Audi Midtown Toronto. Photo courtesy Ontario Concrete Awards.
The winners of the 2016 Ontario Concrete Awards have been announced. The awards recognize design and construction innovation and excellence using the industry?s most ubiquitous material, and in a variety of different building types and applications.
The winner in the infrastructure category was the Derry Road/CN Grade Separation project for Halton Region, northwest of Toronto.  The project includes a long overpass with a cast-in-place deck and precast arches, on a site webbed with highways, rail lines and a transformer station. It also has a huge on site stormwater management component. The team included R.V. Anderson Associates as engineers and New-Alliance as contractors. The Institutional Building award went to the Reactor Materials and Testing Laboratory at Queen?s University in Kingston. The building stimulates the conditions inside a nuclear reactor, so requires a ?bunker? type structure with concrete walls 6 ft. thick, reinforced with fibreglass rebar. The concrete absorbs neutrons and dissipates the energy. Read Jones Christoffersen were the engineers, Diamond Schmitt/Shoalts & Zaback were the architects, and T.A. Andre & Sons was the general contractor.
For Structural Design Innovation, the award went to the Audi Midtown Toronto building, located near the busy Highway 401/404 interchange in the city?s northeast. The striking monolithic structure has sales on its lower levels, offices on the thir...