Staying with the Olympic theme from last week’s post on the Vancouver Convention Centre, the Southeast False Creek Olympic Village is another spectacular example of sustainable building in Vancouver. The Olympic Village will house the athletes throughout the games. Afterward, it will become the home of over 16,000 residents. The following is a link to the diversity of uses that will be or are already included in the development.
A website called “The Challenge Series” has been set up to help educate the public about the Olympic Village’s sustainable features. A well-designed booklet describing the sustainable features of the development is available on the site in pdf format. One that particularly caught my attention was the Water + Building Landscape section (See Cover Above). It explains many sustainable water strategies employed throughout. Some highlights include:
The design team recognized the size was not large enough to handle all of the stormwater in the constructed wetland incorporated into Hinge Park. As a result, the team prioritized the water into a two-tier system. The first tier was considered the “cleaner” water that came from the rooftops and podium sections of the building. This water was directed to the cisterns in the basements of each building. The water was then used to flush toilets, supply water features, or irrigate the landscape. Additional water overflowed the cisterns and entered the South False Creek. The second tier included “dirtier” water. This water came from the roadways and other areas. The water from these areas was directed into the constructed wetland or underground gravel/sand infiltration cells.
The development reduced potable water use by 40 percent.
The site plan incorporates a number of water features that utilize the water collected on the site. The circulation through the water features provides a means of making what would otherwise be invisible visible, while at the same time improving the quality of the water.
287,000 s.f. of green roof covers the development. The roofs include both extensive and intensive green roofs. This was in part because the City of Vancouver mandated that 50% of the roofs be green roofs.
The City also mandated the inclusion of urban agriculture at a rate of 24sf for 30% of the units whose balconies were less than 100sf.
The development has received LEED-ND Platinum certification. I look forward to seeing it one day when I return to Vancouver. There have been a number of articles on the development, but I highly recommend reading the information found on The Challenge Series website.
The winter Olympics just kicked off with the opening ceremonies from BC Place Stadium in Vancouver. But serving as the International Broadcasting hub for the games is the Vancouver Convention Centre— the world’s first LEED Canada Platinum rated convention building. The 1.2 million SF center boasts a 6-acre green roof, which also now makes it the largest green roof in North America.
The roof is planted with over 400,000 native plants and collects rainwater for irrigation which contributes to the buildings stormwater credits as well. Other interesting sustainable features include marine and shoreline habitat restoration. Fish habitat was actually built into the buildings foundations. The building also uses seawater for heating and cooling and incorporates on-site water treatment.
The following video “Vancouver’s 6 Acre Living Green Roof”, posted on You Tube gives a great sense of the scale and context of the green roof. The landscape architect who worked on the project, Bruce Hemstock, discusses the plants used, soil media and the idea behind habitat linking into urban centers that is beginning to be made possible with the inclusion of more green roof in our cities. Interestingly enough he says one of the biggest challenges of the project was initially convincing people that it was the right thing to do.
With a son who is a sophomore in college and a daughter as a high school senior, I have managed to spend a lot of time visiting college campuses over the past few years. One of the things that I have paid particular attention to (and seen an huge increase in during the past two years) is the focus on sustainability. My strong hunch is that schools are incorporating sustainable technologies because this generation of smart, college age youth demand it.
Many college campuses now sport LEED certification on at least one building – my son’s dorm at the University of Richmond (Lakeview Hall) is LEED registered and undergoing certification. It is one of nine buildings at the University which is either certified, or in process of being certified as LEED with the USGBC. Locally, Vanderbilt University completed the LEED certified The Commons at Vanderbilt residential housing complex in 2008. As I have traversed the country and seen what must be dozens of (mostly) smaller liberal arts colleges, I have seen organic gardens and solar panels at Whitman College, windmills and biomass generators at Middlebury, local and organic foods at Skidmore, a unique “homestead” intentional environmental community at Denison, beautiful rain gardens at Emory and the list goes on.
I also found a interesting resource online called the College Sustainability Report Card for 2010 (www.greenreportcard.org), This report card basically looks at environmental sustainability at over 325 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada based on 48 indicators used to evaluate performance within four categories.
One of those categories is “green building”. It was heartening to see that 44% of the schools have had at least one LEED-certified green building or are in process of constructing one and a whopping three-quarters of all of the schools have adopted green building policies that specify minimum performance levels such as LEED certification for new construction.
I was particularly interested in taking a closer look at some of the successes that I have witnessed at several of the schools that I have visited especially as they relate to green infrastructure. I found some additional information on Emory, Allegheny, Middlebury, University of Vermont and Macalester.
WATER CONSERVATION
As a part of Emory University in Atlanta’s overall commitment to sustainability (with over 1 million square feet in LEED certified buildings), Emory has incorporated many innovative water-conservation technologies.. Particularly impressive to me was their implementation of rainwater harvesting and condensate recovery, especially in light of the fact that Atlanta suffered an historic drought event in the summer of 2007. On Emory’s whole campus they have to date included 6 cisterns with a collective size of over 350,000 gallons for both toilet flushing and for irrigation as well as a condensate recovery technology for over 4 million gallons of water per year.
In their new freshman residence complex including Ignatius Few Hall and Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Hall, rainwater and condensate collection is diverted to an 89,000 gallon reservoir underground which can provide adequate volume to provide 2170 gallons per day needed to flush all toilets int eh buildings. The rainwater is collected form the roof, then filtered and slowed through a bioswale system outsde of the building and then into the below grade cistern. The condensate harvest provides a reliable source of water to supplement rainfall during those months from May through September. It is estimated that the condensate harvests is adding 300,000 gallons per year to the system.
At the nearby Whitehead Biomedical Research Facility Building, completed in 2001, the engineers devised a system of piping condensate back into nearby cooling towers to use as make-up water. This system conserves water AND diverts 2.5 million (that’s 2,500,000) gallons a year from the sanitary sewer system.
Video About Emory University’s Sustainability Efforts
GREEN ROOFS
It seems to me that many, many schools are incorporating green roofs as that technology provides one of the most visible elements to show-off sustainable design. In every school we visited, if there WAS a green roof, it was highlighted on the student led campus tours. The green roof were touted for their well-documented benefits such as longer roof life, reduced cost of heating and cooling, stormwater runoff reduction and habitat.
Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania impressed me with the well designed green roof on the Vukovich Center for Communication Arts. It is located within the topography of the campus site allowing for a fully accessible roof (entering the building at the green roof on the high side and entering on a lower level to the main campus commons or quad –type area. The roof includes extensive and semi-intensive depths and features lawn space as well as sedums and native grasses with an interesting incorporation of stones and cedar decking through the rooftop.
Middlebury College, also in Vermont, provided a sloped green roof above the Atwater Dining Hall. I was interested in seeing their notation that in addition to the traditional green roof benefits that I have seen listed in may locations, Middlebury includes improved acoustical insulation, noting that green roof systems can reduce airborne sound levels by 40 to 50 decibels.
Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota impressed me, not in size but in determination. The two green roofs on campus were the result of student designs and even some student labor! The first green roof at Macalester was a 300 s.f. tray system installed above a walkway between tow residence halls and the newer 1350 s.f. green roof on Kagin Commons. I happened to be on campus the day the Kagin Commons green roof was unveiled.
I believe the influence of these campuses and so many others will influence the bright minds of our next generation of decision makers and leaders.
The Pinnacle at Symphony Place, a 29-story office building in downtown Nashville, opened this month. The building includes 520,000sf of Class A office space. It is home to law offices of Bass Berry and Simms and the headquarters of Pinnacle Financial Partners. The building designed by the award winning architectural firm Pickard Chilton with Nashville architects EOA Architects is anticipated to receive LEED-Silver certification from the United States Green Building Council (USGBC). With the inclusion of a 28,000sf rooftop garden, the building contributes significantly to Nashville’s ever growing green infrastructure
The green roof, designed by our office, is located on the 7th floor above the parking garage and includes a series of spaces that can be enjoyed by the building’s tenants. The area is comprised of 9,400sf of pedestal pavers and 19,000sf of vegetated areas. One hundred percent (100%) of the pavers were selected to exceed the minimum solar reflectance standards established by the LEED rating system. The striping pattern continues the prominent vertical fins on the facade of the building into the rooftop garden area. The planting areas are a combination of extensive green roof (planting media depths ranging between 5-9”) and semi-intensive areas (planting media depths ranging between 18”-30”). The semi-intensive areas were planted to reflect a more traditional landscape around each of the gathering areas and provide areas for trees to shade and scale the spaces. In an effort to establish a more pedestrian scaled environment and additional interest a series of 12ft pyramidal trellis structures were incorporated in the extensive green roof areas.
It is estimated that the green roof can retain nearly 67% of the annual rainfall falling directly on it. In addition, it reduces the peak flows, is significantly cooler than neighboring conventional roofs, reduces thermal heat gains in the water that enters the stormwater system, and provides a beautiful space to look upon and enjoy.
We are honored to have been a part of such an exciting project and look forward to watching it grow. We have been pleasantly surprised by the significant growth the plant material has shown in a short time period. As it matures, we will keep you up to date on its progress.
According to author Ajay Garde, the LEED-ND committee has taken “the technical credentials of LEED and the criteria of New Urbanism for neighborhood design and created LEED-ND.” This approach may undermine the use of green criteria, as developers may focus on New Urbanist criteria instead. These drawbacks mean that LEED-ND is suitable as a supplement to, but not as a replacement for, local planning for sustainability that considers projects on a case-by-case basis within the local context.
My interpretation of Mr. Garde’s article is that LEED-ND is a great start, but it may not be the only answer to ensuring the absolute best development practices. Likewise, typical Best Management Practices (BMPs) for stormwater quality alone within a sprawl setting do not necessarily equal the best solution for a sustainable future…but they too are a good start.
One of the conclusions in the study suggests that LEED-ND certification is weighted more heavily for projects based on their location, layout and density with less emphasis on green infrastructure and technology. Mr. Garde suggests “that more points should be awarded for criteria such as solar orientation, onsite renewable energy sources, and other criteria from the green construction and technology category that contribute to energy and water efficiency.” I agree. Couldn’t we have well designed projects in appropriate locations that incorporate green infrastructure and technology?
Often in the real estate business, developers will look for the proverbial low-hanging fruit. If a developer can attain LEED-ND certification by Smart Location & Linkage and Neighborhood Pattern & Design with minimal emphasis on Green Infrastructure & Building, it’s probably safe to assume many will choose that route. Development costs vs. value and profit (short term vs. long term) are considered. Government regulations and entitlements are also a part of the equation.
LEED-ND is a voluntary and market-driven rating system. If a developer has a choice of developing in an urban area with more regulations but the incentive (faster approval times, increased density, etc.) of attaining LEED-ND certification or higher vs. developing in a suburban area with less regulation, which will they choose? This will continue to play out as the economy recovers.
How do government officials and agencies, planners and non-profits create either market-driven incentives, government regulations or a combination of both to ensure future development is as sustainable as possible in terms of social aspects, economics, and the balance between natural and man-made environments?
These are the questions and this is the challenge moving forward, but it’s comforting to know that progress is being made every day.
This Thursday the Sustainable Sites Initiative will open its pilot program and begin accepting applications for projects that are greater than 2,000sf. They are looking for a wide variety of project types. According to their website, “pilot projects will be selected to ensure a broad range of project types, sizes, budgets, geographic diversity and phase of development.” The deadline is February 15, 2010. More information should be available Thursday. Feedback from the pilot program is intended to tweak the system and offer content for a technical reference manual.
The Sustainable Sites Initiative was created in conjunction with the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, and the United States Botanical Garden. It is envisioned that these guidelines will eventually be incorporated into the United States Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Building rating system. The Sustainable Sites Program is intended to apply to sites with or without buildings. Click Here to learn more.
Cover of Water + Building Landscape (Chapter 6)
Green Infrastructure Digest 
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