Living up to the challenge - MARCIE GOOD

The collection of old warehouses, industrial buildings, an auto body shop and empty stretches of pavement southeast of Vancouver's Main Street and Terminal Avenue is hardly a utopian vision.

In the minds of a team from Stantec, however, it is.

A group of 12 architects, engineers and urban designers from the Vancouver company recently won second place in the "most visionary" category in an international contest sponsored by the Seattle-based Cascadia Region chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council, which includes member offices in British Columbia.

The 19 entries in the competition had to meet the criteria of the so-called Living Building Challenge, which calls for ultra-green sustainable buildings capable of meeting their own energy and water needs using renewable resources. Two winners were chosen in each of the "most visionary" and "realizable" categories. Stantec, the only B.C. winner, picked up $1,000 (U.S.) for its prize.
For their entry project, the Stantec team chose a rundown, seven-acre Vancouver site that is ripe for renewal. The model they envisioned features 16 buildings offering residential, light industrial and commercial components, all of which would make maximum use of rainwater, daylight and solar power to meet energy, heat and water needs.

The design team focused not only on reducing waste but also reusing it, outlining methods to collect compostable material from kitchens and restaurants and transform it into heat, power, vehicle fuel and soil. The end result was an ideal community that could provide its own energy, heat and water, with enough surplus to sell to others.

It might sound like an Al-Gorian pipe dream, but according to Stantec intern architect Max Richter, this kind of community is closer than we think.

"We wanted to push the envelope, but at the same time we wanted it to be feasible," Mr. Richter said of the Stantec entry.

"We're using technology that exists. We're not relying on NASA to develop something that would make this work."

Along with the sustainable energy and water measures, the Stantec team proposed planting trees on the site to help improve the soil after decades of industrial pollution. It also scored points for choosing a site close to the Main Street SkyTrain station and locating workplaces in a high-density area.

Rather than tearing down the old warehouses on the site, the Stantec designers proposed making them more energy-efficient with a covering of photovoltaic panels and recycled glass. The skin would collect water and act as a ventilator, responding to changes in airflow, humidity and temperature. This idea was particularly noted by one of the competition's three judges, Jason McLennan, executive director of the Cascadia Region chapter who drew up the guidelines for the Living Building Challenge in the mid-1990s.

Among the 16 criteria for a living building is the need for "net zero water," meaning that the building's annual water allotment is the amount that falls on the site; it might draw from a municipal supply sometimes, but must contribute an equivalent amount of water to other sites. It also treats its own water on site.

Similarly, the criterion for "net zero energy" means the building provides for its own power needs through renewable energy generation, such as solar or wind. When sunlight is low, it might draw from an outside power grid, but it can also sell excess power.

Other requirements include that the building generate no pollution, and that it improve the health and diversity of the local ecosystem. Each of the 16 criteria have been demonstrated in existing buildings, but a living building that meets all of the standards has yet to be built.

However, Mr. McLennan expects to see one within the next 18 months: a classroom building at Cambrian College in Sudbury, Ont., is in the final stages of design while three projects in Portland, Ore., are vying to be the first.

"There would be no barrier, technologically, to these buildings — we've proven that," Mr. McLennan said.

"The biggest barrier is attitudinal, or human-based, barriers. Right after that would be economic ones."

Because ultra-green buildings cost more at the outset, Mr. McLennan says the most likely candidates to build them are institutional. That's part of the reason the Stantec group chose the Main and Terminal site: It's owned by the City of Vancouver, and thus their theoretical project could conceivably go ahead some day. (A Stantec study of a living building concluded that, over a 100-year period, it would cost less to build, operate and take down than a structure built to LEED Gold standards.) Stantec's current projects include the Vancouver Aquarium expansion and the Greater Vancouver Regional District's water treatment plant, both of which are aiming for LEED Gold rating. The water plant design collects methane from waste and uses it to generate power and heat, an idea that was used in the competition entry for the Main and Terminal site.

The team from Stantec, which has 390 employees in its Vancouver office, spent about a month on company time designing their entry. Mr. Richter said they took part in the Living Building Challenge contest to encourage other designers and developers to expand their ideas about what a sustainable building or community could be.

That, too, was the rationale behind the Living Building Challenge. For most of the 20th century, Mr. McLennan explains, building practices reflected architect Le Corbusier's famous line that houses are "machines for living," guzzling energy, heat and water and spewing out waste. When he drew up the guidelines, Mr. McLennan replaced the machine metaphor with that of a flower, envisioning structures that would be as much a part of their natural environment as a perennial plant.

The Living Building Challenge was recently endorsed as a national program by the Canada Green Building Council, which notes that buildings currently contribute 30 per cent of this country's greenhouse-gas emissions.