Windsor District Office

WalterFedy was retained by Union Gas to provide architectural and engineering services to design a new district office and service centre in Windsor, Ontario. The project has been LEED® Gold certified. The two-storey building has a gross floor area of 35,735 sq.ft. The building is comprised of two major occupancies:

• An open office area facing the street with approximately 90 workstations and two private offices on two levels, with meeting rooms, a lunch room with a servery on the ground floor, and ancillary rooms.
• A two-storey volume service shop with overhead doors and a surrounding compound at the back at the building, which includes a weld shop with an overhead crane. The service shop includes all racking systems and functional requirements as put forth by Union Gas.

The simple building footprint follows the functional design approach, providing a relationship between the office and the service shop, marrying the two different uses. The open office space design allows for maximum flexibility, with exposure to outdoor views. Clerestory windows were incorporated to allow natural light to penetrate deep into the floor plate for both office work areas and service area. 

A uniform material and colour language visually connects the office area and service shop area and considerable attention was given to the work structure and relationship between employees to maintain efficient workflow. 

For this LEED® Gold Certified building, WalterFedy implemented a host of sustainable features that enable it to use 56% less energy than comparable buildings designed to the Canadian Model National Energy Code for Buildings. Additionally, water use was reduced by 52% with low-flow fixtures and rainwater harvesting. 

An additional feature was the Windsor facility’s trigeneration (Tri-Gen) system, which contributes to the reduced energy consumption noted above. Tri-Gen takes advantage of the simultaneous production of two forms of useful energy which, in this case, is through electric power and the generation of heat. In the winter, most of the waste heat is recovered, providing part of the facility’s heat requirements normally produced by other means in conventional mechanical plants. In the summer, the waste heat is run through an absorption chiller, which produces chilled water to help offset the energy consumption required for air conditioning. 

The Tri-Gen system is supplemented by a large hot water storage vessel that enables the waste heat produced when the Tri-Gen plant is operating to be used when the Tri-Gen plant is not operating.