Organic Gardening News

Identifying lawn diseases is the first step in stopping them. Here are the most common ones you'll come across and how to get rid of them.

A 1910 Craftsman residence with original floors, stained glass and claw foot tub is one of nine sites on the 2026 Heritage Discovery Day tour .

Participants on the self-guided tour will have a chance to check out a curated selection of nine heritage properties in Mount Pleasant and Riley Park. Another stop on the tour brings together mid-century modernist roots with what later became typical Vancouver Special layout and design.

Since 2003, Heritage Discovery Day has showcased the stories behind the architecture, design and history of some of the city’s most interesting and distinctive homes. Last year’s event drew 600 people to Kitsilano.

Ticket holders are provided with a guidebook that includes information about the homes as well lesser-known places and spaces that have shaped the neighbourhood. Volunteers are also on hand to provide information.

Biking and transit are encouraged, although some sites are walkable and parking information will be provided.

Heritage Discovery Day

When: June 6, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Tickets are on sale now at vancouverheritagefoundation.org.

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Ricardo Brites has spent much of his career helping move engineered timber buildings from ambitious design experiments into practical housing solutions.

Originally from Portugal, Brites completed his PhD in timber engineering before working in the United Kingdom during Europe’s rapid expansion of mass timber construction. At the time, Europe was already delivering large-scale timber buildings while North America was still cautiously testing the concept.

“I was part of projects with Lendlease, Mace, and Berkeley Homes when mass timber was transitioning from niche to near-commodity in that market,” says Brites.

Today, as director of engineering and VDC at Mercer Mass Timber, Brites works across Canada and the United States on projects ranging from libraries and universities to large-scale residential and commercial developments. His focus is not simply on promoting timber buildings, but on solving one of the industry’s biggest challenges — how to make them practical and affordable enough for mainstream housing.

“What drives me is not the structural performance of mass timber. That case has been made. What drives me is cost competitiveness,” he says.

Mass timber products such as cross-laminated timber, or CLT, are engineered by layering wood panels together to create structural components strong enough for multi-storey buildings. Increasingly, these systems are being paired with steel or concrete in hybrid designs that aim to balance performance, cost and speed of construction.

The most interesting and commercially viable work is almost always hybrid, says Brites.

That approach reflects a shift away from viewing timber as an all-or-nothing material. Instead, hybrid systems use each material where it performs best.

“A well-designed hybrid doesn’t compromise the timber story. It makes the whole building work better and land closer to budget,” says Brites.

One reason architects continue to gravitate toward engineered timber is the atmosphere it creates inside buildings. Exposed wood interiors can feel softer and calmer than conventional concrete structures, while the structural systems themselves often produce cleaner lines and more efficient interior layouts.

“There’s a quality to exposed timber that reads differently from any other structural material,” says Brites. “Warmer, quieter, more grounded,”

Brites says the bigger story is less about esthetics and more about industrialized construction.

One of engineered timber’s major advantages is prefabrication. Structural components are manufactured off-site using highly precise digital modelling, then delivered ready for installation.

“Prefabrication shifts where problems get solved. Instead of resolving co-ordination issues in the field, you resolve them digitally before a single component is fabricated,” he says.

That can shorten construction timelines significantly while reducing costly surprises during the building process.

Canada, particularly British Columbia, has become one of North America’s most active mass timber markets. Brites says the region’s progress has been driven by a combination of housing pressure, supportive policy and growing manufacturing capacity.

Projects such as UBC’s Brock Commons Tallwood House helped establish confidence in tall timber construction, while newer housing policies are encouraging more standardized mid-rise development.

Still, Brites believes the industry remains in a transitional phase similar to what Europe experienced years earlier.

“What we’re in now is a transition from early demonstration projects toward broader market adoption,” says Brites.

One of the biggest barriers is that developers often struggle to evaluate timber systems early enough in the design process. By the time cost estimates and engineering assessments arrive, many projects are already locked into conventional concrete and steel assumptions.

“By the time a project team had enough information to evaluate a mass timber solution properly, the design had already hardened around conventional assumptions,” says Brites.

To help address that problem, Mercer Mass Timber partnered with ZGF Architects and Fast + Epp to develop BuildSpec, a free digital platform that allows architects, engineers and developers to quickly test hybrid timber systems during the earliest planning stages.

The platform generates real-time information about structural feasibility, constructability and carbon impacts for mid-rise housing projects, helping teams compare systems before major design decisions are fixed.

“What previously required weeks of consultant co-ordination can now be explored at the massing stage in minutes,” says Brites.

For Brites, the long-term goal is not simply to create standout timber buildings, but to help the industry move toward repeatable systems that become more efficient over time.

“The housing supply problem in Canadian cities is not going to be solved by better-designed individual projects. It’s going to be solved by delivery systems that can produce good buildings repeatedly, predictably, and at a cost that works,” says Brites.

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