'Deep Green'- Recent CaGBC Buildings in Balance Workshop

On Wednesday July 11, 2007, the Cascadia Green
Building Council hosted a workshop on ‘deep green' and the ever important Integrated
Design Process (IDP). Here are the headlines...

Kathy Wardle of Busby Perkins & Will and Alex Hutton of
Stantec presented the newly released ‘Roadmap for the Integrated Design
Process' document that has been put together to assist design professionals.
The guide comes in 2 parts and can be downloaded free of charge from the BC Green Buildings
or Buildsmart websites.

The second part of the event posed the following question:

Is it true that while you can get away with having a true
integrated design process on a ‘light green' building, it is a necessity for
the successful completion of a ‘deep green' building?

This workshop set out to answer this question through the
lenses of three of Canada's most cutting edge green buildings and the IDP they
did or are employing.

The buildings presented were: the Gulf Islands Operations Centre, the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability and the South East False Creek Net Zero Initiative.

The Operations Centre, Gulf Islands National Park Reserve
presented by Ron Kato, of Larry McFarland Architects

This is the first
building in Canada
to achieve LEED Platinum certification.
Key points were:

• Mind set at the
  initial stages of the project is critical
• Strong vision
  and goals important
• Thorough site
  analysis was critical to the success of this project
• An initial
  ‘Green Building Workshop' was held for all team members and stakeholders.
• A ‘planning
  charette' was held with the Owner to analyze the functional programme and
  identify potential synergies and efficiencies.
• Three vision
  statements were produced around the themes of environment, function and
  architecture.

Other interesting features were the use of a ‘talking wall'
where all the known and unknown variables were posted up and refined as the
design process progressed and the holding of an energy performance workshop at
the end of the schematic design phase. The workshop used real time energy
modeling software so that immediate answers to ‘what if ‘ questions could be
provided (eg. The cost benefit of adding an additional 1" of insulation to the
building.) A commissioning agent was brought on board at approx. 50% working
drawing phase to go through assemblies, processes etc.
In summary, what worked well:

• Pre-design
  process
• Energy
  performance workshop
• Post construction
  reviews

What didn't:

• LEED integration
  into the construction process

The Centre for Interactive research on Sustainability (CIRS)
presented by Dr. John B. Robinson, Professor, Sustainable Development Research
Initiative at UBC.

This building will be a living laboratory that pushes the
frontiers of sustainable construction materials and building techniques. It is
still at the design stage. This building arises out of the belief that it is
not sufficient to build green buildings one by one as this results in ‘islands
of sustainability' that can't benefit from neighbourhood or community scale
synergies. This building aims to make Canada a leader in:

• Green building
  design and building operation
• Visualization,
  simulation, community engagement (seen as a key to political change)
• Partnerships and
  strategies at a regional level

The building has a clear and inspirational vision statement.
It should enable us to live within our means. The aim was to get:

• All heating and
  cooling from the ground
• All water from
  the sky
• All waste
  treatment from the ground and sun
• Al light from
  the sun (when available)
• All electricity
  from the sun (almost- 100% not practically possible at this time)
• All ventilation
  from the wind

The building should also improve the human environment and
be reproducible/smart- ie not unreasonably expensive. They are aiming for
beyond LEED Platinum @ $400s/f. With the exception of the monitoring and
control system, there are no massive technological jumps in this building. The
current design process is characterized by a weekly three-hour all-consultant
meeting, the cost of which they hope to be able to document as a cost saving
when the overall process is complete. Lessons learned:

• the IDP process
  is costly and time consuming but completely necessary to meet the high design
  goals for this building.
• The IDP process
  is a good way to protect against the ‘slash and burn' of value engineering.
• We must bridge
  the capital funding vs. operational funding chasm if this process is to become
  widespread in institutional buildings

South East False Creek Net Zero Initiative
presented by
Esteban Undurraga of Recollective Consulting

This building is part of the new
Olympic precinct at SE False Creek, and has been selected to be part of the Net
Zero Initiative. This means that the building should achieve an energy balance
on an annual basis. When completed it will be the first multi residential net
zero building in Canada.
The building is one of three that sits on top of a common podium (a proposed
supermarket) that is not part of the Net Zero Initiative. The other two
buildings are an affordable rental housing building and a market housing
building. The configuration of the buildings and the associated overshadowing
and outlook issues mean that it is not possible for the seniors building to
install enough pv generating capacity on site, so the plan is to supplement
this with offsite generated wind or solar power. The building will be heated
largely using waste heat from the supermarket refrigeration. It will also have
a passive solar hot water system. Electrical conservation will also be strongly
encouraged. Real time electricity monitors called ‘Powertabs' developed at UBC
will be installed in each suite. The monitors have a surround that glows green
if demand in the suite is under the established consumption target and red if
its over. Key issues were:

• Need an
  executive decision maker in such a complex project
• Longer and more
  expensive front end design
• Difficulty of
  sharing value driven goals
• Early design
  stages hold the key.
• Creative
  synergies deliver a better building- no such thing as a crazy idea- just a
  series of options.
• Advanced buildings are about more than
  just design- they must also be business models.

Cascadia's Buildings in
Balance series includes workshops and seminars on the most current and
innovative issues in sustainable design. We look forward to the next event!