Completed in April 2024, what was once an industrial warehouse for automotive parts and accessories for cars and heavy vehicles is now the site of a 70,000-square-foot structure that embodies impactful levels of decarbonization.

Built 50 years ago, the Montreal headquarters for United Auto Parts (UAP) now looks ahead to another 50 years in the automotive industry. This time, it emphasizes greater sustainability for the environment and well-being of its employees, with a complete, ZCB-Design v3 certified redesign by the Canadian architecture and design firm Lemay.

The certification results from a comprehensive combination of the firm’s architecture, landscape, interiors, engineering, digital services, branding, and NET POSITIVE™ sustainability strategies. This major overhaul of an existing building has reduced the building’s overall energy consumption by 34% through environmentally positive choices in lighting, heating, cooling, and water retention systems, compared to a baseline building. It also translates to as much as $40,000 in energy savings per year, in addition to a 27% reduction in embodied carbon.

On the exterior, the structure balances an internationally resonant look and feel with a distinct design. Its form responds to its history and context with curved lines, cuts, and articulations reminiscent of those of an automobile. The surrounding grounds and parking lot were regreened to create a more inviting approach from the street level, with exterior rest areas for employees, better access to public transportation, and a reduction in the property’s heat island effects.

Inside, UAP’s headquarters features a bright, open array of collaborative and concentrative workspaces to foster innovation, learning, research, and development. Its campus-style layout accommodates as many as 260 users, skylit from one end of the building to the other, illuminating activity and bathing its central atrium in light.

A wide range of strategies were employed, including building envelope performance, HVAC systems optimization, renewable energy sources, and digital tools from Lemay’s energy specialists. Passive and bioclimatic strategies also formed a significant part of the project’s positive impacts, using natural solutions that extended to ventilation, airflow management, and orientation to paths of sunlight. Acclimatized to its environment and four-season context, the UAP headquarters’ energy consumption is reduced via natural cooling while improving comfort, where an automatic roof system allows hot air out while allowing cooler air to come in. 

“This redesign signals an important infrastructural shift in an industrial part of Montreal once historically known as the Pittsburgh of Canada," says Oscar Hernandez, Lemay’s Project Director, Energy Efficiency. "Most of all, it provides a clear pathway for what carbon-neutral, bioclimatic, and circular approach strategies can create when adapting existing industrial buildings for decarbonized realities.”

Leading a wave of essential change with a new, energy-efficient, ESG-focused, ZCB-Design v3 certified office, the UAP headquarters demonstrates the potential of design to transform the aging and often understated heritage and historic infrastructure surrounding the automotive industry, reducing their greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprints.