. These are the kinds of prescriptive measures we’re introducing to compensate for the reduction of two stairs to one. And we would argue, and there’s a lot of work by consultants that make the compelling argument that this is equal, if not greater than having two exit stairs. The missing middle problem is one we would say it has to do with allowing changes to the building code to make the development of smaller sites more viable. Making missing middle and mid-rise housing easier to build to us is as much about reducing the exiting from two to one story. So you can do two to one exits, so that you can get more residential or area per floor plate and also allows for the development of smaller lots. And when I say that, I mean, when you can build smaller buildings, you move away from multi-unit residential that requires a large amount of capital to fund the project. You can also get away from land assemblies because you can build on a smaller site. And you don’t have to right off the bat, acquire large properties to develop a multi-unit residential. So it opens up the amount of lots that are available as infill and new lots in primarily municipalities that are well developed at the moment, but can accept a turnover at the scale that you’re talking about here. So with that, I’m going to turn it over to Conrad.

Conrad Speckert Hi everyone. So as part of the CMHC Housing Supply Challenge, LGA over the past year has been collaborating with 10 other architects and building code experts across the country to develop single stair designs. And these are for different types of small residential buildings of up to three and six stories in height. Each team has submitted an alternative solution to the authorities having jurisdiction for review. So some of you may be asking, what is an alternative solution? Applying the prescriptive provisions, the acceptable solutions in the code is one option for compliance. They, by default, meet the code’s stated objectives. But the other option is the use of alternative solutions. These have to satisfy the same objectives assigned to the prescriptive code. And so in other words, any proponent of an alternative solution has to demonstrate that the alternative solution performs as well as a design that is prescriptive, as well as not well enough. And the intense statements when we look at the requirements in the code currently for two exit stairs speak to limiting the probability that persons and emergency responders will not have a choice of alternative exit. And so what that means is that any alternative solutions that eliminates the choice must therefore demonstrate that the probability of this risk is mitigated to the same level of performance. Now just to quickly cover this, the National Building Code under Section 3421 and 998 speaks to a floor area in a building of more than two stories in height requiring two exits. And at two stories in height, the single exit permissions are limited to an occupant load of 60 persons. So in other words, any multi-unit residential building of more than 2 stories has to have two exits. But the intense statements around the exceptions also speak to the basis that floor areas can be served by one exit if they have a limited occupant load, a restricted area, and travel distance. Another intense statement also speaks to the basis that you can have one exit if occupants are familiar with their egress routes and the dwelling units are designed and constrained to limit the number of occupants. Single stair in Canada is also not a new idea. It’s been receiving a lot of attention recently. But we can go back to 1984, when two architects wrote a research report for CMHC documenting the differences between Canadian apartment building layouts and other jurisdictions. In 1993, a very well-known Canadian architect, Deb Zeidler, wrote an essay and then a news article specifically on this issue, saying that if there is an intent to develop Main Street housing, the requirement for two exit stairs along with parking requirements is a very significant barrier to doing so. And in the mid 1990s, the former assistant director of the Ontario Building Code wrote a study proposing single stair changes to the code. And so today, 40 years since the original CMHC work, this technical issue is receiving more attention. And the U.S. also revised their limits on single stair about 20 years ago in recognition of the performance of sprinkler systems. And so there is long overdue to be a discussion around alternative solutions to address this issue across Canada. Now here’s a rendering of one of the projects that we are looking at for a three-story small apartment building with 10 dwelling units. There’s five two-bedroom units and five three-bed room units. The zoning by-law says here that you can build a small apartment building or you can a row of townhouses on the same lot. And so typically a developer would turn this into a row of four townhouses. But in our case the land belongs to Community Land Trust and they are looking to build rental housing. With single stair, the difference between these two scenarios on the same property and with the same overall building footprint is yielding four extra bedrooms and more importantly, a fully accessible building with an elevator where otherwise it would not be accessible. Here’s a very quick overview of the safety measures that are being proposed as part of this alternative solution. The design was developed with an expert building co-consultant and has also been peer reviewed by a third party fire protection engineer. And so the building is fully sprinklered, whereas the prescriptive code does not require sprinkling. The compartmentation of the exit is increased from 45 to 90 minutes. The travel distances are very limited and the total occupant load served by the exit is only 20 people per story. which is a third of what the code currently allows for any floor area served by one exit. Now, before I hand it over to Kevin to talk about the prototypes, I’d just like to share a quote from 1984, or 40 years ago, from that CMHC report, which states that “When a stair is directly accessible from surrounding apartments, it becomes highly visible and a familiar feature that apartment dwellers know well. They know where it is and where it goes. It is not a mysterious construction at the end of long corridors, hidden behind steel doors. And this may be an important safety benefit for both fire and other types of emergencies. And so what this really means is that psychological factors must be considered in addition to physical factors in the planning of our building designs. It is important that exits are used as a matter of daily routine so that the occupants are familiar with and comfortable with them. And so, we really must ask, how does the building code influence the design of our buildings, our exits, and what alternatives are available?” With that, I’ll pass it over to Kevin.

Kevin Martin A lot of questions have come from people asking to empirically quantify the benefit of single stair design for small scale housing. So in addition to the site specific pilot projects undertaken by LGA and the partner firms, LGA also decided to develop six prototypes, you can see on the screen for single access stair building design at three, four and six stories in height to demonstrate the differences. Each of these designs is for infill housing, using typical lot sizes across Canada, ranging from 25 feet to 66 feet in width. Each design includes a comparison with prescriptive egress requirements as a measure of floor area efficiency, construction cost, projected rental income, and residual land value. We also looked at them in terms of design flexibility. Sometimes the benefit is used for more GFA, but in other designs we show how it can add more windows, better unit layouts, and more generous bedrooms. It’s important to note that there is an inverse relationship between the size of the building and the impact. In other words, the smaller the building, the more impactful the solution can be. So just to walk through a few of the prototypes, here’s prototype number one, a design for a typical 33 foot wide residential lot as a four story small apartment building. The typical floor plan you see on your screen contains two two-bedroom units on each level for a total of six apartments. This means that the single-exit stair serves a total eight people per story or 24 people cumulative. When we compare the typical floor plan to a scissor stair design as permitted by the NBC, we see a floor area efficiency difference of about 10.5%. The footprint of the scissor stair deletes one of the bedrooms on each floor resulting in lower rental income by about 14%. The single stair design also costs about $88,000 less to build than the scissor stair scenario. So we can see how it could sort of provide some flexibility to unlock some of these smaller sites. Next, here is another prototype for a six-story apartment building on a 66-foot-wide lot with a total of 22 units. This was the larger prototype we studied. The typical floor plan contains a mix of two, three, and four-bedroom units for a total 12 bedrooms per story. This means that the single exit stair serves a total 24 people per story or 120 people cumulative. So, and when we compare this to this typical floor plan to a scissor stair design as permitted by the NBC, we see a floor area efficiency difference of around 4.5%. The footprint of the scissor stair deletes two of the bedrooms on each floor, resulting in lower projected rental income by about 6.5%. Uh, the single stair design also costs about $68,000 less to build than the scissor stair scenario, depending on what kind of smoke control system is provided. Finally, just to round it out, here’s a design for a typical 50 by 100 foot property with a three-story small apartment building under part 9. The building contains eight units in total and is shown here with an elevator and adaptable dwelling units on all floors. Overlaying a scissor stair onto the floor plan, we see a floor area efficiency difference of 6.3%. In this case, the cost of sprinkler with the single stair design compared to the cost of the scissor staircase results in a small increase in overall construction cost. The footprint of the scissor stair shrinks the one bedroom unit to become a very small studio. And it becomes impossible to draw with accessible design standards. Overlaying a scissor stair onto the floor plan, we also tried a version where the elevator is deleted. So in the first version, we were trying to include an elevator in a part 9 building to provide that adaptability of all floor plates. What this implies is that the floor area of the second stair can offer design flexibility, not just necessarily extra bedrooms, but a different approach to a building within this footprint that can be used to create bigger units, more bedrooms, or to provide an elevator where otherwise not required. I’ll pass back to Conrad to walk through some of the background on costing and performance.

Conrad Speckert And so when we take the six prototype designs, what we had done with the six costings and the six pro forma analysis was draw a bit of a trend line between the construction cost estimates. Again, each of these quantifies the cost of additional fire and life safety measures comparable to the cost of a second exit stair. For part three buildings, these are the larger ones, we found an average decrease in construction costs of around $74,000. And for part nine, we find a slight increase. due to the cost of the fire sprinkler system. Then the other thing we look at is the average increase in net operating income on an annualized basis. And so again, when we look the cost to operate or maintain additional measures, we must also factor in the net operating income impacts. And then using these inputs, upfront costs and operating income, we collaborated with a professional planner to look at the financial feasibility more long-term of these buildings, both in terms of rental housing scenario, so the sale price after 10 years, as well as residual land value, which is a very key metric in determining whether or not a project is feasible in terms how much someone can pay for the property. And the numbers you’re seeing on the screen are not how much someone could…a small scale citizen developer could pay, but it’s the delta, the difference between the same building design on the same lot with two stairs versus one stair and how much – either the sale price difference or the residual land value differences. As part of the CMHC work, we were also asked to estimate and project the impact that their solution would have on housing supply. And so we looked at…to sort of do this as an analysis across the country was quite a daunting task, but just to look specifically at major streets where zoning reform for six stories is being discussed and at multiplexes and neighbourhoods at the three-story height. We then assumed an adoption rate around labour capacity of the construction industry, an adoption rates as to how many of these buildings would actually be built on an annualized basis. And, again, as with any construction or sort of impact estimate of policy, it’s a variable exercise, but estimated that within neighbourhoods there’d be an impact of around 3,000 additional bedrooms per year and on major streets up to 6,000 addtional bedrooms. And again, beyond housing supply, what this really is about is also providing more design flexibility to unlock these smaller sites in the first place. To learn more about all the pilot projects, I realized there’s a lot of information in just a few minutes here. Please visit our website, singlestair.ca, where you can see the six prototype designs and the various pilot projects. Now, we have three presentations from three of the architects. Unfortunately, Inge Roecker has a family emergency and is not going to be able to join us today. But she’s given permission for us to share the slides. Inge and I had presented at UBC recently, so I am going to try my best in the time available to share a few words with each of those slides. […]

Conrad Speckert So, AIR Studio is an architecture office in Vancouver and Germany. Inge specializes in the design of small-scale housing. Now, you’ve seen a similar slide already in Vancouver, much like Toronto or Edmonton and other Canadian cities, there is a missing middle issue. Recent zoning reform is changing that and opening up a discussion about building code, electrical code and other technical standards that may not be optimized for this scale of construction. And so this is a really fascinating map of Vancouver. Right now, 80% of the land that is zoned for low rise housing is owned by seniors over the age of 65. Meanwhile, almost 80% of elderly people over the age of 85 remain living at home. And so this raises the question of how well our housing options are suited to housing needs. Here’s one of Inge’s previous projects, a five-story single-stair building in Germany. Let’s move that off. If you take a look at the floor plan with bedrooms facing one direction and living rooms to the other, each unit has daylight from both sides and cross-ventilation. The other interesting thing about this floor plan is the elevator cab size, which allows a wheelchair to roll in and out, but is not required to be stretcher-sized. Here’s another one of Inge’s projects. One of the big differences between these plans in the North American context is that the units open directly into the stair. Tomorrow, we’ll talk a lot more about this in detail, but the basic premise in Germany is that there are two methods of compliance. Up to 22 metres in height, about seven stories, you can design a building to rely on ladder rescue and the apartments can therefore open into the stair. Or up to 60 metres in height, that’s 20 stories. Ladder rescue is not relied upon or required, but the exit stair must be compartmentalized as a smoke-proof enclosure. And here are a few images of the exit stair in that five-story building. The staircase has a smoke extraction system, which is the orange button that you see that opens the skylight. And tomorrow, again, there’ll be a lot more discussion around pressurization and other passive and mechanical smoke protection measures. This image shows a master plan courtyard community consisting entirely of single stair apartment buildings in Germany. The floor plans show the difference on the same plot of land between a series of small single stair point access blocks versus a row of double loaded corridor buildings designed to the prescriptive code. The statistics show how many are family sized units with multiple bedrooms and windows on multiple sides. Inge also looked at how many stairs actually exist in the project, and there are more stairs serving fewer people in the single-stair scenario than the double-loaded corridor version. Each of these stairs only serves about 20 units and is highly compartmentalized. On the other hand, the two-stair plan could have a 100-metre-long hallway and a lot more people sharing the staircases. And so those are a few case studies and perspectives from the architect. We’ll just end with a few slides of the pilot project that AIR Studio is working on.

*Session was briefly interrupted due to an unknown tech issue

Conrad Speckert So where were we? Oh, yes. So after some of the case studies and perspectives, we’ll just look at the pilot project. So this is a six story building with 18 apartments and a commercial unit on the ground floor. Now in terms of occupant load, there are 54 people using the stair, which is less than the 60 people that the building code allows for any floor area served by one exit. Here’s the floor plan. It’s an interesting solution from a smoke control perspective with an exterior stair that is partially enclosed and protected from adjacent openings. And this limits the probability of any smoke infiltrating the exit much better than any prescriptive design. Here’s a rendering showing the design with the central courtyard. You’ll notice that the finishes on the exterior passageway and the exit are non-combustible. And this limits the probability of any fire growing beyond the point of origin. is a quick image showing the courtyard. Tomorrow, you’ll hear from an architect from Seattle with a very similar building that was built in 2016. And so a few concluding points from Inge. Ses buildings are healthy, they are neighbourly and they make for better urbanism. And with that, we’ll pass it on to Matt Bolen to learn about his four-story pilot project in Waterloo, hopefully with no more exciting interruptions.

Matt Bolen I definitely hope so, too. I always assume that any IT snags are my fault because I’m not technically savvy, but so glad to know that this one wasn’t. Conrad, can you hear me okay? Great Well, uh, yes. My name is Matt Bolen from mcCallumSather. Um and we’re firm out based out of Hamilton, Kitchener and Toronto. Um so obviously serving primarily the Ontario region. Uh first of all, I just want to say thanks to LGA, uh specifically to Janna, Conrad and Kevin in this case, just, you know, thanks for your leadership and the quality and clarity of the design and analytical material that you’re both providing today, but also that you’ve been. you’ve been championing for a number of years. For myself and for our office, we’ve talked a little bit about the missing middle, which is obviously I’m sure everyone here on the presentation today is very interested in providing solutions for. For us, we’ve been definitely focused in that space, but also a little more broadly, and as per CMHC’s definition, we’ve really been focusing, and myself specifically, over the better part of the last 20 years, have been focusing on the housing continuum of need and this is a little diagram to show how we’ve actually been fortunate to have exposure and be able to do work across that entire spectrum and that entire that housing continuum need in terms of the different types of housing that is needed, the different types of demographics and types of organisations be it private developers. supportive services, municipalities, all those types of various groups, which of course, as we know with housing, all bring their own different unique requirements and desires and intentions and pro forma analysis and all these different things. So it’s been a very fruitful space to be working in and we’re excited to continue on in that space. I should note here that I think I am talking today as a convert of the single stair. I’m pretty sure a number of years ago when Conrad actually reached out and came to me with this idea, I shot it down like a grumpy old architect. I think it was myself and one other person who did so of many who didn’t. And I think, you know, it speaks to the quality of how well and how well-researched Conrad has been, how convincing he has been along with, again, the LGA team and various others in the building code industry. But obviously I’ve converted for a lot of reasons, but one too that I just wanted to bring up was actually a trip I was able to take to visit a friend in Copenhagen last year where we actually went to this friend of mine who has three kids and lives with his family in a single stair exit building in the Northern Haven area, which is new, new construction and beautiful. and really started to unlock, okay, yeah, this is something that we need to be pushing on and within our toolkit of housing solutions for that continuum of need, how can we do that and how can be a part of that? So again, very, very fortunate to be here now and pushing on this. So as I said, within our tool kit of what we’ve been using in the missing middle space and in generally the innovative housing construction models. We’ve had some really good success over the past number of years, specifically with panelization, prefabrication. We’ve come to understand pretty deeply the benefits and the risks associated with things like modular, both volumetric and panelized, but also just really tried to build a deep understanding of conventional delivery of housing and how it works, both in the part nine and the part three space. So as you work from left to right, you can kind of see, you know, how we’ve started to build that. experience. So and specifically in the last number of years, we’ve actually had some real success with CMHC’s rapid housing initiative program, which was a real shot in the arm for pushing innovation, specifically when it comes to prefabrication. So these are three specific projects that all leveraged a fully massed timber solution on a very, very tight and quick turnaround, which, you know, allowed us to meet that mass that Rapid Housing Delivery Initiative, and each of these, you know, provided the same type of model that we were able to use and then repurpose based on A, the site and B, the client specific needs and requirements. So on the left, it was the YW project in Kitchener supporting women battling homelessness, the centre, smaller site, limited ability through servicing to provide as many units for men actually in a transitional living environment. So we were to tailor that for them. And then in the one on the right is actually a recent project that we actually just got our test results on today actually, which was exciting because they were very positive. And that’s actually the same type of project, but which is done to a six story and pass a standard. So again, even in terms of understanding some of these code implications, it’s really helped us as we’ve now started to push and focus ourselves in towards, okay, how can we make a mark here? And we start to execute projects in this single stair environment. So as we’re doing, and as again, some of that great information that we’ve already seen here today from LGA, where they broke down sites in those typical sites where I think they were talking about, you know, 20, 20 feet up to 60 feet wide, we’re, we were looking at it in a very similar way. We’re looking at, okay, well, what are some of the conventional infill suites, infill sites that we’re going to be given or that our clients in this case are going to bring to us and how can we respond with a single stair solution? that works and then is adaptable in the same way we’ve had that success with the rapid housing solution, how can we take it and make it adaptable for the very compact but also for the sites that where we have a little bit more room and we can expand it out still within the context of that missing middle and infill density. So this is the first project, this is the project that’s part of this study that Connor had outlined. This is in Waterloo. It’s a four story, seven unit layout, two bedroom typical layouts. We are looking to use our hybrid mass timber solution. So stick frame walls and mass timber floors. It’s very, very efficient, very cost-effective. It allows us to panelize the whole system offsite and bring it sort of just in time for a very quick erection. We’ve done a full electrification and this permit submission is now. Um, in the final stages of just basically being submitted, uh, in the city of Waterloo, uh under the study, some of the specific fire safety measures that we’ve been working with Vortex fire on in terms of integrating. And again, consistent with, with some of those other projects that we’ve seen featured today is we are going to be putting in a sprinkler system, uh fire alarm and smoke alarm, smoke control measures, emergency lighting and signage. Um, we have specific things we’re doing with our suite doors in terms compensatory measures, travel distance in terms of this design, we’re making sure that even within the suites, there’s a maximum travel distance of 12m, which again, because it’s a compact site, that had that wasn’t really a challenge for us to do that. We’re having a maximum number of two suites per floor. Obviously, you know, we are looking in the expanded versions to increase that up to three or four. But in this one, we’ve actually just bake that right into our code required solution. and cap that, which does help in terms of our rationale and justification and then obviously also an unoccupied load maximum as well, which again keeps us consistent there. It’s an interesting point that we have in our relationships with all the jurisdictions that we work in, specifically here in Waterloo, we’ve already gotten some feedback about the discomfort that they have about accepting this, but I think it again shows one the great things about this initiative is that we are pushing and really trying to make sure that we require a firm response to this very practical pragmatic solution that we’re offering that does just make sense and is a really great solution for the type of development we’re trying to do there that is so important and so necessary if we wanna really take a bite out of this housing crisis that we have having. So again, as I said, this is a 15 meters. So again just over about 30 feet. site here which is again compact it’s characterized as a low-rise neighbourhood. However, this particular site is also in a part of town that is student housing and some of the zoning has actually changed and changed the character of this neighbourhood. So the typologies and the sites themselves that are narrow with sort of single detached housing built form bungalows and two storeys, they are here able to be now deployed with this very narrow a solution in this apartment that we’ve come up with. We have a single aisle drive aisle with a limited amount of parking in the back. Again, just trying to meet those zoning requirements. And it’s noted too that in this one, one of the important things for us as we worked through with the client group on this one was actually being able to have the project not require site plan approval. Because we’re under that 10 units under Bill 23, we actually wanted to say, okay, how can we find a site? where we can actually come in and not require that planning approval process, which is part of some of the new flexibility that’s offered under Bill 23. Obviously there’s pros and cons, but one of them is that we can deliver these projects a little bit quicker. So that’s what we’re looking to do here. So as you can see, in terms of the floor plan layout, we do have that single stair exit. We do have full accessibility. There is a supportive services group that we’re working through on this site Uh, and they- that’s a big part of what they do. The people that they’re catering to, they are very inclusive in the community in terms of who lives in these spaces, but the elevator and the access and barrier-free on all levels, not just the ground level, is something that’s important to them in terms having an adaptable solution here. And you can see in terms of a conventional design where you’d have a long corridor, we’re able to really minimise that. We have still created, we haven’t created the open stairwell condition That again. we’ve seen and I’ve experienced referenced in Europe. But again, just based on the nature and the feedback we know we’re gonna get from the city, we’ve decided to do something that is a little bit more protected that way. And then again, in terms of the comparison and one of the things we’re looking to do, and this is not just for our not-for-profit development type clients, but also our for-profit community, being able to rationalize this and come to the table as again, LGA did very effectively. with talking about, you know, what is the actual cost benefit and what is the pro forma analysis on this stuff? So here we’ve just talked about it in a little bit of a different way in terms of what we’re taking away. You can see in this diagram of if we were to do that scissor stair design layout and actually really just wouldn’t work on this tight site because we’d be forced to push the building out or create a really limiting design and layout for the units that wouldn’t be barrier free or would actually just take up too much of the site. reduce our parking and create, again, a really challenging way to execute the site versus the design we have, we’re actually able to create a differentiation of suite types, which is nice and important in terms of the flexibility of the overall building design. And again, it just works very well on this extremely compact site. So that’s the primary project that, again we’re submitting as part of the study and hoping to get some really good feedback on to be part of this group. I did want to just talk a little bit again, in terms of that adaptability, the same client we’re working with here, we have a project in Kitchener, which is obviously just adjacent to Waterloo here in our community. And so this group we’ve actually worked on a few years ago, went through a process, a bit of an arduous process of doing an infill design, very long drawn out planning approval process that was really part of that frustration that I think has driven a lot of the change in terms missing middle and how we get there. And so we did, though, get out of the gate on this. We got our approvals. We finally got through funding. But it was for a design that was to the code as it currently exists, two stairwells, relatively inefficient in terms of its layout. You can see here the site design where the drive aisle came in. We ended up having to put parking underneath the building, which from a building efficiency, as we all know, wasn’t ideal. The site itself did have some challenging geometry that we just had to try to fill out and squeeze into just to get the most out of it. And again, when we start to look at what we could have done if we had proposed or if we hadn’t pushed for a single stair solution, we could’ve done something that was much more flexible, had the ability to be more panelized and prefabricated and less site specific in terms of some of the technology which obviously can bring down both costs and speed up the ability to actually execute on these tight sites, which is oftentimes a challenge. So you can see here the nature of this. double stair and corridor connecting. Overall, a design that we’re proud of and we’re happy to be working through the client on this one, but it has just on reflexion, come to us to say, well, if we could have used something again, more like this, we still could have, we actually could have created more again, diversity of unit type in terms of one, two and three bedroom, still gotten that very efficient design with the elevator access, with the single stairwell. And again, we could have really driven that. that efficiency of these units up significantly on the site created probably a less than reduced building area. And it’s just something that again, in terms of our next steps, as we keep driving to push this type of built form forward on these in full sites, we’re excited about not just that compact, but also the adaptability of how we can start to push and pull. depending on the sites and depending on the user and the developer characteristics. So thanks very much. Looking forward to hear more in the Q&A.

Conrad Speckert Thanks, Matt. We’re going to jump over now to the next presentation from Office Ou, so if you guys want to share a screen.

Uros Novakovic Hi there, can everybody see our screen and can you hear us? I assume yes. So, hi, my name is Uros and this is my partner Sebastian. We are a part of Office Ou and we are here to talk about a single-stair project we’re working on right now and just about to submit for permit at some point this week. The project is a small apartment building in the Bloor Court, the neighbour of Toronto. And it’s basically exactly, I think, what you would describe as a missing middle. So, the site is located on a fairly typical residential street in downtown Toronto. The property has approximately 64 feet of frontage or 19.5 metres and there is a 12-foot right-of-way on the south side, which allows for the entry into the building to be from side, not on the front. Once all the zoning setbacks are taken into account, we are left with a 15 by 15 metre deep floor plate and a building height as of right, which is 11 metres. So this is a three story building and we are still well within part nine of the OBC. The clients came to us with a particular vision. And it was kind of a vision for European style urban living in downtown Toronto. So large, bright apartments, no more than two apartments per floor, all accessible and all accessed by a shared stair that is pleasant to use and naturally lit. So, I guess following the OBC, this was kind of our initial stab at it. You can see that there are two staircases and it doesn’t really work. For a number of reasons, it’s very, very inefficient. We are not showing the basement plan here, but I’m trying to find a way for both of stairs to exit really compromises and chops the basement layout, and ultimately it just didn’t make financial sense. So we had to try other things. And we tried lots of things. We tried kind of, these are mostly different versions of stacked townhouses that give you a lot more efficiency. but make it very, very difficult to create accessible units. So I think it also didn’t work. And in the end, we found there were only two reasonable options, either exterior stairs or a single stair. With the exterior stairs, there are a number of downsides. There is a loss of fenestration. their privacy and the security issues, the layouts are very constrained. And if there is a second stair added at the back to resolve some of those layout limitations, the cost of it is actually higher than the cost of a sprinkler ring for a single stair. At some point last summer, I think we learned that the city of Toronto was working on approving single stairs. And we thought it might be worth trying for our project. So we had a meeting with the city in the fall and from that we understood that the major necessary compromises would be wider stairs and sprinklers.

Sebastian Bartnicki So this is kind of what we landed on. The result, as you can see, is a lot more efficient. We’re hitting around 85 efficiency right now. And just to run through some of the alternative solutions that we’re applying to to make this work, obviously we are sprinklering the stair like many of the other projects that you’ll see on the single stair website. So this is an NFBA 13R sprinkler system. The single stair itself is 1200 millimetres wide and it’s naturally lit through a wall of glass block on the south facade. And in our view, the stairs actually going to be adding quite a lot of value to the prop project, it creates a much nicer entry for the occupants. And we’re also trying to encourage people to use the stair rather than the elevator by ensuring that the stairs, the first thing that you arrive at rather than elevator, which is very typical. And I think this goes back to what Conrad was talking about about making the stair really familiar to the occupant. It’s something that they use every day. It’s like front and centre in their consciousness of what the building is and, and what it means to them. You can also see that in the orange boxes there are some elevator vestibules, unfortunately these are still required under the OVC because you can’t have an elevator opening onto an exit stair. This is of course something you see quite a lot in European buildings but we decided that given all the other things we’re trying to do it’s not something we wanted to pursue at this time. Some of the other measures, we are increasing the fire rating between the suites and the stair up to one hour, up from the typical 45 minutes. The door into the exit is 45 minutes, smoke sealed doors rather than typical 20 minutes, and the flame spread rating of all the walls and ceilings in the exit, is limited to 25. I should also note that there are balconies on every floor that act as refuge spaces for all of the occupants. And another really important mitigating factor like many other single-stair buildings is that the occupant load is very low. We have at most two units per floor and on the top floor it’s just one big unit and the actual occupant load is only around eight people per floor. So I think it’s worth mentioning that this is actually still a long way from the scale of buildings that are contemplated by, for example, the recent amendments to the BC Building Code, which were kind of imagined for much larger six-story buildings that are already in part three. And I think what it shows is that there’s a scale of missing middle that is even smaller than a lot of the things that are being discussed. at the municipal or provincial level that is really important to talk about because it fits into the zoning of a city like Toronto which is very, very restrictive in places and there’s like a lot of neighbourhood opposition to increasing density. So getting this scale of building to work is really to us. And just finishing with a view of the lobby and the stair and the glass block and a little entry vestibule, just showing that the stair doesn’t just have to be an exit facility, it can actually be a real amenity for the building and improve the quality of life for all the occupants. That’s it for us. Thank you.

Jennifer Barrett Great, thank you everyone. Thank you to LGA, AIR Studio, mcCallumSather, and Office Ou. We’re now gonna move to the Q&A portion of the session. So I’ll ask all of the panellists and speakers to turn their cameras and their microphones on.

Conrad Speckert Thanks, Jennifer. So in the Q&A, there’s a couple of different questions on certain topical themes, particularly around accessibility and fire safety. Just to point out the way that we’ve structured this event is that today there’s real focus on the architecture, the design of these buildings. The housing diversity and options that come out of it, and tomorrow is a topical discussion really on safety and sustainability questions, in particular the basis and the premise of alternative solutions, which is defined by the level of performance of the building code as prescriptive sections. We’ll just go through some of the questions in the Q&A that relate to today’s theme, maybe one for Kevin as he was speaking to the prototypes. So the question from an anonymous attendee is, could you clarify the differences between a single stair and a scissor stair? The six prototypes seem to compare single stair with a scissor stair, but are these They’re not both single stair configurations. What is the difference between a scissor stair and a single stair or two separate exit stairs?

Kevin Martin Anyone else can jump in on this as well but essentially a scissor stairs is two means of egress they can be compartmentalised from each other and it’s usually the most efficient footprint of trying to deliver two means of egress or two exit stairs in in small buildings like these so we thought the prototypes should compare to that as kind of the most…the second most efficient approach to those prototype layouts would be a kind of scissor stair approach to providing the two means of egress. We didn’t want to push further and show the simpler two separate stair enclosures, which would be just a further delta in efficiency.

Conrad Speckert Then a question from Alan Bigelow. Comparisons are often made with European building codes, which allow for single stair up to six or seven stories. How would you address fire safety concerns, which point out that these developments typically use concrete construction rather than the wood frame typical in North America. So if anybody wants to take that one, they’re welcome to, otherwise all, I’m happy to answer that. Matt, jump in.

Matt Bolen I would, and you can definitely jump on to, but I would just say it’s a really interesting topic, obviously, and I referenced it briefly in terms of the work we’ve been doing with mass timber. And as some know, yes, a stick frame, regular house construction that can burn very fast akin to, you know, kindling on a fire that can just light up quickly. What we have seen with our mass timber applications and with some, you now, a more robust industry and fabrication and supply. industry growing in here in this country. Mass timber actually is a really good solution for a lot of different ways. Low carbon, very good quality fire performance in an exposed situation that actually makes itself very appropriate and works really well specifically in ….we found that mass timber or the mass timber hybrid, can actually work the best in this actually type of missing middle scenario versus when you get into the high rise, which you do see, you know, stories on and some news headlines on, it’s actually not ideal for that. But what we end up seeing in the non-combustible space of cast in place, precast and steel construction or hybrids of those systems, they’re not really catered. And there’s a real lack of economy of scale when you apply those to the missing middle in terms of what they need, the weight. The infrastructure required to actually install them and deal with those become very heavy and very disruptive to established infill communities versus the type of panelization and more lightweight nature that we can see out of some of these great innovative timber and mass timber solutions, we’re seeing great results out of.

Conrad Speckert The other, Alan, just to note, again, I think this will be a topic that will be discussed in a lot more detail tomorrow. The question does mention SCFs up to six to seven stories. I’d encourage you to look at the codes of those jurisdictions and the actual building heights that it’s permitted up to, as well the construction type permissions and fire suppression requirements for those, which will be discuss in a more detail tomorrow, to I think debunk a few myths perhaps as to what is permitted in other jurisdictions. Then there’s a question from Pat Petrala. Maybe this can go to Office Ou. Quebec and New York City’s exterior stairs are attractively made character. Why not use that in this format?

Uros Novakovic I mean, we have tried using the exterior stairs. And I think it was something we have taken a vow to go through. But in the configuration of the building that we were at this morning, I think there’s some background noise. It was just really, really limiting the unit layouts. Another concern was kind of the privacy and the fenestration that’s lost with it because when you have a stair attached to your facade, that’s an exit facility, people can walk up and down the stair and theoretically walk in front of other units’ bedrooms or living rooms, and that’s not necessarily desirable.

Sebastian Bartnicki I think also Montreal has somewhat different codes with respect to fire exits than we do. I mean, basically you can’t have a fire exit in Toronto anymore. As I understand it, it has to be a full exterior exit stair. So I think the physical configuration, as much as I love the Montreal spiral exit stairs, they’re just not possible in Toronto because of our own local codes.

Conrad Speckert So then another question around, it’s being posted in the chat, but we can bring that over here. Thank you for the presentations. The German apartment versions showed a courtyard, integrated public spaces, where neighbours could build community and social connectedness. I didn’t see any such integrated public space for the social resiliency component of the climate crisis at grade in any of the Canadian examples. Is there any reason why public spaces can’t be integrated in the Canadian versions of single stair apartments? That’s a broad question, but if anybody wants to try to tackle that one, Janna, Kevin, feel free to jump in.

Janna Levitt Uh, I’m afraid I don’t have very specific, um, you know, building code based response to that. I, I’ve seen a number of single stair projects that do have community space built in. I’m thinking of some in Seattle specifically. So, um. I would say it’s really a building programme issue if you would want to incorporate public spaces or community spaces. You can and it’s just a matter of having it conform to the building code for where you’re at. I don’t know if Kevin can add some other another perspective to that.

Kevin Martin Yeah, no, I think at all points to sort of, again, getting back to this design flexibility conversation and I think a single stair with alternative solutions that meet the safety requirements just provides for these opportunities to deliver different housing approaches and different approaches to these parcels that can provide what’s pointed out in some of those uh european precedents and exist in other precedents across the country here it’s not in the in the comparisons we’ve shown today

Matt Bolen Yeah, I was just gonna add that I mean, it’s one of the great things about this format of what we’re doing today, but also this project we’re doing and having this cross-pollination of seeing what everyone’s doing in the housing catalogue. I find it very inspiring. And I think there’s a certain, a lot of times in our architecture community, there’s this head in the sand to the, things like proformas are the bad word and building efficiency and conventional construction. It’s like, well, no, we just want to be doing beautiful design and urban design and community connected. And we, and we obviously do, we all want to be doing that kind of good work. But what we’ve tried to be trying to put a focus on, and I think you can very much see in all the work being generated out of here, understanding the what’s really driving the industry, what’s really allowing for the go, no go on projects actually is the toolkit. And if we can understand that and then use it to our benefit, best example I would say is for our project that we’ve done, because we can show that there’s a 9% efficiency in ours versus another design standard, that means in this case, we’ve actually taken one of the bedrooms on the top level, on our fourth level, carved it out, and it is actually an open outdoor patio space that is an amenity for the building adjacent to the elevator. So there is, I mean, and I didn’t get into the detail on it, but what I think you by getting this. these nuts and bolts figured out and figuring out how we can squeeze that stair out of the design, it actually opens up the narrative and the conversation that we can start to have with a given client. Again, in the case of this project we’re working on, we’re very fortunate, it’s a not-for-profit, community-minded group that’s really trying to create this environment and are willing to invest that. Well, we are going to lose a bedroom, but we’re going and gain this amazing amenity for the seven other units. Of course, some private developers might not do that, but if you can create narratives, whether it be marketability, increased rental rates, because you have that type of community and amenity, those things can start to really get traction if we’re using that right understanding to do it.

Jennifer Barrett Maybe I’ll jump in. I just wanted to pose some of the questions that were in the first half that may have gotten missed when we all came back in. There were a few questions, particularly on Janna’s presentation, where she mentioned, the question is, Janna’s presentation mentioned there would be floor plate control for the number of people allowed in a building with a single stair. How many fewer? Is it less per metre? What about hosting people or parties? And then a follow-up question to that would be, how would occupant load for apartments be enforced without discriminating? discriminating against larger families or households or even roommate arrangements when selecting tenants.

Conrad Speckert Sure, thanks, Jennifer, I can take that one. So one of the things to keep in mind with this project is these are pilot projects within the framework of the building code currently. So it’s not a project that is about a code change or a regulatory policy change, but it is about alternative solutions. And so what that means is that each of these building designs has to be premised upon and based upon the definitions and technical conditions in the code currently. So, for instance, the question was about occupant load. The building code is very clear as to how occupant load is calculated in Group C residential dwelling unit occupancies currently, and that is the basis upon which we define occupant load for any residential building. And so the probability of a party occurring within one dwelling unit or within all dwelling units simultaneously, again, comes back to the fact that our building code is a probabilistic risk document. And so we have to use the same methods and technical compliance process as the building code sets out otherwise. So around occupant load, it’s the same as the Building Code currently, which is basis of two persons per bedroom.

Jennifer Barrett Great, thanks Conrad. Anyone else want to add to the response? All right, great, maybe I’ll go on. There was a few questions that sort of oriented around what I would say are weather emergencies or climate change in particular. Someone mentions that staircases can be a place to refuge in the case of extreme weather emergencies and does the impact of moving from two to one minimise the ability of a building to provide that safety aspect?

Conrad Speckert So on ventilation and natural ventilation, cross ventilation, one of the things that we noticed with our prototypes is, in some conditions, the Single exit stair design allows for more windows, allows for a central courtyard condition, which means you have cross-ventilation from two sides. In other conditions, the space is consumed by additional amenities space or additional bedrooms, but it gives the architect of design flexibility to do that. The other thing is that if we zoom out and think bit more holistically. Zoning reform means that in a lot of our urban areas, there are now permissions for these types of small buildings, but they struggle to be financially feasible. And so the existing housing supply tends to be older buildings that do not have fire alarm systems or sprinkler systems, that also may not have air conditioning, that do no have elevators, that are buildings constructed to earlier additions of the building code with much lower levels of performance. And so any way in which we unlock the feasibility of new construction we create new housing supply with elevators, fire alarms, sprinklers, air conditioning and all of these things which improves the overall performance of our Canadian housing supply.

Sebastian Bartnicki I’d also just like to add to what Conrad said that I really think the survivability of a building in really extreme weather has a lot more to do with the design of the building envelope and, like you said, cross ventilation and other options besides air conditioning. In the BC heatwave that we had a couple of years ago, a lot of the deaths were senior citizens who were just trying to shelter in place in their apartments. and they just had nowhere to go. And I think that one of the real benefits of these point access buildings is that they can deal with ventilation in a much more rational way than these kind of two exit buildings that are chopped in half by the corridor.

Jennifer Barrett Great, thank you. Maybe one more question along the lines of egress but also access for a variety of individuals. Someone mentions, is it possible that the stairs could be replaced with ramps in order to accommodate those with accessibility needs?

Sebastian Bartnicki I’m not sure if we would have the space in Toronto, but I’m sure it’s theoretically possible.

Conrad Speckert On that one, I would add the building code currently requires elevators for buildings above three stories. There are also CMHC financing criteria in many ways in which elevators become introduced in buildings, even if it’s not required by the building codes. And so, presumably, an elevator is a preferred means of barrier-free vertical travel to ramps. And given the slope at which ramps are required to be constructed, they would consume a great deal of floor space.

Sebastian Bartnicki And I think elevators also add a lot of value to buildings. This is what we found in our own project that even a relatively small elevator like we’re showing, like a LULA -low use limited access elevator – is like maybe $130,000 extra for the building, but it adds a lot value to all of the tenants.

Jennifer Barrett Alright, I’m going to move on to another question around. This one is someone mentions. Do any of the buildings have underground parking? And then we had a subsequent question around what is the parking and waste collection requirements or provisions for single stair housing in Toronto and Vancouver?

Uros Novakovic Is the same is the same as for any other type of housing. So for an apartment building, you have to have enclosed area for garbage bins in Toronto. That’s one big kind of a disadvantage we run into our building is a six unit building, making an apartment building If we were a four unit building, we would be considered a multiplex. And for multiplex, you don’t need to have a dedicated area for garbage bins. You also don’t have to have dedicated area for bike parking, which I think is why LGA presented a four-unit multiplex in a condition that is similar to the condition that our project is in. But yeah, when you go to more than four units, you have to follow the rules for apartment buildings, which require you to have enclosed garbage areas and enclosed bike parking areas. And the City of Toronto requires two visitor parking spaces and nothing more than that.

Conrad Speckert Well, I’ll just add to that one in case there’s any city planners from the City of Toronto, the bylaw also requires when you have bicycle storage in a building with five or more units to have a two by 1.5 meter bicycle repair facility, which is quite a large footprint and is equally required for a five-unit building as it is for a 500-units building. And so it may have been the case that that requirement was introduced not mindful or optimized to the scale of missing middle housing, but that’s a separate discussion for another day.

Jennifer Barrett Alright, I am going to follow. We had a few questions around municipal planning departments, approvals, authorities having jurisdictions. So I think that’s a good segue into these. How are you finding getting approvals for pushing forward with the single stair was one question, and the second was how does city staff respond to an approval process with increasing density and code?

Conrad Speckert Yeah, so I think the purpose of today’s presentations is to show the building designs, the prototypes, the sort of cost benefits in terms of operating income and floor space. The individual site-specific approvals process that each team is going through is, frankly, to that individual team. We’re not going to be discussing that today, but you can follow along on the website as these projects submit and proceed.

Jennifer Barrett OK, another question around design that just came in. Does a single egress stair always increase the height of your building when compared to a two-exit stair design? And is there a tipping point when it comes to the number of units on a site for an SES project where the increased building height offsets the benefits of an SES layout?

Sebastian Bartnicki Yeah, in general, the limitations on height tend to come from zoning, and it’s not a kind of… Usually the limitation we have is, at least on our project, not with density, so it’s not like we’re kind of trading floors for area, but in other municipalities it might be. But I think in many cases it’s simply what you get from it is efficiency. It’s not that kind of a trade off.

Matt Bolen I think too the AIR Studio presentation did a good job of looking at a site where there was multiple buildings on on a site one as the long slab style with the very long corridor like you’d see in Las Vegas or something, versus the more cluster based approach and what we’ve done and actually in some of our individual applications, obviously the, if you’re talking about a singular building as defined by the building code you have four units is is basically being understood it to be the max, which does obviously cap your number of units you can fit. but you can then start clustering those buildings either through firewall or if you have space in the site to do it and create unprotected openings. There’s lots of flexibility once you get into it where you can start to run those analysis on what actually works better and what’s exciting about it for us. Again, I go back to more so the tools in our toolkit, being able to use the tools appropriately and use them to see what you can get out of a given site given a client’s needs, can open up new opportunities. And that’s what this is really doing for us is new opportunities that maybe in some cases we can start to look at providing better urban spaces and better public and amenity spaces and outdoor spaces, courtyards, what have you, because now we will have this added tool in our toolkit to still provide safe buildings but with more flexibility.

Jennifer Barrett Great. Thank you, Matt. Anyone else want to comment on the flexibility?

Kevin Martin Well, I’ll just add to that because I think, maybe stepping back from that a bit, but that they also just provide, the flexibility not only provides that opportunity, but it also just helps unlock a lot of these small sites for this type of development in the first place. A lot of this is about just actually trying to get this scale of project to pencil out and be viable. So it’s not about a cash grab for developers to try to get more space in these, but it’s just trying to make them work and have this type of density that I think the majority of people kind of rally around, be possible rather than the larger scale multi-site kind of development as the only kind of viable solution. So in that term, there’s a different sense of flexibility just to be able to make things more viable at different scales.

Janna Levitt And yeah, Kevin there’s another question…Oops, sorry, go ahead, Janna.

Janna Levitt I was just gonna add to what Kevin said and point out that this scale of development also is a lot easier for existing neighbourhoods to handle because the volume of new residents is very small. So it typically doesn’t upset either social infrastructure or hard infrastructure, and yet it allows for more density within existing neighbourhoods.

Jennifer Barrett Yeah, that’s perfect. That’s exactly where it was going to go. There was a back and forth in the chat about how did these fit into the fabric of a heritage circa 1900 streetscape in our more traditional neighbourhoods. Does anyone else want to comment on that aspect of it?

Conrad Speckert Oh, sorry Office Ou, one thing I was just going to add is it’s interesting because until 1941, Canada did not have a national building code and it was a kind of patchwork of regulations across the country. And at the time we had introduced the building code was very much based off of U.S. requirements. And so there is a collection of buildings I would say in North American cities and certainly also in our Canadian cities, constructed before 1941, that were single exit stair buildings, obviously at the time the types of measures, the degrees of compartmentation, the entire understanding of how these buildings performed was vastly different. But those buildings at that scale, it would be very, very difficult to try to conceive of constructing a building of a similar size today without an alternative solution to do so.

Uros Novakovic I think that’s a great point, Conrad. I think our project is almost like a perfect example of that. We are in a typical Toronto 19th century, early 20th century kind of street. And there are, further down the street, some of these early apartment buildings from 100 years ago, which I think nobody would say don’t fit the character of the street. And I think, I mean, I think our building actually is going to fit quite well. We try to use, you know, we try to match the brick and obviously the height matches. I don’t think we are far off in terms of scale compared to some of the larger mansions on the street. So…

Sebastian Bartnicki And I think, you know, one of our models is always like the really nice walk-up apartments in St. Davisville here in Toronto that are, you know, four or five stories, also, you know, really, really nicely scaled urban buildings that are unapologetically apartments and are now very, very desirable. So I think that there’s definitely room for this. It doesn’t all have to look like the house with a gable roof. Uh, but I think it does absolutely need to be done sensitively because I think there’s a risk here that single stair will be seen as just a way of just cramming more density and more density. And that’s, you know, as we’ve said before, it’s not just about maximising returns. It’s about making a project possible, period.

Uros Novakovic Yeah, I would say the goal of our project was not to cram maximum density or a maximum number of units onto the site. We could actually get way more units in there if that was the goal, using allowed stacked townhouses and all the OBC tricks. But the goal was to actually have a living that is comfortable, kind of urban living that’s comfortable, that is accessible, where the stair does not feel like an exit. The stair feels like a comfortable space.

Sebastian Bartnicki It’s accessible. You can age in place…

Uros Novakovic yeah you can age in place, your… Yes that that was that was really the that’s really what the single stair allowed in our case.

Janna Levitt I’d just like to add, I’ll put in a plug here for architecture. I think one of the critical things is adding a good design into the mix. And when you hire a good architect, you get a response that is contextually sensitive to the neighbourhood.

Jennifer Barrett Thanks, maybe I’ll just do one more question. I know there are some questions we’ve skipped over that are really focused on more of the safety issues and because tomorrow’s session will be based on that, we’ll save some of these questions for that Q&A. But I wanted to follow up or end the session perhaps with this one question about adaptive reuse. We’ve been talking about existing buildings that are desirable in their current context. The question by Stuart is, Stuart McIntosh, what are the opportunities for converting? two stair exits to a single stair building, or is it only possible when developing new sites?

Conrad Speckert So the pilot projects and the prototype designs that we have been focused on is for new construction. The building code, generally, if you have an existing structure and you’re changing its use or occupancy or doing an addition to it, applies in certain ways to that proposal. So there may be, for instance, an existing two-story building with a single exit stair, and that building has additional structural capacity, and there’s an interest in adding on top of that building. Well, right now, if that existing building was a two-storey building with one staircase, and you were going to go to three or four stories, that would be very, very challenging. There is a very interesting initiative that we see in other parts of the world of identifying existing buildings with additional structural capacity and they add light construction on top and are able to extrude up to do so, partly because of the flexibility in those building codes to to allow that. Again, this project is about alternative solutions, so an intelligent and prudent architect and fire protection engineer working together conceivably is able to develop a design that meets the needs of the site-specific project. We’ve just done that for 10 new buildings.

Jennifer Barrett Great, thanks Conrad. Any final comments from any of the presenters and then I’ll just give a plug for tomorrow and we’ll wrap up for today. Matt, Kevin, Uros, Janna?

Uros Novakovic Thank you for having us.

Jennifer Barrett Alright. Thank you, everyone, for the presentations. Tomorrow will be the second of the three-part series in our mini conference on single-stair solutions. And tomorrow’s presentation will look at questions of safety and sustainability, featuring presentations from fire engineers and architects in Canada and in other jurisdictions. We look forward to seeing many of you again tomorrow. You should have the registration link in the email or the link that was used for today, but please know that you have to subscribe individually to each of the sessions. Thank you for all the great questions. As I mentioned, we’ll save some of the safety questions for tomorrow and we look forward to seeing many of you again tomorrow. Thanks very much.