Vancouver structural engineer wins “Wood Champion” award.

At the 2013 WoodWORKS! BC Wood Design Awards, structural engineering firm Equilibrium Consulting won the Wood Champion Award. The 9th annual awards were handed out at the Vancouver Convention Centre on March 4, with 350 people in attendance.

Equilibrium Consulting’s principals, Eric Karsh and Robert Malczyk were chosen for their work on such projects as the City of North Vancouver Civic Centre Renovation and the Prince George Airport. The firm is also structural designer on one of the projects that won an award — the Earth Sciences Building at University of British Columbia.

Eric Karsh also received the Engineer Award, partly for his work as co-author of a report, “Tall Wood,” written with architect Michael Green. The report introduces a structural concept to build timber high-rises of 30 storeys or more.

The Wood Innovation Award went to architects Peter Busby and Jim Huffman of Perkins + Will for the VanDusen Botanical Garden Visitor Centre in Vancouver. Fast + Epp are the structural engineers (the project won a 2012 Canadian Consulting Engineering Award of Excellence, click here.)

The Green Building Award also went to Peter Busby of Perkins + Will for the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) at the University of British Columbia. The building is designed to be the most sustainable building in North America, and also functions as a research tool.