McGill University?s Building Architecture Research Node (BARN) project was awarded over $7.5 million through the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) Innovation Fund (IF). With additional funds from the Government of Quebec, BARN will receive more than $19 million in research support.
Conceptual design rendering of BARN exterior. Courtesy of mcgill.ca.
Working with an interdisciplinary team of McGill researchers, as well as with private and public sector partners, BARN co-leads Profs. Michael Jemtrud, Kiel Moe, and Salmaan Craig (Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture) aim to develop regional, carbon-negative approaches to construction, linking sustainable forestry with timber innovations. 

With the goal of producing long-lived and resilient architecture, the BARN team will explore ways to ?decarbonize? buildings and environments by making them less carbon-intensive to operate and by reducing the amount of carbon embodied in building materials, components, assemblies, buildings and communities. 
The showcase BARN building, to be located on McGill?s Macdonald campus, will include laboratories for an interdisciplinary team of experts in energy, ecology, landscape, forestry, architecture and construction.

The Building will incorporate a state-of-the-art workshop for processing timber, and space for assembling and testing innovative building technologies at full scale. The Mac campus site will also enable the team to use wood harvested sustainably from the Morgan A...