Mass timber is making strides in the educational space with two new projects in Vancouver and Toronto. Acton Ostry Architects associate principal Milos Begovic presented the Here to Stay: Educational Projects in Mass Timber session during the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s annual conference held in Vancouver. Begovic highlighted innovative wood-based construction at both the Little Flower Academy, a Catholic girl’s school in Vancouver, and the Limberlost Place project in Toronto, a 10-storey building on the George Brown College campus. Currently the National Building Code only allows up to two storeys of combustible construction for assembly and occupancy projects so it was necessary to follow alternative compliance prescribed in the code to get both projects built. “If we can prove equivalent fire safety features can be achieved through alternative means and these projects used mitigating measures to achieve that goal,” he said.