Photographer Francis Zera's Vancouver, B.C., photo essay: now showing only in the print edition of Sustainable Industries Journal.
Vancouver calling by Michael Burnham - 11.7.05
It’s not much to look at now — a few rusty aluminum warehouses, overgrown gravel lots and slouching wood pilings that helped keep the British Navy afloat and fighting during World War II. The days of building Liberty ships along Vancouver, B.C.’s, Southeast False Creek waterfront ended 60 years ago. But a new burst of change is coming soon to this 80-acre site opposite the city’s downtown.
The results could influence architects and urban planners for decades.
Next spring, construction crews will begin laying the streets and sidewalks for the 2010 Winter Olympics athletes’ village. A handful of the warehouses will be converted into energy- and water-efficient commercial buildings. They will stand beside 564 condominiums built to meet the Canada Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) Gold standard. When the athletes leave, the buildings will be divided into a mix of affordable and market-rate units for sale to the public. A school, grocery stores, parks, community and child-care centers will follow. A neighborhood will be reborn.
“This is the greatest legacy that the Olympics is going to bring to the city,” says Rob Bennett, who left his post as director of the City of Portland’s green building program to become a pre-Olympics project manager with Vancouver’s Sustainability Group. “It’s a great coming together of policy, expectations and sustainability.”
Like the Olympic village future and the working waterfront past, Vancouver is a city of contrasts. It is distinctly North American; Starbucks coffee shops sit on two sides of a four-way intersection downtown. Yet Vancouver is uncommonly cosmopolitan and international.
A melting pot of Pacific Rim cultures, ideas and ambition, the metropolis is undeniably geared to the future. What started out 138 years ago as a tiny saloon for trappers and loggers is now the continent’s third-most densely built city, behind New York and San Francisco. About 15 percent of Vancouver’s more than 550,000 denizens live downtown in glass and steel towers erected during a ’90s construction boom.
“The downtown population has almost doubled [up from 45,000 in 1990], and children are flooding into downtown,” boasts Larry Beasley, the city’s planning director. “We are the fastest-growing residential downtown in North America.”
The next construction boom will not only reshape Vancouver’s skyline, it could reshape the very face of green building in North America.
An abandoned salt-processing facility is one of the few remnants of Southeast False Creek's working waterfront. The early 20th-Century building will remain standing as Vancouver readies for the 2010 Olympics.
In the past year, Vancouver logged 15 LEED-registered projects — more than any city in Canada. The city also became the world’s first to require that all new public buildings meet Canada’s LEED Gold standard, plus a 30 percent improvement in energy performance.
The proving ground for this civic vision will be the Olympic athletes’ village, which will mark the first development phase of the city’s so-called “Sustainability Precinct” wrapped around the eastern edge of False Creek.
City leaders want at least one building in the district — potentially a new community center — certified as LEED Platinum, the highest rating awarded by the Canada Green Building Council. The city is also creating a municipal-owned utility that would provide geothermal-powered heating and water for the athletes’ village, and eventually for the entire district. Other on-site renewable energy sources could include small-scale wind turbines and photovoltaic rooftops and streetlights, says Dale Mikkelsen, a city planner.
“The hope is that the district would be greenhouse gas-neutral,” he adds.
Perhaps the city’s most audacious goal is to add 10 million square feet of new buildings throughout the precinct by 2020. Most of the property outside of the athlete’s village is privately owned, so the city is amending its bylaws and rezoning the district so that any new building, by default, would meet minimum LEED certification standards.
“We as a city are willing to take bold steps forward,” Beasley says. “That same step that the public should expect from our buildings should be reflected in the private sector.”
Living Shangri-La
When completed in 2008, the 642-ft. Living Shangri-La will be Vancouver’s tallest building.
The yawning gap along the entire 1100 block of Georgia Street West only hints at the scale of things to come.
Eighty feet below ground, workers in orange hats are pouring the first concrete for what will be the Living Shangri-La — a 642-foot-tall tower in the heart of downtown Vancouver. The sleek, wedge-shaped tower will loom more than 20 stories above the city’s next-tallest building.
Developers of the US$200 million project are shooting for a LEED Silver certification from the Canada Green Building Council. That’s no small task, given the building’s size.
“It may require some creativity,” contends Belinda White, a program assistant with the Canada Green Building Council. “But if anyone can do this, I’m sure [Vancouver] can.”
Developers of the project hope to earn LEED points through an energyefficient shell that includes a high-performance curtain wall, green roof and glazed windows. Low-emission materials will be used throughout the building’s 227 live/work units, 66 luxury condominiums and 120 five-star hotel rooms, says Jennifer Sanguinetti, a principal with Keen Engineering, the project’s mechanical engineer.
“The green is quite subtle, but it’s there,” Sanguinetti adds. “It’s showing that high-end can be green, and the market is ready for that.”
She appears to be right; 100 percent of the building’s units have been sold more than two years before the building’s scheduled completion.
In addition to building the Living Shangri-La, developers are contributing $4.4 million to restore the Coastal Church — a rare Colonial Revival-style cathedral adjacent to the skyscraper. Together, the projects will connect Georgia Street West with nearby restaurants and shops.
University of British Columbia
The University of British Columbia’s C.K. Choi Building’s large, double-glazed windows provide natural ventilation and optimum sunlight. Evergreen trees behind the building regulate the cooling.
The sprawling University of British Columbia campus, located a half-hour’s drive east of central Vancouver, boasts a mix of buildings as easy on the eyes as they are on the planet.
Among the most notable is the C.K. Choi Building, home of the university’s Institute for Asian Research. The 30,000-square-foot structure, completed in 1996, capitalizes on its diverse ambience. A wooded area west of the building provides cool air during summer months, and large, double-glazed windows facing a wide street east of the building let in daylight for offices and common areas. The end result is a cathedral-like building that has natural ventilation and full days of light year-round.
“When you walk in, you can still see the forest through the windows,” says Freda Pagani, director of UBC’s Office of Sustainability. “If you make a building people love being in, it will stay the course of time.”
One of the building’s most arresting features is a spare interior of concrete floors, exposed timber beams, ducts and sprinklers. “Architects adopted a strategy of never putting a finished material on a surface unless it was functional,” Pagani adds. “Many architects have since adopted that strategy because it saves money.”
The building also saves energy and water. Electric sensors and continuous dimming ballasts automatically adjust lighting based on available sunlight, cutting energy consumption by about 65 percent below normal. Likewise, composting toilets save more than 264 gallons of water daily.
A gray-water recycling system processes waste from the composting toilets and sinks and uses it for the building’s landscaping. Plants are also irrigated by rainwater collected and stored on the building’s roof.
Behind the Choi building is another design gem, the university’s Liu Centre. The building’s unassuming stone and glass exterior is designed to blend into the second-growth forest surrounding it. Completed in 2000, the building stands on the same-sized footprint as a sorority house that formerly occupied the site. Ninety-three percent of the sorority house was salvaged and reused in the Liu Centre and other buildings — including the City of Vancouver’s National Works Yard, Pagani notes. In fact, UBC was able to save about 60 percent on Liu construction costs by using bricks, pavers and decking from demolished buildings. Perhaps most notable, the 19,000-square-foot Liu Centre was the first Canadian non-industrial building to use a high-volume (50 percent) fly ash concrete mix in its construction. By using fly ash — the dust captured from burning coal — campus officials estimate they prevented 75 metric tons of pollution from entering the atmosphere. High-volume fly ash concrete has since been used in several commercial projects in B.C.’s Lower Mainland.
The Liu Centre’s innovations have earned it awards from the Architectural Institute of British Columbia and other groups. The efforts also dovetail nicely with the Centre’s commitment to the study of population growth, resource use and other issues.
The ICIC/CS Building uses water lines case in the building's concrete infrastructure for heating and cooling.
Across campus stands the Fred Kaiser Building, UBC’s newest environmental innovator. The four-story building, which opened for classes in September, houses UBC’s Department of Electrical Engineering. There’s good reason for this. The four-story building’s rooftop features demonstration direct current and photovoltaic power systems and a weather station. A hydrogen fuel cell project might eventually join the mix. “It’s a living laboratory for electrical engineering students,” Pagani says.
Like the Choi and Liu buildings, the light-filled Kaiser relies on passive cooling. The building is designed so a central atrium pulls air through groundfloor doors and out the roof. But don’t expect the Kaiser — or the Choi or Liu, for that matter — to become LEED-certified any time soon. University officials are choosing not to spend money to certify campus buildings with the Canada Green Building Council. Instead, the university provides its developers with mandatory energy- and water-saving features that must be part of new projects.
The strategy is similar to the City of Vancouver’s policy for Southeast False Creek. “We’re building green without the certification,” Pagani adds.
National Works Yard
The National Works Yard was the first building to earn the Canada Green Building Council’s LEED Gold certification.
The National Works Yard might one day be regarded as Vancouver’s grand old lady of green building, but the smart glass and steel structure and its environs are on the cutting edge of design today. In 2004, the Works Yard — which houses the city’s transportation workers and fleet — was the first Canadian building certified as LEED Gold.
The entire 12-acre complex of buildings, garages and parking lots is built atop a brownfield site. Pervious pavement and drought-resistant plants on the main building’s rooftop and landscaped areas help reduce surface runoff. However, any rain that is captured is used for sewage conveyance. The catchment system, combined with dual-flush toilets and waterless urinals, reduces the building’s potable water use 75 percent, according to city estimates.
The Works Yard relies on passive cooling through both old and new technologies, notes E.C. “Ted” Batty, Vancouver’s engineering yards manager. There’s the old way: workers can open and close windows or adjust awnings to cool off or warm up. And there’s the new way: the building is wired with temperature and humidity monitors, and an automatic displacement ventilation system provides fresh air where required.
“More and more, you’ll see municipal facilities like this,” adds Batty, who gives tours at least once a month to city officials considering similar projects in Europe, Asia and North America.
B.C. Cancer Agency Research Centre
The B.C. Cancer Research Centre is built with patients’ and workers’ health in mind. The LEED Gold building houses some of the world’s top cancer researchers.
People head to hospitals to get healthy, so it seems logical that medical buildings offer healthier environments for patients and staff members.
The B.C. Cancer Agency Research Centre, adjacent to Vancouver General Hospital, is one of a growing number of medical buildings constructed with a healthy environment in mind. The 231,000-square foot building, opened in March and awarded LEED Gold certification, houses eight research departments that study all 200 known types of cancer, according to the Canada Green Building Council.
“This project has never been just about building a great facility, but about creating an environment where researchers can achieve their best,” says Mary McNeil, president and CEO of the BC Cancer Foundation, the building’s owner.
The free-standing building, adjacent to Vancouver General Hospital, uses a heat-recovery chiller, chilled slab flooring and other features that result in 42 percent energy savings. Water savings of 43 percent are possible through the use of waterless urinals and other features. Other design elements include 24 percent recycled construction and finishing materials — an “extraordinary” amount for health care facilities, notes Ian Theaker, Canada Green Building Council’s LEED program manager (formerly an engineer with Interface Engineering in Portland).
Researchers also hope to save money and time through the use of interstitial floors. These eight-foot-high mechanical floors between each laboratory allow the building’s 60 principal scientists the flexibility to move labs as research needs change.
But this 15-story building designed by IBI Group and Henriquez Partners Architects is not only about function. Office windows are said to be inspired by DNA printout, and round lab windows symbolize Petri dish and cellular structure.
Vancouver Convention Centre expansion
The Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre is already an architectural icon. The facility’s new wing will support a six-acre “living roof” planted with vegetation native to the province’s vast coastline.
Vancouver’s newest park is for the birds. But the people don’t seem to mind.
In preparation for the 2010 Winter Olympics, the city is building a 1.2 million-square-foot addition to the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre. The new wing, located just west of the convention building along Burrard Inlet’s southern shore, will become the international broadcast and media hub for the 2010 Olympic Games.
When the building is complete in 2008, developers hope to certify it as a LEED Gold project with the Canada Green Building Council.
Perhaps the structure’s most remarkable feature will be its roof — a six-acre stretch set to be covered with sea thrift, sedge, beach strawberry and dozens of other plants native to coastal British Columbia. “It will be the largest non-industrial living roof in North America,” says Bruce Hemstock, a partner with PWL Partnership, the project’s landscape architect.
The roof will be covered in six inches of growing medium, a mix of composted organic material, sand and lava rocks. All 400,000 plugs of vegetation will be inoculated with mychorrizal fungus and irrigated during summer months with treated black water from the building.
The end goal is to have a light-weight rooftop with hearty plants that can survive easily in dry summers and wet winters. Hemstock, however, underscores that the “ecological sanctuary” will be off-limits to the public. The best chance to catch a bird’s-eye view of downtown’s newest park might be from nearby skyscrapers. “We’re hoping people see this roof and think they can do the same on their own projects,” Hemstock adds.
Vancouver Aquarium
Full house: The popular Vancouver Aquarium is often packed to the gills.
The Vancouver Aquarium turns 50 next year, but it’s in the midst of major growing pains.
Perched on a wooded hillside in Vancouver’s Stanley Park, the aquarium is a compact honeycomb of freshwater aquariums, saltwater tanks, offices, hallways, stairwells and labs. In just two acres, the aquarium gives visitors a peek at Amazon, Arctic and Puget Sound aquatic life. Construction crews are adding to the mix a four-story building, which its owners hope to certify as the first LEED Gold aquarium in the world.
The 50,000-square-foot building, scheduled for completion in the summer of 2006, will include a wet lab, aquatic gallery and classrooms for the thousands of children who pass through the aquarium annually. Visitors, however, aren’t likely to notice the aquarium’s most innovative green building features.
The existing complex is equipped with twin pumps that deliver up to 1,200 gallons of sea water a minute to the building from nearby Burrard Inlet. The new wing will include a titanium heat-exchanger to transfer energy between the incoming sea water and the building cooling water. The system is expected to cut energy costs by about 40 percent relative to the Model National Energy Code for Buildings, according to project engineer Cobalt Engineering.
Aquarium officials hope to save additional energy and water through the use of low-flush toilets, rooftop heat recovery and water catchment systems, and a “living” wall — a pumice stone facade with ferns that soak up rain and provide shade.
“Being a conservation aquarium, the idea is to hopefully give people ideas on how to protect and preserve what they have,” adds Clint Wright, the aquarium’s vice president of operations and animal care. “We decided to walk the talk.” Where to go for more info: City of Vancouver Sustainability Group: www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/sustainability City of Vancouver 2010 Olympics: www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/olympics Vancouver2010: www.vancouver2010.com/en University of British Columbia Office of Sustainability: www.sustain.ubc.ca Canada Green Building Council: www.cagbc.org
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