Brightwood has won a 2026 WoodWorks Ontario Wood Design Award.

Brightwood, at 150 Wissler Road in Waterloo, is a six-storey building with 128 rental homes. mcCallumSather designed it for Killam Apartment REIT. It’s five storeys of light wood-frame over a concrete podium. At the time of construction, that made it one of the largest wood-frame residential buildings the Ontario Building Code allowed.

The building was planned around wood from the start. Exterior and corridor wall panels were prefabricated off-site, so fabrication could begin before the full permit was issued. Once panels arrived on site, the structure went up quickly. That helped VanMar Constructors make up time lost to permitting delays. Choosing wood also gave the building lower embodied carbon and lower structural costs. Every wood product on the project is SFI certified.

Principal Matt Bolen accepted the award on behalf of the team:

“What’s so special about this award is that it recognizes our builder, VanMar, and our client, [Killam Apartments REIT]. Neither of them is who we’d usually see in a room like this. But we all came together and collaborated, and their openness to using wood showed how wood, mass timber and panelization can help solve the conventional problems they’re so used to dealing with. Hopefully this helps drive more of that work, for us and for everyone in this room.”

Thank you to WoodWorks Ontario and the Canadian Wood Council for the recognition. Thanks also to Killam Apartment REIT for trusting the process, and to our project team: VanMar Constructors, Tacoma Engineers, Next Gen Panels, GSP Group, MTE Consultants, Smith + Andersen, MGA and HGC Engineering.