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december 2008/ january 2009

Volume 58 Number 6

Editor

Peter Sobchak Upfront

Dave Gabriele Legal Editor

Jeffrey W. Lem Contributors

Silvio Ciarlandini, Sheri Craig, Luigi Ferrara, Priscilla Li, Jason Sahlani, Andrew Sobchak Art Director

Ellie Robinson Outside the Box layout

Kamilla Nikolaev Circulation Manager

Beata Olechnowicz Tel: (416) 416-442-5600 ext 3543 Reader Services

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Features 8. Blue gold / The current confluence of technology and social pressure for environmental sustainability suggests it is time the development industry implemented stormwater reuse programs that change our perception of it from waste product to resource.

By Andrew Sobchak

10. A Generation of Generalists / Why Chris Magwood gave up his summer holidays to teach something that might be unteachable -- sustainable building.

By Jason Sahlani 12. Designing low-cost housing with Outside the Box strategies / Our fourth annual Outside the Box competition, in partnership with the Institute without Boundaries, challenged 16 teams of students to design low-cost and environmentfriendly housing for the tropical climate of Costa Rica. By Sheri Craig

Departments 4 Editor’s Notes

5 Upfront

22 Viewpoint

Cover image courtesy of Institute without Boundaries Above images courtesy of: Chris Magwood, Perin Ruttonsha

23 Infosource

editor’s notes

Think with the world Sometimes we are reminded in positive ways – like the popularity and growth of the green movement – other times by more painful ones – like the inescapable intensification of the global economic crisis – that we are all connected. There is no such thing as the other side of the world now. What happens in developing regions affects us, and obviously the reverse is true, so it is incumbent on all of us with the ability to do some good within our world to create new models that are collaborative and holistic and that consider ecology, social equity, cultural values and economic feasibility, in order to re-draw the built environment map.

And this map desperately needs re-drawing. In developing countries, over a billion people live in urban slums or in the streets without shelter. By the year 2030, three billion people in the developing world will need housing; this means 96,000 housing units per day are needed to give people shelter.

Which is why this year Building wanted to align our Outside the Box awards programme with an organization that is taking issues facing the developing world seriously, and collaborating with the Institute without Boundaries (IwB), who have embarked on a multiyear endeavour called the World House project to design a sustaining, universal and healthy human dwelling, was the perfect match.

To practise design effectively today we need to eliminate boundaries between designers and other professions, and between designers

and the local and global constituents they serve. This is what the World House Costa Rica project was intended to do, and the results featured in this issue are impressive and encouraging.

But even more encouraging, in a way, is how a class of grades 4, 5 and 6 students at Elizabeth Simcoe Jr. Public School in Toronto loved the idea of the World House project and integrated it into their curriculum in a special class project. For example, Daniel and his team designed the “super subterranean earthquake-proof house” seen above. It is 20 feet by 20 feet “with an additional ‘moat’ to hold in water, to allow a bit of movement in case of earthquakes,” and “is suspended by being attached to trees with cables, and using reclaimed bottles from hotels to create a sort of raft.” Materials used include concrete (“so water won’t go through”), wood from the Guanacaste tree, metal (“because it is hard to break and looks neat”), glass (“so they can melt down to make new stuff”), and plastic bottles.

Awareness – both in terms of what needs to be done and what can be done – is key in starting the move towards addressing the problems we face on this planet, and the earlier we can start the better. Which is why programmes that create awareness at all levels – students, professionals, young, old – are so valuable, and why Building joined forces with IwB’s World House project this year, because to make a difference we need to think outside the box. B

Peter Sobchak

Building welcomes your opinions.

E-mail your comments to psobchak@building.ca

WATCH Is the fallout over from the U.S. subprime market issues? / On September 18, Ross Moore, executive vice president and director of market & economic research at Colliers International, gave an outlook of U.S. economic performance for 2009 at the Colliers International 6th annual Market Outlook Breakfast at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

READ LEED for Core & Shell: A smart and fast approach to certification by Dr. Mir F. Ali / Buildings which do not apply themselves to the LEED rating system may be devalued in the future, but LEED-CS gives developers a unique opportunity to pre-certify a building before it is finished, then once complete the developer can submit documentation to secure a final LEED rating.

ExPLORE Holcim Awards ceremony 2008 North America

Life after the back cover...

what’s on BUILDING.CA

upfront

North America’s largest ‘Eco-Business Zone’ landing near Toronto

TORONTO — Partners in Project Green, a growing community of businesses working to green their bottom line, has unveiled its green strategy that will transform the 12,000 hectares of industrial and commercial land surrounding Toronto Pearson International Airport into North America’s largest ‘eco-business zone.’ The initiative, a partnership between Toronto and Region Conservation (TRCA) and the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA), will deliver programming to help businesses reduce resource costs, uncover new business opportunities, and address everyday operational challenges in a cost-effective manner.

The Pearson Eco-Business Zone includes an estimated 12,500 businesses and approximately 355,000 jobs, making it Canada’s largest area for employment. Annually, this area consumes approximately 5.8 million Megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity, 46 million Gigajoules (GJ) of natural gas, and 109 million square metres of water, resulting in 1.7 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions related to energy consumption.

The area falls under four municipal jurisdictions: The City of Toronto, Region of Peel, City of Brampton and the City of Mississauga, which were all strategically involved in the planning.

To date more than 200 businesses have been involved in the development of the project For more information www.partnersinprojectgreen.com, www.trca.on.ca, www.gtaa.com.

sq.-ft. LEED Gold-certified building will house the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry – Windsor program, a joint program between Ontario’s Windsor University, the University of Western Ontario, as well as London and Windsor hospitals.

The Medical Education Building is an expansion of Diamond and Schmitt’s 2003 Toldo Health Education Centre at Windsor University. The expansion includes anatomy laboratories, a clinical learning suite and a specialized video conferencing system which enables the facility to be connected to the Schulich School of Medicine at the University of Western Ontario.

The building features a three-storey interior court which now connects the two wings. A three-storey living plant bio-filter, a vertical hydroponic system that acts as an indoor air purifier, is a system that Diamond and Schmitt helped pioneer in 2003.

For more information www.dsai.ca, www.uwindsor.ca

Construction begins on ProLogis Park

CALEDON, Ont. — Construction has begun on the 416,043sq.-ft. ProLogis Park Bolton, a speculative distribution building developed by ProLogis’ Mississauga, Ont. office and designed

by Toronto-based Ware Malcomb. Mississauga-based Ledcor Industries Ltd. is the general contractor for the project, located in the Equity Prestige Business Park at the corner of Pillsworth Road and Parr Boulevard in the Town of Caledon.

Metropolitan Towers gets the BOMA BESt

VANCOUVER — The Metropolitan Towers in Vancouver, owned by Gateway Management Corporation of Delta, B.C., is the first residential building to receive the BOMA BESt Level I certification by the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) of Canada. The certification for the 30-floor building is the first for the multi-unit residential building class.

BOMA BESt is a new program which combines the old Go Green and Go Green Plus green building certification programs.

Although Go Green focused on office buildings, many BOMA members’ portfolios contain a mix of residential, office and industrial properties which can all benefit from energy conservation.

BOMA BESt has the ability to efficiently undertake technical certification of buildings in these different classes.

“BOMA BESt is about providing a quality certification program, a cost-effective way to make buildings more environmentally friendly and cut operating costs,” stated Diana OslerZortea, president of BOMA Canada.

For more information www.metropolitantowers.com, www.gatewaypm.com

Diamond and Schmitt designing a school of medicine

WINDSOR, Ont. — Toronto-based Diamond and Schmitt Architects, in association with DiMaio Design Associates of Windsor, Ont., have designed the $24-million Medical Education Building at the University of Windsor. The 65,000-

The building construction will consist of pre-cast concrete wall panels, a 32-foot clear ceiling height and both grade-level and dock-high truck doors designed on a 21.6 acre site. Other components of the project include: parking for low-emitting and fuel-efficient vehicles; 20 per cent domestic water use reduction; energy efficient lighting; diversion of 75 per cent of construction waste; use of recycled content and regional materials; EnergyStar white membrane roof system; refrigerants that minimize emissions of ozone depleting compounds; and reduced water use through drought resistant landscaping and high efficiency irrigation. These features make ProLogis Park Bolton a contender for LEED certification upon completion, projected for March, 2009.

For more information www.ledcor.com. building

december 2008/january 2009

upfront

Introducing Build Toronto and Invest Toronto

TORONTO — The Toronto Economic Development Corporation (TEDCO), a wholly owned subsidiary of the City of Toronto, has appointed the new TEDCO Transition Board of Directors to oversee the transition of TEDCO to Build Toronto and Invest Toronto. The new Chair of the Transition Board is Kyle Rae, a member of the City of Toronto’s Executive Committee, Chair of the Economic Development Committee and Director of the previous TEDCO Board.

Build Toronto will focus on the development of the city’s 7,000 properties which have an estimated value of $17.9 billion.

Invest Toronto will work on attracting international investment to Toronto. The Transition Board is currently searching for new CEOs and private sector Board directors for both corporations TEDCO, incorporated in 1986, owns more than 500 acres of land, manages 580,000 square feet of building space and leases properties to more than 60 companies. As an Ontario Business Corporation, TEDCO plays a key role in brokering private and public sector partnerships to advance city building initiatives.

For more information www.tedco.ca

Student housing goes LEED in Hamilton and Calgary

HAMILTON, Ont. / CALGARY — Hamilton-based Dundurn Capital Partners and subsidiaries, in association with Enermodal Engineering of Kitchener, Ont., and R.F. Lintack Architects of Hamilton have completed the first LEED Platinum student residence building in Canada. At $20 million and 225,000 square feet, the West Village Suites located in Hamilton is the largest LEED Platinum project in Canada. The nine-storey building is estimated to be 57 per cent more efficient than Canada’s Model National Energy Code for Buildings.

West Village Suites achieves its high efficiency through innovations such as insulated concrete form construction and an evacuated heat pipe solar system which includes 60 solar panels used for domestic hot water. Other features include a rain water capture system that collects and re-uses gray water in the toilet system, EnergyStar appliances and low-flow water fixtures.

Each suite comes equipped with a heat-recovery system that heats fresh in-coming air with stale exhaust air. Up to 75 per cent of each living space will be lit by natural light due to large doubleglazed windows. Additionally, a real-time digital “watt-meter” in the common area of each suite lets residents know how much energy they are using at any given moment.

Calgary-based GEC Architects and construction management firm Stuart Olson of Calgary have built a LEED Silver student residence building for the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT). The $53-million building, named The Tower, is a 22-storey residence that adds an additional 715 spaces for students, and features floor-to-ceiling windows for increased natural lighting, low-flow showers and plumbing fixtures, radiant heating in the walls, and a heat recovery system.

For more information www.westvillagesuites.ca, www.enermodal.com, www.sait.ab.ca, www.gecarch.com.

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december 2008/january 2009

Minto unveils Canada’s first LEED Silver home

TORONTO — Ottawa-based real estate developer Minto Communities, one of the founding sponsors of the Canada Green Building Council’s (CaGBC) LEED Canada for Homes case study program, is developing its first LEED-certified homes in East Gwillimbury, Ont. The project includes Canada’s first

LEED Silver home in Minto’s new Harvest Hills community.

The CaGBC’s national case study program is developing a formal rating system for LEED homes that will establish a long-term environmentally sustainable program for new homes. Findings from the study will be integrated into a formal LEED Canada for Homes program, scheduled to be released in 2009.

“We believe in building energy efficient, healthier, green homes, and we want to prove it to our customers, through independent third party testing and verification to certify that our homes are as good as we say they are,” said Andrew Pride, vice president, Minto Green Team. Minto, which certified all of its Toronto hi-rise buildings to LEED standards, was awarded the Green Builder of the Year Award at the 2008 Ontario Home Builders Awards.

For more information www.minto.com

Why stop at a building when you could LEED a neighbourhood?

CALGARY — Toronto-based Canada Lands Company (CLC), in consultation with Enermodal Engineering of Kitchener, Ont., is completing the 200-acre Currie Barracks redevelopment site in Calgary. Currie Barracks is the first project in Canada to earn Gold certification in the LEED-ND (Neighbourhood Development) program, a new type of rating system designed to determine if a neighbourhood design incorporates the principles of smart growth, new urbanism, and green building.

When complete, Currie Barracks is expected to accommodate approximately 3,000 housing units of various types, 200,000 square feet of retail services in a mixed-use format, and 300,000 square feet of office space. Its design includes

upfront efficient housing and use of space, and encourages alternative forms of transportation through a network of sidewalks, pathways, bikeways, and transit routes. Street and traffic lights will incorporate LED technology to reduce typical energy consumption levels by 30 per cent.

The United States Green Building Council (USGBC) had to certify Currie Barracks as there is currently no LEED-ND certification process through the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC).

For more information www.enermodal.com, www.clcl.ca

Honeywell opens LEED office complex

MARKHAM, Ont. — Honeywell has opened a new Canadian headquarters for their Honeywell Building Solutions business in the Town of Markham by consolidating two of its offices and moving approximately 400 employees into a LEED-targeted complex. The 68,000-sq.-ft. workspace incorporates several Honeywell solutions to help the Markham facility reach a LEED Silver certification. This includes the Honeywell Enterprise Buildings Integrator (EBI), a facility management platform that actively monitors and manages air quality and climate control throughout the facility, optimizing comfort while reducing energy consumption. Honeywell systems for fire alarm, access control, intrusion protection and digital video monitoring are also integrated into the building design, and managed through EBI.

Other green features of the building include: technologies that recover waste heat from exhaust systems to heat the building; a cistern that captures rainwater from the roof to reduce the amount of treated water needed to remove waste, saving almost 2.5 million litres of water per year; site lighting to minimize “light pollution” of the night sky; and low-volatile organic compound (VOC) paints, coatings, sealants and adhesives to create a healthier work environment and reduce smog.

For more information www.honeywell.com.

Holcim North American Awards handed out in Montreal

MONTREAL — The winners of the second North American Holcim Awards competition for Sustainable Construction projects were announced at a ceremony in Montreal. Awards went to

nine projects from Canada and the United States that showcased the latest approaches to address critical topics including housing affordability, employment, renewable energy, and water efficiency.

Project submissions for the North American cycle were evaluated by the designer’s consideration of the target issues: economic, environmental, social and architectural quality.

The US$100,000 Holcim Gold Award went to the 13,000-sq.ft. Solar-powered Arts and Education Center building, New York, N.Y., for being the first building in New York to produce all its energy needs from sustainable sources. John Gunn of Laurentian University earned the US$25,000 Holcim Bronze Award for The Living with Lakes Centre for freshwater restoration and research in Sudbury, Ont. (pictured below) Housing a research facility to investigate the restoration of Sudbury’s ecosystem, the project will be self-sufficient for electricity and heating needs and built to LEED Platinum standards.

A US$20,000 Acknowledgement Award prizes went to the Evergreen Brick Works heritage site revitalization in Toronto.

Evergreen is transforming Toronto’s Don Valley Brick Works factory buildings from an underused, deteriorating asset to a thriving environmentally-based community centre.

The North Vancouver Outdoor School (NVOS), credited to Vancouver’s Larry MacFarlane Architects, also received an Acknowledgement Award for its sustainable “living building” design which provides experiential field-based studies on the ecological reserve land in Paradise Valley, BC. The Holcim Awards competition included a category for the visions of young architects and designers called “Next Generation.” The US$10,000 second Next Generation prize went to the Residential Density for Urban Spaces project in Toronto, designed by architects Chenlong Wang and Lingchen Liu of Beijing, China. The proposal creates a series of unusual housing concepts that utilize small urban spaces.

The competition is run in parallel in five regions of the world by the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction in Zurich, Switzerland. Approximately 5,000 projects from 90 countries entered the competition and the Montreal event was the second of five ceremonies. Winners from each region qualify for the global Holcim Awards competition, which will be further evaluated by a global jury and the winners proclaimed in Switzerland in May 2009.

For more information www.holcimfoundation.org building

december 2008/january 2009

The current confluence of technology and social pressure for environmental sustainability suggests it is time the development industry implemented stormwater reuse programs that change our perception of it from waste product to resource.

For those who live in urban areas, rain is a nuisance. It serves no purpose other than to delay commutes and flood basements. For those who create the urban areas in which we live, stormwater management also bruises the pocketbook: features constructed to manage stormwater are seen as both land consumption and additional construction costs with questionable value. This is why stormwater is often considered a waste product and something to be dispelled as quickly as possible. However, those on the leading edge of sustainable development now see stormwater for what it is: a valuable resource.

Flowing away Canadians waste water -- and a lot of it. In 2008, Environment Canada reported that only 10 per cent of residential water usage needs to be potable, even though potable water was being used for over 99 per cent of the applications. In November, the Conference Board of Canada released Report Card on Canada: Environment – Details and Analysis, grading Canada’s performance in several environmental categories against those of 15 comparable nations. Canada’s water consumption was given a grade of D, ranking just behind the United States for top spot on the scale of water gluttony.

According to 2004 Environment Canada statistics, Canadians use an average of 329 litres per day of water while many of our European neighbours use less than half this amount.

Our overarching problems lie in our perception of this resource. According to the Conference Board of Canada these wasteful tendencies can be directly attributed to “water pricing that does not promote efficiency,” and price is an instigator to which all react. For example, in 1999 a World Water Commission study revealed that people in Germany were paying $2.16 per cubic metre of municipal water while Canadians paid $0.31 per cubic metre, a difference of roughly 700 per cent. When it comes to the economics of water supply, Canadians have it good, but like oil, there is no such thing as an endless resource.

Which brings us to a simple supply and demand equation: find more water or use less of it, and many communities across Canada are already grappling with the former in order

8 building

december 2008/january 2009

to provide for rapidly growing populations. In the industrial and commercial hub of southwestern Ontario, communities like Kitchener-Waterloo and Guelph are maximizing their ground and riverine water sources, providing real barriers to urban growth. These cities now entertain, amongst other solutions, significant capital projects like pipelines to the Great Lakes to augment supply.

One of the best ways to use less water is to redesign or change the function of our built environments. Reusable water takes many forms including black, grey, green and stormwater, with the latter being the easiest to rescue. As technology and post-treatment stormwater quality has improved so has the usability of stormwater in site development and reuse applications.

Reuse helps mitigate on-site quantity issues by supplementing the municipally-supplied potable water to the site, generally involving four core concepts: collection, storage, treatment and distribution. The main advantage with stormwater reclamation is that collection, storage and treatment are already provided through mandated stormwater management. Why pipe in additional quantities of potable water for applications that don’t need this level of quality when perfectly suitable water is already falling on-site?

Shift our paradigm In addition to cost saving benefits, stormwater reuse strategies gain valuable points toward LEED certification, and ultimately increases site sustainability. The current certification structure allows for LEED points to be obtained in two categories relating to stormwater reclamation and reuse: Water Efficiency and Stormwater Management (SWM).

With Water Efficiency, a total of five points are available for items such as: reducing or eliminating the use of potable water through water efficient landscaping; total site potable water use reduction; reducing the generation of wastewater while increasing local aquifer recharge. Two LEED points are available through SWM criteria by achieving water quantity and quality control targets via retention and other conventional SWM means. These targets for new developments are often met through municipal SWM criteria and standards such as

By Andrew Sobchak

Level 1 treatment outlined in provincial guidelines such as the Ontario Ministry of Environment Stormwater Management Planning & Design Manual. Since SWM is required for most new developments in Canada, obtaining these accreditation points is almost automatic.

Brock University in St. Catharine’s, Ont. will be adding to its collection of LEED-certified projects in 2009 by building a new ESL/International Groups, Classics and Humanities building (computer model below). The design incorporates on-site cisterns for stormwater attenuation and reapplication through irrigation infrastructure, reducing stomwater discharge by at least 25 per cent, and greywater reuse is proposed through applications such as toilet flushing. The

Image courtesy of IBI Group

formally un-named building is set to open in early 2010 and will be applying for LEED certification, highlighting the important role water efficiency and stormwater reclamation and reuse play in this process and site sustainability.

Even though LEED accreditation is voluntary, there are many tertiary benefits to joining this exclusive membership including improving public perception through environmental sustainability. Since 2002, 126 projects (excluding residential projects greater than 1,800-sq.-ft. in area) have been LEED certified. The annual number of certifications has increased substantially from 2002 to 2007 with the

number in 2008 projected to be slightly higher than 2007.

This trend signifies not only the recognition of the LEED brand but a movement to support its ideals.

Of these 126 projects, 60 per cent are funded by government or not-for-profit agencies, suggesting green infrastructure and site sustainability are important concepts with these groups and the citizens they represent. With this grassroots support, formal regulation is likely not far behind.

Outside of LEED, municipal-level governments across North America are revisiting their current approach to stormwater management and reuse. For example in October 2008, New York City, through its PlanNYC initiative, released a Draft Sustainable Stormwater Management Plan with clear goals moving toward green SWM infrastructure. The public has applauded New York City’s approach and is pushing local governments to establish real goals and programs to make public funds available through grants or tax credits for private developers to ensure these concepts are implemented.

The consensus in Canadian urban areas is that the benefits of stormwater control and reuse far out-weigh those of conventional end-of-pipe SWM solutions, and public funds would be better spent on implementing these concepts than maintaining existing, crumbling infrastructure.

Green infrastructure and smart water consumption is clearly important to an increasingly aware public. Voluntary accreditation programs that gain community acceptance -- like LEED -- are always the precursors to standard adjustment and eventually regulation. In fact, LEED certification is an excellent example for what Canadian conservation regulations could look like in the near future, and financial incentives for private developers to implement these concepts, although rare in the current landscape, are on the horizon as public perception continues to shift.

It falls on developers to start taking full advantage of a previously underutilized on-site resource to the benefit of local and downstream communities. B Andrew Sobchak, P.Eng., is principal of Tributary Consulting Inc., a water resources consulting firm specializing in surface water management for urban land development.

building

december 2008/january 2009

9

A Generation ofG eneralists

By Jason Sahlani There’s plenty of chatter about Canada’s building industry changing to meet the green times. Rising energy costs plus an increase in the market for new energy efficient buildings and retro-fitting old structures in residential, commercial and industrial sectors has put pressure on builders to adapt their practices to fit the changing landscape. But the industry has been lagging in employing the techniques required to meet the demands of the new market, and some say it’s because there are few people who are able to bridge the divide that separates intention and implementation.

Even when the builder can afford to implement new technology or systems there is still a lack of trained trades people who can usher the project past the goal line while maintaining the environmental idealism at the heart of the development. This shortage of such skilled people isn’t the only reason the building industry has done little to make sustainable building practices the norm.

A report from March 2007, titled Skills for Energy Efficient Construction principally authored by Jennifer Penney from the Toronto-based Clean Air Partnership, cites two major barriers facing the growth of energy efficient building training for the trades in Canada. The first is a conservatism found in an industry that focuses on achieving the lowest capital cost as opposed to low operating costs. The second is the demand for energy efficient buildings is still insufficient to move most trade schools and colleges away from basing course material on the current building codes.

What remains is similar to the age-old chicken or egg scenario — is the building industry’s failure to adapt sustainable building practices across the board a result of a lack of trades people knowledgeable in energy efficient building techniques or are those with the expertise needed for the green shift in building unable to exercise their skill in an industry stuck in the past?

The new class After years of working in the industry with his company Camel’s Back Construction, and responsible for over 40 building projects combining natural building materials with high-tech mechanical systems in pursuit of “sustainability” outside conventional parameters, Chris Magwood saw his role on sites becoming akin to a “professional hand-holder” — helping architects and engineers work out conflicting design issues while keeping the construction crew abreast of new developments. He soon realized the potential of such a generalist.

In 2003 Magwood proposed a new course for the Haliburton, Ont. campus of Fleming College that

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december 2008/january 2009

Why Chris Magwood gave up his summer holidays to teach something that might be unteachable — sustainable building.

he believed would address one of the main hindrances in the shift to green building. The course would help students develop an “integrated skill set in the design of structures using green, natural or sustainable building methods, technologies and materials and renewable energy resources,” as outlined in a lecture Magwood gave in the summer of 2008. But more than that, the course was to turn students from various backgrounds in the building industry into “competent generalists,” able to converse with every team member effortlessly. He explains the competent generalist not as builders looking to reinvent the wheel, but instead as integral spokes keeping the wheel together.

“What has been lacking [in the industry] is the people who understand enough of all of it to gather the right people together and have the right conversations and…make sure the right people are sitting in the room together in order to make a project work well,” says Magwood.

In 2005 the Sustainable Building, Design and Construction course was offered for the first time and Magwood took on the task of not just teaching skills through hands-on experiences, but instilling within students the ability to think and act as generalists, able to take theory and match it with job site practice. “[The course] raised a lot of eyebrows in that the mutli-million dollar industry has been trying to get greener for quite a while now, so there was a lot of feeling that how is a bunch of college kids who don’t necessarily know anything going to figure it out in five months. There was a lot of scepticism up front,” he says.

The Fleming College course produces the type of generalist needed to push the green shift along by adding to the traditional way building techniques are taught. Class time is split with 70 per cent of the course spent in the field, working on a specific project, with the remaining 30 per cent focusing on the theoretical basis of sustainable building. Whether in the field or in the class, the focal point of the course remains team-based design.

Students are required to take on at least one administrative, structural and mechanical role for the duration of the course and are evaluated on their performance in those roles as well as their grasp of the theoretical, design and hands-on components.

Magwood says that while students are required to take on at least one role from the groups noted above most participants, if not all, often involve themselves in as many roles as they can.

He says the interest in the course is exceptional, often oversubscribed by 200 per cent.

The culmination of the five month course is the implementation of cutting edge sustainable practices taught by Magwood in a building project undertaken in partnership with a client. Specialist teachers are brought in to assist in design and construction, but the bulk of all required tasks are completed by the 26-student class.

The most recent building, the Performing Arts Centre in Madoc, Ont., was the first time they completed a structure with a net-zero energy usage rating. Built using straw bale supports, the structure employs a geo-thermal heating system and solar-electric panels to provide the electricity.

However, by Magwood’s own admission the costs associated with such deep-green projects are kept under control because of the lack of labour costs. “What we do is an interesting combination because a majority of our structural materials are very basic,

we use a lot of earth, straw, local lumber, it’s very sticks-and-mud type building on the structural side. But on the other hand our mechanical systems are very expensive and very cutting edge in terms of solar technology or geo-thermal heating.”

So while the technology utilized in these projects may not be realistic for use throughout the building industry, the value of the course to the industry could very well be the methods, skill-sets and paradigm-shifting thinking instilled in the students.

However, that’s only if graduates of the course are able to put into practice the lessons they learn.

Filling a market void?

David Elfstrom is an engineer who completed the course in 2006 and has seen a growing desire within the industry for deep green building techniques within the last few years. “Put it this way, there’s no shortage of people interested in the green wave,” he says. “I’ve been asked several times by architects if I could recommend someone else [with the same integrated approach as myself ], there just aren’t many engineers working, on houses in particular, who really know green building.”

At the same time he’s witnessed the persistence of opinions within the industry that things should continue to be done as they always have. Elfstrom says that once he completed the course at Fleming he had to learn the traditional way of doing things because “you have to learn the rules before you can break them.”

Previous page and above: Students in the 2008 class of Fleming College’s sustainable building program as they build the new Performing Arts Centre in Madoc, Ont.

He says that while generalists like himself are valuable as tools to help nudge the industry along towards true sustainable building, he points out that at the end of the day, apart from market forces, it will be profit margins that make the biggest impact on the speed at which the industry applies new techniques.

“Anyone owning and operating a building are making sure they build green, and more often than not, it’s about the bottom line…saving money on the operational costs,” says Elfstrom.

“We’ve had the capacity to build energy efficient buildings in Canada for a long time, we just haven’t.”

“It will change when younger people get into the industry and change it from ‘this is how it’s done’ to ‘that was how it was done’,” says Elfstrom, reminding us that as always with any industry, it’s about people. B building

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award-winning Online COllabOratiOn

Create • Connect • Collaborate Sign-up for a free trial at www.octopz.com

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Designing

by Sheri Craig The challenge: to design low-cost and environment-friendly housing for a tropical climate.

Can 16 teams of students come up with practical, original solutions?

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Four years ago, Building organized an annual Outside the Box competition to encourage creative, imaginative and non-traditional concepts in architecture. Most of the entries that were received respected this goal, showing imaginative thinking and a wide range of innovation in building projects across Canada.

This year we decided to take the competition one step further, teaming with the Institute without Boundaries (IwB), a program of the School of Design at George Brown College in Toronto, to find solutions for an international problem. The challenge was to design appropriate housing for Costa Rica’s rural northwest province of Guanacaste, a region that suffers from water shortages and lack of adequate accommodation for its residents.

The government of Costa Rica was involved as a sponsor and the results of the competition will be presented as part of the World House Costa Rica exhibition at the Architecture Biennale in the capital city of San Jose in 2009. The designs have the potential to be used as case studies for projects within Costa Rica or other communities around the world.

IwB working with students at Veritas University

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A backyard in Matapalo

A panel of judges including Mitchell Hall, senior associate at Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects, Margaret Graham, principal of Superkul, Gregory Woods, architect and Alsop Associates, and Tasos Calantzis, CEO of Readymade in Johanesburg, South Africa, who participated online through Octopz, met to review the 16 entries. They selected four winners, two from the four-day on-site charrette and two from other entries submitted online. The top on-site charrette winner was Team 10, with a design concept that focused on community, and second place went to Team 5.

Tied for first place among the entries submitted online were teams 13 and 14, both from Ryerson University, Toronto.

First place winners received $500 to be split among team members; the second place winner received $200 for the team. The rest of the entries received gift certificates.

Judges reviewing the submissions

In addition to IwB, the government of Costa Rica and Building, another sponsor of the competition was Torontobased Octopz, a software development company facilitating online collaboration in real-time or at a participant’s convenience. Octopz technology was used for the judging session.

Tasos Calantzis

(l. to r.) M. Graham, G. Woods, M. Hall

Photos on this page by Young Kim

Guanacaste is a region experiencing economic, social and cultural changes as a result of rapid growth and global investment. Through an online charrette, students and professionals were invited to design and submit housing models suitable for low-income families in the community of Matapalo. The IwB held an on-site, four-day charrette in February at George Brown to work out designs with George Brown architecture technology students, divided into 11 teams, each having an IwB student as project facilitator and a professional advisor who reviewed sessions with the team. Other entries from other schools were submitted separately.

The housing designs were intended to provide homes for working citizens and temporary quarters for itinerant migrants and/or working tourists, durable homes that could ensure economic equity for their residents. Criteria for the designs included: • US$8,000 budget to build a 42-sq-m. dwelling that includes two bedrooms, kitchen and a washroom; • The potential addition of rental units of 10–15 square metres, each including one bedroom and one washroom; • Creation of larger units, wrapping the 42-sq-m and 15-sq-m modules around patios to provide accommodation from 40 to 160 square metres; • Sustainable building techniques used with a special emphasis on water conservation and appropriate sanitation systems that would not harm the rural environment; • Accommodation made for aging in place and use by individuals with special needs; • Designs that would reflect the regional identity and local social customs; • Designs that responded to the tropical climate.

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On-Site Charrette: First Place

On-Site Charrette: Second Place

Team 10

Team 5

The design uses a scalable pattern for the social environment, placing four living units around a central square.

Each home is built close to the property line, with exterior walls of concrete. Inside, the interior walls are open and made of bamboo.

There are defined public and private spaces—private within the actual home, a semi-private area that includes a personal garden and a place in which to entertain guests, and beyond that the community area.

The group’s focus was on flexibility and growth, with the housing easily expanded and adapted by its users. This could be achieved by building the two-storey structure in stages, maintaining the original roof and building a new first storey. Living space would open to a front porch that runs along the front of the building; the lower level would be kept open, allowing inhabitants and visitors to gather in a shaded area.

Materials used would include plysom, corrugated steel, FSC lumber and clay tiles for the roof, a material that used to be manufactured in Matapalo and specifying it could revitalize a local enterprise.

The roof of the house would gather water, which would then drain into a cistern located in the bottom level of the house. Water from the cistern would be used for bathing and cleaning, not drinking.

Composting toilets would make use of human waste for fertilizer, with wastewater going into a biogarden and filtration system.

Other aspects of the design include harvesting and managing water as a collective grey water system for the community, and purified through an ionization system. Waste is also managed collectively, this time between two houses that share a septic tank. A central composting area allows neighbours to create and share soil.

The group estimated the construction cost for each unit at US$124.75 per square metre plus 30 per cent for labour for a total cost per unit of US$6,612.

That left US$1,200 for landscaping the water purifier, fixtures and utilities.

Single Unit

4 House Hub

16 House Community

The design of the building also increases airflow. Strategically placed vents in the flooring would allow cool air from the shaded lower level into the home while the hot air would rise, then released out the ridge vent of the roof.

Finally, the house would have a green wall by placing fencing material across the front and planting vines, possibly edible, to provide privacy and shade for the first level and also food.

Team members: Qiang Zheng, Dane Joseph, Mojtaba Zakeri, Nathaniel Hoover, Donato Di Francesco, Sepideh Tangestanian, Hajir Saggafi, Mark Stevens, and Dimitri Papatheodorou.

Judges’ comments: This proposal has promise because it focuses on how a community can be constructed, not just on a single house. It also addresses the relationship between public and private.

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Team members: Connor Malloy, Daniel Barbisan, Andrew Cook, Michael Haynes, Scott Mckiernan, Bushra Shahadat, Brett Stevens and Alex Morin.

Judges’ comments: A well-developed concept architecturally, with a good emphasis on simple details. The proposal also as some interesting ideas on how to move air through the building.

Online Charrette: First Place (Tie)

Online Charrette: First Place (Tie)

Team 13

Team 14

Their concept was to adapt a Spanish colonial and single bay style with modern elements. Using the basic floor plan of a square divided into private and public spaces, private spaces would in turn connect to public through outdoor covered verandas, containing outdoor kitchens and lounging/hammock space. The houses could be built as single, semi-detached, row or clustered around a central communal space, and an accessory unit could be added to the rear of a building as an extra living area or workspace.

Water was a major focus for the design submitted by Team 14. The house itself would be built of Guadua bamboo, cement and steel mesh. The roof would use a bamboo truss system, the inner roof using bamboo spanning across the trusses while the upper roof would be covered in reflective corrugated steel panels. The walls would be poured concrete made from steel mesh covered with cement-based parging. Total construction costs are estimated at US $7,642.

Front Elevation

Exterior View

South Facing of the Element

Materials would be almost all local and renewable. The walls would be stabilized earth bricks, made on-site or nearby as long as the soil is 10 per cent or more of clay. The roof would be a bamboo truss structure, from local Guadua bamboo, with corrugated steel. Moveable interior walls, allowing for a multifunctional shifting of spaces, would be a composite paper honeycomb and bamboo matt-board panel.

A rainwater collection system would use gutters draining water from the roof to a cistern of earth-stabilized bricks. A grey water filtration system using a septic tank would store solid waste and allow liquid waste to flow through a two-stage reed bed water filtration system.

This filtration system would clean the water before it is released into leaching lines, plus the reed beds could also be seen as a water feature.

The house has a two-height roof structure, encouraging airflow through louvers at both the top and bottom of the roof. Cross-ventilation would be possible though the gable portion of the home and vegetation around the home would act as a natural air filter, particularly with a planted trellis above the main entrance.

Since the Guanacaste region has an intense rainy season for seven months and then a dry season for the other five months, the team decided that the design of the house should deal with the storage, re-use and sanitization of water. Installation of a subterranean cistern would mean that rainwater runoff from the roof could be stored.

A grey water collection system, beneath the bathroom and kitchen, would be accessed by an exterior pump. A sealed concrete basin with three compartments filled with gravel, sand and soil would act as a three-stage filtration system dealing with human waste. By the time the waste moved through this system, it would be clean enough to be released back into the ground.

Team members: Kiavash Hamidi, Melissa Koonstra, Mike Lock, Anthony Perri and Aleksander Poniatowski.

Judges’ comments: The roof system shows creativity in terms of providing good ventilation. The interior adaptability is interesting.

Team members: Samuel Chan, Christopher Kitney, Alexander Ring, Ritchy Seto and Xue Zou. Judges’ comments: The flexibility of this design as a stand-alone building is appealing. Team members also had to consider the challenges of meeting their budget in constructing this home.

Insulated Attic Space— Natural Ventilation and Cooling

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R&D at the on-site charrette

Highlights from the Other Proposals Team 1 Their design featured durable yet low maintenance construction with renewable straw bale for the exterior and flexible plysum board for the interior. Polyurethane cork was mounted on a track for a movable half wall. The roof was tin with a stucco finish and the housing unit included a covered front porch.

The house would capture grey water from a rainwater filtration system for domestic reuse and have bio-gardens to reduce the amount of potable water needed for the unit.

Team members noted that Funbamboo, an organization in Costa Rica financed by the government of the Netherlands and administered by the United Nations through Habitat for Humanity, has already built over 700 bamboo houses in rural Costa Rica and trained 400 people in building construction and crafting bamboo.

Team members: Paulo Joaquim, Aidan Ferriss, Masoud Muhibi, Megan Roach, Ymmar Brown, Michael Dalupang, Marta Galiano, Nelson Paiva and Stine Laurberg Hansen.

Team 3 Cob, made from mixing and layering rice straw, clay, sand and earth, would be used for exterior and interior walls, with pre-cast columns for additional support for the house. Both the porch

Team members: Leighton Brown, Andrew Bhagwat, Louie Bismonte, Larissa Calder, Kelvin Vadera, Laura O’Brien, Melissa Amarelo and Ekatrine Ossipova.

Team 2 The emphasis was on using bamboo, a construction material that is low-cost, sustainable and grown locally. Matapalo would be the first town in Guanacaste to use bamboo construction.

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and roof framing would be made of wood with the actual roof of corrugated steel with an overhang, providing coverage during the rainy season. The house would be built two feet above grade on reused car tires as a foundation.

Team members: Ana Hindelang, Alfred Agyepong, Sisley Leung, John Loureiro, Joseph Miller, Heamin Seol, Timothy Tapar, Meghan Tremblay and Raylin Yu.

Team 4 This design features collapsible walls connecting the interior and exterior environments. The house would have multiple windows to maximize air flow and cross-ventilation. Bamboo would be used for construction and an inverted, sloped roof to drain rainwater into a water catchment tank.

Team members: Ana Asuncion, Domenic Basile, Amanda Chindamath, Salvatore D’Achille, Kenny James, Karl Johnson, Graham Kelly and Danyal Saboohi.

Team 6 The focus in this design was energy efficiency with the house operating off the community’s main energy grid. Large windows allowing in natural light plus power from a photovoltaic system would provide a lighting system. The windows would also provide cross-ventilation which, combined with large overhangs and concrete slab, would keep the house cool. Thermal protection would be achieved by using straw bale exterior walls. The roof would be bamboo fibre and cement composite shingles.

The building would be primarily of bamboo with stucco finishes and corrugated roofs that would include a three-foot overhang promoting wind exchange and shading. In addition, a one-foot vent in the front encourages air flow.

Team members: Teresa Miller, Nate Caplan, Kent Butkovitch, James Guthenerg, Kelwin Hui, Kyung Pill Kim, Maksym Komyshenko and Alan Villanueva.

Team 8 The focus for this proposal was water, air handling, interior space and mobility aided by on-grade building so no steps would be required. A northeast facing roof would also encourage a healthy airflow throughout the building and also protect it from driving rain with an overhang of about four feet around the perimeter of the building and a patio with a seven foot overhang.

Team members: Krista Palen, Jeffrey Graves, Jason Guihan, Mehdi Hosseini, Darrel Dhanieram, Min-kyung Kim, Julia Lazuta, Edgar Villalta, Gabriel Asselin, Sina Makvandinejad and Chris Steward.

Team members: Allan Cheung, Jimmy Ma, Jakub Misiek, Tino Sisca, Kelly Savage, Lynsi Sensenberger, Eric Amponsah, Marlon Stewart and Michael McMartin.

Team 7 This design team emphasized waste management, implementing composting systems into the unit. The team also proposed using solar panels, combined with high-efficiency lighting and low-wattage LED spotlights to provide a low cost but efficient lighting system.

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IwB students meeting with the locals in Matapalo

Team 9

Team 12

Their building concept included adobe walls and a bamboo roof design with a long overhang facing south that would minimize solar gain in the morning and maximize solar lighting in the evening. The overhang would also encourage natural air circulation, releasing humid air.

Community living was the inspiration for this housing design with an emphasis on communal spaces where several families could share kitchen areas. This would mean larger areas for interior living spaces. Three facades of each house could be completely opened to bring in fresh air and diminish the boundaries between nature and the built form.

The house used CMHC’s concept of flexhousing, allowing the building to be adapted over time to suit the owners’

Team members: Bradley Schnell, Nelson Liao, Robert Giusti, Grigory Noudelman, Andrew Vukadinovic, Dale Owl, David Pimentel and Zhengfan Chen.

Team 11 Communication was the key to this design with a large, retractable wall that could open to create a large space where family and friends would gather. The wall would be a frame of twoby-fours, covered by rice paper allowing the homeowners to personalize their space with painted images. Since rice paper must be replaced periodically, fresh canvases would be created.

A roof overhang would protect the open area from sun and rain, the walls of the house constructed of straw bale and the windows would be horizontal shutters made of Plexiglas.

Team members: Mark Watson, Jessica Taylor, Conroy Jervis, Kareena Vassell, Duska Ziojutro, Peter Valente, Chao Yang and Salwan Ramo.

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needs, with a basic model available with six different exterior partitions, two types of roof designs and 12 partition options from concrete, bamboo and fabric.

Team members (Ryerson University): James Steacy, Daniel Goymour, Michelle Saitta, Kevin Quan and Matthew Dietrich.

Team 16 This design was based on consolidation and modular components. Washrooms and gardens would be common to two houses to minimize cost and maintenance. Smaller modules would share the washroom of the houses to which they are attached, with a roof extension providing a covered walkway from the house to the bathroom. Common courtyards would serve four houses and outdoor kitchens would serve eight houses.

Loam was the material of choice for exterior walls because of its properties of local proximity, thermic mass and durability.

Moveable panels would be corrugated metal for exterior versions and wood for interior ones which, when opened, could be used as a table in the dining room or a bed, desk and chair in the bedroom.

Team members (University of Montreal): Samuel Guimond, Pierre-Luc Filion and Elizabeth Critchley-Caron.

Team 15 Rammed earth tire walls would serve as the structural core of each housing unit while also acting as a thermal mass and absorbing excess heat. The outer faรงade would include a bamboo framing and wall system on the concrete-filled tire wall foundation. Louvred walls would promote passive cooling with optimal orientation to the north and east, taking advantage of trade winds and allowing in natural light.

Interior bamboo partitions would allow easy adaptation of individual spaces.

Tire knee walls, provided to accommodate additions, could also be integrated into landscaping and used to define outdoor living spaces. Clustering of homes in small communities would also permit the use of technologies that would otherwise be too expensive, such as methane production systems and filtration beds.

Team members (Ryerson University): James Steacy, Daniel Goymour, Michelle Saitta, Kevin Quan and Matthew Dietrich. building

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viewpoint

Luigi Ferrara

Designing Our Way Out of the Box Design is the creative process by which we make things that fulfill our particular needs. Traditionally, the design and creation of tools and furniture can be done by one person or with the collaboration of a few hands, but the creation of buildings often requires many hands working in coordination. In the past, under the leadership and vision of a master builder, many specialized craftsmen would work together to create buildings that were location specific, enduring, beautiful and commodious.

Along came the Industrial Revolution, which lifted us from a world of austerity and scarcity to one of abundance and prosperity through the industrialization of design. Key to the process was the infusion of knowledge and science to enhance the productivity of the designed object. The process of designing things that could be produced efficiently and that operated more effectively required a greater amount of time invested by fewer highly specialized people, who created template designs that could be manufactured in multiples more cheaply, quickly, and abundantly than ever before. The task of making buildings also grew more specialized with architects (space) engineers (structure, electrics, and mechanics) developers (finance) and constructors (fabrication) working together to coordinate pre-manufactured products to make cost effective, functional, and appealing buildings.

In many ways, this remains the context with which most of us in Canada are working today. Yet slowly over time, the complexity and challenge of designing products and building places has and continues to increase due to various factors. With the threat of climate change, environmental degradation, and the rising scarcity of resources, and with the opportunities presented by global telecommunications, digital technologies and high speed networks, a new way of designing is

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emerging. At the core of this new design paradigm is whole systems thinking, or the idea that real solutions to today’s problems require systems capable of evolving over time to address the complex challenges created by projects with multiple stakeholders.

At the Institute without Boundaries at George Brown College, we are examining how to manage this new design paradigm by fostering collaboration between specialist design disciplines to create innovative local solutions to 21st century global challenges. We bring together “renaissance teams” composed of diverse specialists in design, construction and financing, who collaborate using systems thinking to design solutions that are holistic and relevant.

How do you create green affordable housing for a tropical country like Costa Rica? How do you create autonomous infill dwellings for a dense urban environment such as the City of Toronto?

How can we renovate our suburbs so they stay relevant in the 21st century? These are the questions we have been asking. Our projects such as the World House Living Model, the CMHC Canuhome, and the World House Costa Rica Project provide a glimpse of the solutions that can be developed using this approach. Together, our network of faculty, students, industry partners and consultants are developing the new thinking for building and design, a new thinking that will lead us out of our current box. B Luigi Ferrara is the Director of the School of Design and the Institute without Boundaries (IwB) at George Brown College. Visit the Institute at www.institutewithoutboundaries.ca and see the work of the IwB at www.worldhouse.ca and www.canuhome.com

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