engineering.
Phillip joined AKT II’s Toronto studio five months ago and is already shaping projects in both Canada and the UK. With a decade of high-rise experience, he’s now exploring adaptive reuse internationally, cross-studio workflows, and new building codes in Canada that demand more efficient and sustainable structures.
I’m part of the structures team in our Toronto studio, working with colleagues both here and in London. I joined about half a year ago and I’m currently involved on the 1 Appold Street in London, an adaptive reuse with an overbuild component, and a striking high-rise development in Liberty Village in Toronto. 1 Appold Street has just completed stage 4A, while the Toronto project is at a much earlier stage, still going through city planning and zoning.
Toronto is a new-build high-rise, which is my bread and butter – I spent ten years at my previous firm designing some unique and complex residential and commercial towers in the city. 1 Appold Street is a different beast, as it’s about working with the interface between old and new. Adaptive reuse is becoming more important in our industry here in North America, so it’s great to be part of that.
On 1 Appold Street, certain aspects of the steel beam design, castellated for mechanical distribution, was proving time-consuming and prone to error. After spotting a mistake, I developed a small programme that automates bulk section size input into a commercial software. I’m currently refactoring it into Compute.Build – a low-code development framework initiated by our parent company Tyréns – so it can be rolled out more widely across the firm and make things faster and more reliable for engineers.
I’ve been working closely with the 1 Appold Street structural team in London. The time zone difference actually works in our favour: I use mornings in Toronto for coordination and then spend my afternoons on production that’s ready for London the next day. It creates a productive rhythm across the two studios.
On the Toronto project, we’ve tried to optimise the structural framing early to avoid carbon-intensive transfer structures and otherwise inefficient load paths. The UK seems further ahead on embodied carbon and adaptive reuse, but Toronto is catching up. Recent developments in our National Building Code are already pushing for simpler and more efficient structures.
Canada’s 2020 building code changes are reshaping how we design. There have been significant changes to structural design requirements with particular emphasis on the earthquake loads and effects, which restrict inefficient structures with major geometric discontinuities such as transfer elements. It’s forcing us to devise more straightforward load paths, which is good for both design clarity and embodied carbon.
I’ve been learning a lot about structural steel and composite design, which is more common in the UK. My background is mainly reinforced concrete, so working with Eurocodes and composite systems has been a valuable shift in perspective.
Personally, I like to start early and finish early – it allows me to commute via bike, gives me quiet time before office distractions, and syncs nicely with London office collaboration. In Toronto, we’re also beginning to bring in Tidy Fridays and regular socials, inspired by London.
Favourite tool: Bluebeam – it’s PDF on steroids for engineers and architects.
A detail you wish people noticed: My slightly obsessive approach to organisation, from desk layout to digital file management.
Best graduate tip: Keep learning, and always maintain a health amount of curiosity throughout your career development.
Sketch or calculations first? Sketches, but digital ones for neatness and record-keeping.
Shortcut you can’t live without: Win+V and Ctrl+Shift+C.
Book, paper or talk that shaped you: “In Search of Elegance”, a famous lecture on the history of structural engineering given by my professor Michael Collins at the University of Toronto.
One file/model rule: It’s all about the node! Improper connectivity in FE models means garbage in garbage out!
If you could standardise one thing across projects: A robust set of general notes and typical details, since they provide the overall requirements for entire project, helping to tie it all together.
