"Little Flower" Monastery in British Columbia, Canada

The "Little Flower" monastery was built in 2015, situated in beautiful scenery of green meadows, mountains, and crystal-clear lakes.

The little monastery is equipped with 18 bedrooms, a chapel, a dining room, a kitchen, and a conference room.

"Little Flower" Monastery in British Columbia, Canada

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Timber Supporting Structure Made of Glued-Laminated Timber

The monastery building is a pure timber structure. In total, 36,436 ft² of cross‑laminated timber panels and 847.5 ft³ of glued-laminated timber were used. The engineers Berger and Gadner from Merano performed the structural analysis. The whole supporting structure was analyzed as a 3D model in RFEM.

Structure

The 3D model was created in AutoCAD and imported to Dlubal Software using the interface integrated in RFEM.

The surfaces made of cross‑laminated timber for the roof and wall elements were entered as orthotropic surfaces with the stiffness matrix. Furthermore, at the junctions, line hinges with spring stiffnesses according to the fasteners used were arranged.

Seismic design was performed in the RF‑DYNAM add-on module according to the Canadian seismic standard NBC 2005.

Structural Engineering	Structural Analysis Dr. Ing. Berger, Dr. Ing. Gadner Merano, Italy
Construction	Contractor Company AHC-Derix, Canada www.ahc-derix.com Construction Design Styxworks LLC, USA www.styxworks.com
Investor	The Order of Discalced Carmelites of Canada www.carmelhill.ca