This, it turns out, is the key to about a third of the solution to climate change and a good deal of human happiness in most industrialized countries, where buildings account for over a third of greenhouse gases and 90 per cent of peoples’ time.

When buildings are designed to elegantly tap into nature’s flows of sunlight, water and air, a graceful green simplicity is achieved. Sunlight brightens the indoors, supplemented with ultra-efficient and soft LED lights. The building breathes in the warmth or coolness from the ground and air using heat pumps to keep temperatures comfortable. Blue roofs funnel rainwater for non-potable uses and a garden of tasty fruits and vegetables on the rooftop, which doubles as a lovely place for summer parties.

It also turns out building to this type of specification can generate a positive net present value, and enhance peoples’ productivity, while also resulting in a 70 per cent lighter environmental footprint.

Canada has experienced a rapid growth in our green buildings stock, though most of our buildings are far from the smart, efficient and elegant ideals that are now both possible and cost effective.

According to a recent report by the Canada Green Building Council and the Delphi Group, there has been a marked increase in market penetration for LEED-certified buildings in Canada over the past five years. Only 0.8 per cent of new construction floor space in Canada built between 2005 and 2009 was LEED-certified, a number that jumped to 10.7 per cent for the 2010-2014 period.

Some sectors have shown greater leadership than others, namely those in the commercial and institutional sectors. Nearly 30 per cent of institutional buildings built in Canada between 2010 and 2014 have been LEED-certified, followed by 22 per cent in the commercial real estate space.

While LEED is certainly the biggest player in the green buildings space, there are a number of additional certification regimes that have cropped up in recent years as well.

One offshoot of LEED is the Cascadia Living Building Challenge, which “calls for the creation of building projects at all scales that operate as cleanly, beautifully and efficiently as nature’s architecture.” The VanDusen Botanical Garden and Visitor Centre in our ranking was created with Cascadia certification in mind.

The WELL Building Standard, meanwhile, is the world’s first building standard focused exclusively on human health and wellness. It is designed to blend best practices in design and construction together with evidence-based medical and scientific research. The MNP Tower in Vancouver has applied to be Canada’s first WELL-certified office building.

This growth in Canada, however positive, pales in comparison to developments in Europe. The EU has mandated that by 2020, all new buildings within its boundaries will be “nearly zero-energy buildings.”

What holds us back in Canada are old conventions and short-term thinking, but which our political leaders have recently begun to express a sense of urgency about rectifying.

As Roark put it: “The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.”

Fortunately, as the following ranking make clear, there are a growing number of people with eyes wide open toward a future of elegant and efficient buildings.

Click here to go back to the ranking landing page.

The post Spotlight on green buildings in Canada appeared first on Corporate Knights.

University and college buildings

Jim Pattison Centre of Excellence, Okanagan College:
Gold (1st place)
City: Kelowna, B.C.
•Windows indicate when they can be opened to maximize cooling
•Floors are polished concrete, heated and cooled within-floor radiant system
•Solar chimneys draw warm air up and out of the building
•Building’s mechanical and electrical service sare exposed, where possible, to demonstrate technology used –part of the building’s teaching and “living lab” capability

Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability, University of British Columbia:
Silver (2nd place)
City: Vancouver, B.C.
•100% of all reclaimed water originates from the building and campus sewer system, is treated onsite and reused within the building
•Thin floor plates allow light into the building from both sides
•Wood sourced from forests affected by mountain pine beetle infestation
•Living wall shades interior space from late afternoon sun in summer while allowing sunlight into interior spaces in winter

Mona Campbell Building, Dalhousie University
Bronze (3rd place)
City: Halifax, N.S.
•First university building in Atlantic Canada to become LEED Gold certified
•Built using Bubbledeck technology, which uses hollow, plastic balls, reinforced by steel within concrete slabs to reduce the amount of concrete used
•Features a bike room with two showers, 36 lockers and 32 indoor bike hanger racks
•90% of construction and demolition waste materials diverted from landfills

Hospitals

Sechelt Hospital
Gold (1st place)
City: Sechelt, B.C.
•Hospital includes 125 boreholes to provide zero-carbon energy for the building’s heating and cooling, distributed through radiant slabs
•Patients look out over green roof combined with white roofs
•Local wood, stone and landscape elements echo the local ecology and materials
•Designed with the goal of being North America’s first carbon-neutral hospital

St. Joseph’s HealthcareWest 5th Campus
Silver (2nd place)
City: Hamilton, Ont.
•Site lighting layout is designed with no light spillage to adjacent properties, limiting light pollution
•One of first healthcare facilities in Ontario to beconstructed on brownfield site
•Minimal solar heat gain through a predominant east-west orientation
•PVC roof toreduce heat island effect

Bridgepoint Hospital
Bronze (3rd place)
City: Toronto
•Mechanical equipment contains no harmful chlorofluorocarbons or hydro-chlorofluorocarbons that cause ozone depletion
•Alla dhesives, sealants, paints and coatings used in the building are low-to-no VOC
•Campus filled with garden spaces where patients and community members can enjoy therapeutic benefits of the outdoors

Office buildings

TELUS Garden
Gold (tied for 1st place)
City: Vancouver
Owner: Westbank
•10,000 square feet of outdoor garden terraces on six different levels
•Rainwater capture and recycling system for grey water and irrigation
•Over 300 solar panels produce approximately 65,000 kWh per year
•District energy system uses heat transferred from TELUS’s nearby data centre
•Fully integrated smart building program controls all systems

MEC Head Office
Gold (tied for 1st place)
City: Vancouver
Owner: MEC
•Building assembled in piecesand can be taken apart at the endof its useful life
•Artificial lighting only needed for a few hours of workday
•Heating/cooling provided by 20 geothermal wells optimized through ground source heat pump
•Passive ventilation system draws fresh air through three vertical stacks

A Grander View
Bronze (3rd place)
City: Kitchener, Ont.
Owner: Carpenter Properties
•Landscaping requires no irrigation and provides habitats for native species
•Automated exterior window shades help mitigate solar heat gain and glare
•Buried concrete earth tubes used to pretreat ventilation air
•Low-flow fixtures throughout, including water less urinal
•Recycled content used in construction, including stone from demolished church and retired river tunnel

Other public buildings

VanDusen Botanical Garden and Visitor Centre
Gold (1st place)
City: Vancouver
•Structure has been created tomeet the Cascadia Living Building Challenge standard
•Majority of the roof is finished as a green roof; one of the roof “petals” is a rainwater catch-basin and another holds a solar hot water tube array
•Net zero water and net zero energy use
•Wide roof overhangs help to prevent heat gain and also provide rain protection

Bibliothèque du Boisé
Silver (2nd place)
City: Montreal
•Transparent partitions and open concept plan mean that 90% of occupied floor area has views to the exterior
•Two-storey format minimizes the building footprint, opening up space to plant 105 trees and 5,000 shrubs
•Durable materials with minimum maintenance requirements selected for longevity

Centre for Green Cities at Evergreen Brick Works
Bronze (3rd place)
City: Toronto
•Operable windows throughout office space are augmented by cross ventilation, ceiling fans and three solar chimneys
•Building has programmable lighting control system that automatically shuts off lights when there’s enough natural light
•High-performance envelope reduces energy costs for the building

Click here to go back to the ranking landing page.

The post 2016 Green Building Review results appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Corporate Knights’ editorial staff then shortlisted the top five or six buildings in each of four categories, and a panel of expert judges voted on their top three picks, with each first choice earning 3 points, second choice counting for 2 points and third choice for 1 point.

Expert judges:

Michael Brooks, CEO, REALpac
Randal Froebelius, Past Chair, BOMA Canada
Thomas Mueller, President & CEO, Canada Green Building Council

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Click here to go back to the ranking landing page.

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