This year’s Teron Scholars were presented with their awards by William Teron, founder of the Teron Group of Companies and the “father of Kanata.” Mark Madera, Ming Fu, Benoit Maranda and Mateusz Nowacki were awarded prizes with  Matthew McKenna, Nilakshi Roy and Andrew Bako receiving honorary mentions.

To kick off a new academic year in the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism, provide inspiration to future Scholars, and recognize the achievements of this year’s winners, the awards were presented at the Director’s All-School Welcome.

Since the Teron Scholar program began in 2007, the annual awards have challenging students in the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism to hone the skills needed to become multidisciplinary lead architects.

Students in any year of study can tailor a studio project identified by a professor as a Teron contender, and submit it for critical review by distinguished members of the Ottawa architecture community. The winners, judged on five critical disciplines (physical, social, environmental and economic dimensions and imagineering), display a holistic approach to architecture.

Ming Fu’s Dugout: The Art Centre for the Discriminated

Team Ontario has seen the future of housing and believes it includes an ECHO. In fact, the team of students from Carleton University, Algonquin College and Queen’s University is so confident in ECHO — the ultracompact, net-zero, solar-powered home they’ve designed and built over the past 18 months — that they’ll soon be trucking it all the way from an Algonquin parking lot to California for the biennial Solar Decathlon competition.

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, the competition runs for 10 days in October. For the first time ever, Ontario institutions number among the 20 teams, winnowed down from dozens of applicants worldwide, that are vying for first place. That honour will go to the house that best blends affordability, consumer appeal and design excellence with optimal energy production and efficiency.

The competition is meant to introduce clean-energy products and technology into the mainstream while educating students and the public alike.

At just 940 square feet, the ECHO “was designed for people like us, our generation,” says Chris Baldwin, Carleton’s student project manager and, at 24, a member of the so-called Echo Boomer generation.

By that he means people eager for home ownership but on a far more modest scale than the McMansions that may have addicted their parents.

The name ECHO (it was originally called the Aurora House) also plays on “eco,” reflecting the home’s ecologically conscious design.

The modular structure was built in two parts by students in the advanced housing program at Algonquin’s Perth campus and shipped to the college’s Woodroffe site this spring. There, the two parts were joined by three mammoth, 13-foot bolts. It’s since been outfitted with a deck, painted and furnished.

That whole process will be reversed later this month so it can be loaded aboard a flatbed truck and shipped south, where the team will reassemble it for judging.

“There were a few issues along the way, but we figured them out and now it’s easy to snap together,” says construction manager and Algonquin student Jacob Morgan.

Such bumps along the way are valuable, according to Carleton faculty adviser Cynthia Cruickshank. “They’ve learned that it’s not like in class, they’re not always dealing with ideal conditions so they have to learn to create flexibility in the
design to deal with that.”

As part of the competition, each team (there is another Canadian one, Team Alberta from the University of Calgary and Mount Royal University) also has to host a dinner for eight to prove the house is functional. Says Baldwin, “We’ll do a Canadian menu, maybe Atlantic salmon.”

The small, comfy home in which they’ll do so boasts a devilishly clever design.

Outside, there’s 585 square feet of decking and, in front, a post-and-beam exostructure that serves as an architectural focal point while supporting a large array of solar panels. The solar array in turn provides shade for the interior.

Those panels will generate 7.8 kilowatts of electricity for sale to the grid. That’s as much electricity as the home will use in the course of a year, giving it net-zero status.

A tight building envelope includes insulating foam as well as state-of-the art vacuum insulation panels with 15 times the thermal resistance of conventional fibreglass-batt insulation. In all, ECHO’s building envelope has twice the insulating value of a conventional home.

Photo: Chris Roussakis
ECHO’s open and compact kitchen and dining area.

Inside, there’s an open-concept kitchen/living area with generous, south-facing windows to provide natural daylight and maximize solar gain during the winter.

There’s also a master bedroom with direct access to the deck and a small, second space for an office or child’s bedroom.

“There’s not a lot of storage,” says Morgan, “but our generation has to learn to live with less stuff.”

Multi-use furniture like a desk that becomes a bed in the second bedroom will help maximize space.

ECHO was designed using an in-out approach to architecture. That means that the interior layout, including the separation of living and sleeping areas and the flow inside the home — both especially important factors in a small space — are first established. That layout, along with engineering needs, dictate the floor plan and building shape.

Building materials were either donated or paid for through sponsorship. In selecting materials, the team used a “cradle-to-grave” approach that, for example, accounted for embodied energy and emphasized locally sourced, reused, and other
ecologically friendly components.

ECHO brims with emerging technology, including an advanced solar-assisted heat pump (SAHP) system to meet space heating/cooling and domestic hot water needs. There’s also a predictive shading system. It uses daily weather forecasts to raise and lower south-facing window shades automatically, reducing cooling needs on summer days.

ECHO, which would cost roughly $300,000 to build commercially, has involved more than 100 students from the proposal stage two summers ago to the completed project now. Says Baldwin, “It’s really nice to look out and see all the work we put in come to fruition.”

The contest invites undergraduates from all disciplines to propose ideas that can improve accessibility and inclusion for persons with disabilities and accepts a maximum of two submissions in each of five categories from each university based on issues identified in the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). This year, Carleton students have submitted: an affordable prosthetic hand (video above); an adjustable heigh wheelchair seat; a collection of products building on a hand-powered tricycle to explore accessibility and economic opportunities for people in Uganda; an offroad motorcycle for riders with lower limb disabilities; a dot navigation system for visually impaired athletes; and a presentation for students on IDeA.

Selected as a finalist is the low-cost 3D printed prosthetic hand with intelligent EMG control designed in the Department of Electronics as a fourth year project. The team of Tim Inglis, Alim Baytekin, Alborz Erfani and Natalie Levasseur were supervbised by Dr. Leonard MacEachern. The team will showcase the project at the Ontario Centres of Excellence Discovery 2013 Conference.

View this year’s submissions. In 2012, Carleton students won 1st and 2nd place.

Carleton is receiving up to $1,430,000 through FedDev Ontario’s Graduate Enterprise Internship initiative, which will be used to place 100 recent graduates and graduate students in small- and medium-sized enterprises and startup businesses within STEM sectors.

Some graduates will be placed in firms in the Ottawa region that have less than five employees. This will provide them with a rewarding experience, exposing them to all sides of the business.  Participating companies benefit from enhanced productivity and innovation of these highly-skilled and talented graduates.

However, it is not always enough to connect Carleton students and graduates with job opportunities. This funding encourages students and graduates to consider careers as entrepreneurs where they can apply their knowledge and ideas by starting and managing their own businesses. Therefore, another contribution of up to $945,000 through FedDev Ontario’s Scientists and Engineers in Business initiative will enable Carleton to partner with the University of Windsor and award commercialization fellowships to STEM graduates and graduate students across southern Ontario. 

Carleton University fosters a rich entrepreneurial environment through a number of initiatives. All Carleton students, regardless of their field of study, can take a minor in entrepreneurship. In 2011, the university launched a unique program called Carleton Entrepreneurs that offers participants access to specialized expertise and support to help them turn their business ideas into successful ventures.  Carleton also offers the Technology Innovation Management master’s program.

The university continues to introduce new entrepreneurship academic programs through the Sprott School of Business and the Faculty of Engineering and Design. By working closely with the community, Carleton has helped spin off more than 150 different businesses since 2009 with more than $5 million from various funding and university-driven activities invested in entrepreneurship.

Building on Carleton’s well-established reputation as a leader in providing access to students with disabilities, the READ Initiative endeavors to propel Carleton into a global leadership role in promoting a world that is truly accessible and inclusive.

“The READ Initiative is proud to welcome the Lieutenant Governor as its Honorary Patron,” said President Roseann O’Reilly Runte. “His strong leadership in accessibility will be most significant as we bring the wealth of expertise at Carleton on accessibility to play, benefitting people around the world. ’’

Among many activities planned for the years ahead is an International Summit on Accessibility that will be held in Ottawa in June 2014.

The Lieutenant Governor has championed disability issues on many fronts and for many years. Having lived with polio and post-polio syndrome since the age of three, he has broken through social barriers and become a role model and a leader on the international stage.

About the READ Initiative

“Coming from a third world country with poor health care, I always wanted to improve the quality of life and care back home,” says Chaugai. “I had heard that North American schools offer a good education in the field of biomedical engineering. Carleton was my top choice because the research carried out here catered to my interests and it’s also one of the most reputed institutions in Canada.”

Chaugai, who will graduate on November 10, is researching factors that affect the treatment of irregular heartbeats in the hopes that her research could eventually help save lives.

When people are experiencing abnormal heart rhythms, they are often given an electrical shock to restore a normal rhythm. That treatment is called defibrillation. In order for this to happen, sufficient electrical current needs to reach the heart. However, tissues (especially fatty tissues) can resist the flow of the electrical current. That property, which was the main focus of Chaugai’s thesis, is called impedance.

Chaugai explains that the electrical current conduction in the human chest is like the flow of water through a hose. Chaugai explains: “You can imagine the size of a hose as impedance and flow of water as current. If the size of the hose is small, lesser flow of water is seen and vice versa. Likewise, the amount of current that is going to reach the heart is dependent on the impedance of the body tissues.”

The novelty of Chaugai’s research is that it shows how the current travels in the chest and the way the impedance affects the current flow in the heart.

Chaugai worked with other researchers from Carleton and University of Ottawa Heart Institute.

Says Chaugai: “Our results suggest that it is going to be difficult to restore normal heart rhythm in larger patients with a high content of fat tissues, since the amount of current in the heart is going to be less. We also suggest a way to solve this problem, which is by changing the position of the electrodes through which the current is given to the chest.”

“These findings can be employed to improve the success rate of the treatment process in hospitals,” points out Chaugai. She says that the Electro-Physiology group and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute have shown strong interest in implementing the results of the research.

Chaugai says her supervisors, Drs. Andy Adler, Adrian Chan, andTimothy Zakutney, “are excellent researchers and their support and guidance have been invaluable throughout my studies. My overall experience in biomed at Carleton has been a process of learning, discovering and creating and has been one of the best experiences I have ever had.”

After she graduates, Chaugai is thinking of doing a PhD but also wants to apply her knowledge to help solve problems related to the biomedical industry.

More information about the Master of Applied Science in Biomedical Engineering.

A team of industrial design students at Carleton University are work at perfecting a hand-cranked bike built for Ugandans with disabilities by their fellow countryman, Nelson “Kio” Mukiika.

“We were amazed he was producing these bikes for $170 a piece,” said Dean Mellway, Acting Director of the Research, Education, Accessibility and Design initiative at Carleton University. “He’s built over 50 of them from old bikes now in his local machine shop in Kasese, one of the poorest areas of Uganda.”

A little more than a year ago, Mellway found out about Mukiika through an Ottawa initiative called CanUgan which had been helping pay for the bikes. Mellway thought Carleton’s students could help and got the International Development Research Centre on board.

“We took the design and tried to learn what it would be like to be Kio,” said Andrew Theobald, a fourth year industrial design student working on the project. “He’s a self-taught welder and works with little equipment. He doesn’t work with blueprints. He uses his fingers to measure.”

Industrial design students Andrew Theobald, Alyssa Wongkee, Ruby Hadley and Carmen Liu are working to perfect a hand-cranked tricycle for disabled Ugandans.

Roughly 2.4 million people with disabilities in Uganda live in chronic poverty without the means of making a livelihood. The bikes, Mellway said, give them mobility and the chance to earn wages.

To design a bike like the one created by Mukiika, the students had to limit their options. “We would usually create parts to exact measure,” said Theobald. “But we built this prototype with hacksaws. We wanted to learn a design empathy with Kio.”

Each bike he builds is a one-off since they’re made from the scraps of broken bikes. “I looked into how he manufactures the tricycles,” said Alyssa Wongkee, “to see if he could bring some of the principles of mass manufacturing into his process to make it faster and easier to build.”

The students have already come up with a major design improvement, said course instructor Stephen Field. “They figured out you could develop a new backbone for the steering and chain.”

Next Monday, the students will be meeting with design experts from San Francisco and will be joined by Ugandans participating in the project via. Skype.

“These are very smart people in Uganda and we’re trying to design with them, not designing for them,” said Field. “They’ve done so much with so little.”

Faculty of Engineering and Design graduates Dipak Roy, MEng/74, PhD/77, of D-TA Systems Inc. and Vinod Rajasekaran, BEng/05, of HUB Ottawa won in the categories of innovation-oriented enterprises and social enterprises, respectively. Carleton Science grad Obaid Ahmed, BMat/07 took the youth business entrepreneur award for his company OAK Computing.

The work of the 2012 Teron Scholars displays the art and science of architecture.

This year’s Teron Scholars were presented with their awards by William Teron, founder of the Teron Group of Companies and the “father of Kanata.” Five students were awarded prizes with a further three receiving honorary mentions.

To kick off a new academic year in the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism, provide inspiration to future Scholars, and recognize the achievements of this year’s winners, the awards were presented at the Director’s All-School Welcome on September 4, 2012.

Since the Teron Scholar program began in 2007, the annual awards have challenging students in the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism to hone the skills needed to become multidisciplinary lead architects.

Students in any year of study can tailor a studio project identified by a professor as a Teron contender, and submit it for critical review by distinguished members of the Ottawa architecture community. The winners, judged on five critical disciplines (physical, social, environmental and economic dimensions and imagineering), display a holistic approach to architecture.

“I am amazed at the work of these young students,” says Teron, honorary fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and officer of the Order of Canada. “The honourable mentions go to students who show potential, to encourage their talent. The Scholars’ work though, adds magic.”

The winning submissions

Iva Mihaylova design for the Canada Council for the Arts includes an archive tower with large sliding walls through which the general public can see the stored art and a cantilevered auditorium extending slightly over the outdoor public garden.

Inspired by artist Lee Bontecou, Sam Smallwood designed The People’s Eye, a pavilion that twirls skyward. With a dome opening radially and 18 extending solar-panel equipped arms, it evokes the opening of an eyelid, with eyelashes and a pupil for the acceptance of light.

Vance Fok designed ARK 1, the Arctic Centre for Research & Knowledge (Generation 1), as a modular research centre to be shipped and assembled in the ice fields on the border of Yukon and Alaska. The ARK container carries the materials for the building and is then adapted to create the structural frame of the building itself.

Abbi Kusch designed Urban Burrow, a self-dependent, primarily public and environmentally conscious community combining a community centre, library, boat club and residential complex.

Matthew McKenna’s Sussex Drive bookstore plays on the model of an art gallery, featuring a curated book collection for selective exhibitions or sales and gathering space for lectures, forums and public events.