Pointers from a front-line practitioner

Throughout Canada, as in the rest of the developed world, employers are confronting the looming demographic crisis — the retirement of vast numbers of baby boomers from the workforce — and projected acute shortage of younger skilled workers to replace them. The competition to attract and retain these workers has begun in earnest, and there is a growing consensus in the marketplace that offering a high quality work environment is an essential key to success. The result is a revolution in commercial office building design, the first since the 1960s.

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Vancouver Convention Centre | Simple outward appearance belies underlying complexity of Canada’s largest green roof

The Vancouver Convention Centre Expansion Project [VCCEP] which opened in April 2009 occupies a prominent site on the city’s Coal Harbour waterfront, with sweeping views west to Stanley Park and north and east to the Coast Mountains. Designed by Seattle-based LMN Architects, in conjunction with Vancouver’s Musson Cattel Mackey Partnership and DA Architects & Planners, the 100 000sq.m [1.1 million sf] facility was conceived as a model of sustainable design for large-scale civic buildings.

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By Bruce Hemstock

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The basics on the all-important “nerve centre”

Controls are the brains of a building and are responsible for the performance of the mechanical and lighting systems. Because these systems are the primary consumers of building energy, the controls must be well designed, commissioned and maintained if energy performance is to meet design expectations.

By Richard Lay, Stan Holko,Tim Dietrich and John Kokko

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Early planning means an economic afterlife for buildings

by Vince Catalli

The traditional model for the design, construction, operation, decommissioning, demolition and disposal of a building is a linear, sequence in which new materials, products and building systems are created at the beginning of a project and discarded at the end. (more…)

Types for sustainable building

The green roof of Electronic Arts, Phase II. Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership, Vancouver. [1] Photo: Ed White

by Hugh Perry

Considerations to stay with conventional installation methods of roofing in order to keep initial cost low can no longer stand against improved installation methods and new products that provide long term returns.
Not surprisingly, higher initial investment in denser insulation, membrane thickness, good drainage and reflectivity brings the greatest return on investment. Such measures deliver longevity that lowers the life cycle cost of roofing by decreasing material sourcing, manufacturing energy cost and transportation. And a decrease in repeated installation and demolition reduces the need for raw materials, transportation and landfill space. The added benefits of energy savings are a bonus.
Duro-Last Roofing Inc., considers sustainability in roofing as requiring all of the Five E’s: Energy, Environment, Endurance, Economics, and Engineering. The time for short cuts and ‘it’s good enough’ attitudes may be finally outdated. (more…)

Exterior view of the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability, showing the Living Machine waste water treatment system.

by Jessica Woolliams
Research Jessica Wooliams and Jim Taggart

When LEED was first launched about 10 years ago, it filled a huge void in the marketplace because it provided both an effective definition of a green building, and a means to measure green building performance in a consistent way.

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NOW House™ revival

One of the million or so iconic Veterans’ Homes, the Now House is upgraded to a net-zero energy level

by Lorrane Gautier and Don Fugler
The Now House is one of the 15 net-zero energy healthy housing projects selected from across Canada to be part of the Canada Mortage and Housing Corporation’s EQuilibriumTM Sustainable Housing Demonstration Initiative. The project comprised the renovation and retrofit of a 60 year old house, one of a million similar homes built across the country during and after World War II, and is the only EQuilibrium™  project focused on the renovation and retrofit market. (more…)

A summary of recent advances

Glazing considerations such as window area, elevation and orientation, thermal performance and solar shading to optimize natural daylighting and passive solar heat gain are very important to the envelope performance and energy consumption of buildings [1]. [BC Cancer Agency Research Centre, IBI Group and Henriquez Partners Architects, Photo: Nic Lehoux]

by Hugh Perry

Many of Canada’s commercial buildings were built over 40 years ago when there were few, if any, worries about energy performance and environmental responsibility. In an era of cheap and abundant energy, heating and cooling loads were of little concern; buildings were often clad entirely in glass with no differentiation between facades having different orientations. (more…)

The basics start with environmental loads

Building envelopes must be designed to perform under all weather conditions. The BC Cancer Agency Research Centre in Vancouver by IBI Group ans Henriquez Architects.

Modern building systems consist of structural, service and envelope components that can be respectively compared to the bones, organs and skin of the human body. The skin protects the body from harmful exterior environments and maintains comfortable body conditions. In the same manner, the building envelope aims to regulate indoor environmental conditions for human use or occupancy. (more…)

New rating systems will change our ways

Green roof of the Burnside Gorge community Centre controls stormwater runoff as part of a landscaping strategy that contributes points to LEED Gold certification.

We think of the landscape as green by default. In reality, it is challenging to achieve this goal in urban areas where requirements are imposed by market expectations, municipal requirements, and a range of other factors.
At the same time, green building rating systems are beginning to demonstrate their power to transform both the market and the regulatory context, and are offering opportunities for landscape architects, engineers, and other designers to apply a variety of new approaches to site development. (more…)