News

By Tanner Morton, Communications Coordinator

With the arrival of a new year comes a range of new activities and opportunities with the RAIC. It is difficult to guess what is in store for 2021, but the RAIC is committed to pushing for a more sustainable and accessible future, no matter what the next twelve months may bring.

The RAIC Foundation is pleased to announce a new student scholarship to be launched in the 2022-2023 academic year. The Vince Catalli Scholarship in Sustainable Design Innovation has been created to promote and encourage innovative, practical, scalable and transferable approaches to sustainable design among the next generation of architects in Canada.

Endowed by a generous donation from Vince Catalli, this award will be open to students in the last two years of a professional degree program in a registered school of architecture anywhere in Canada, or in Part III of the RAIC Syllabus Program.

Vince Catalli studied architecture at Carleton University, then worked as a student and intern in the offices of KPMB, WZMH and Leonard Koffman.

While facing employment uncertainties in the unpredictable economy of the 1990s, he attended an OAA conference where he had what he calls ‘a light-bulb’ moment.

Listening to a lecture by William McDonough, Vince learned about the concept of Cradle to Cradle design, the circular economy, the complexity and opacity of supply chains and the harm being done through the use of toxic substances in consumer goods. From that moment on, he decided to devote his career to the promotion of sustainable design. After an intensive process of self-education, he started his first consulting firm, By Design Consultants in 1994. Finding himself ahead of the green building curve, he began initiating projects of his own.

As market transformation began in the late 1990s, Vince worked on consulting contracts with public and private sector clients till 2005, then later spent time with architects HOK as their Business Development Manager and with the Canadian cement industry as their first Director of Sustainability. His recent major contract was with the federal government, developing a strategic framework for the identification and implementation of a climate change resilience plan for the Parliamentary Precinct in Ottawa.

Asked why he chose to endow a scholarship of this kind, he replied:

“I always valued my architectural education because it caused me to think, to problem-solve with people and enabled me to work on very tangible things that positively affect people’s lives. It is all very rich and gratifying and I want to encourage the next generation to find and develop a similar passion.”

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Vince will be actively involved in the first few years of the scholarship, promoting it to architectural schools and acting as a professional advisor to the jury.

The RAIC Foundation would like to extend its profound thanks to Vince Catalli for initiating this scholarship and looks forward to working with him as the scholarship program unfolds.

Join the Climate Action Community on RAIC Connects! Here, members can post climate-related questions, participate in discussion threads on pertinent topics, stay up to date with the latest 2021 Congress on Architecture news, and meet other members interested in sustainable and regenerative design.

Following the launch of the RAIC Members community, RAIC Connects is excited to be adding topic-specific communities where members can come together over shared interests and areas of practice. Be sure to watch for more communities coming soon. More information about the site can be found at raic.org/connects.

The RAIC is seeking one volunteer to join CORE, a committee of the board. The purpose of the Committee is to support the profession’s collective capacity, collaborative agency, and ability to respond to complex systemic challenges—in a way that is inclusive, inspiring, and equitably enabling; so that we can collectively help create a world that nurtures the quality of life and empowers people and place to thrive. The deadline to apply for this position is January 15, 2021. Learn more about the

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The latest regional FOCUS issues, a joint publishing project of the CaGBC and SABMag, cover the local scene such as the Humber College Barrett Centre, and the net zero Waste Management Centre in south-west Ontario; the Stratford Emergency Building in PEI, and seawater cooling at Halifax’s Purdy’s Wharf; and the UVic District Energy Plant, the LEED Gold Wilson School of Design, and designing with carbon in mind. See the digital

Passive House Canada/Maison Passive Canada (PHC) has hired Chris Petit, a Passive House Institute Certifier, as the Technical Services Lead of its new Technical Services Department.

Based in Toronto, he will provide deeper technical services for both PHC membership and the broader Passive House community in Canada. Besides offering enhanced technical consulting for members, Petit will provide technical policy development for PHC’s government and industry advocacy efforts, guidance for component designers wanting to manufacture to PHI standards, and build closer ties to the North American PHI Certifiers community.

The unique needs of the Canadian market were reflected in the latest addenda to the LEED rating system. They include an alternative compliance pathway (ACP) that shifts the focus from energy cost to energy usage, such that projects can avoid distortions caused by differences in fuel costs. The LEED v4 and LEED v4.1 zEPI Pilot ACP was accepted by the U.S. Green Building Council, LEED’s governing body, before being included in the most recent addenda. It follows over a year of effort by the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC), its Technical Advisory Group (TAG), and Steering Committee volunteers as well as key stakeholders.

LEED projects can now use reductions in energy consumption and GHG emissions to evaluate energy performance using any version of the National Energy Code of Canada for Buildings (NECB) or ASHRAE 90.1 cited by the local authority. This avoids the need to perform additional energy modelling under a different standard or version.

On a related note, the CaGBC, its TAG and Steering Committee volunteers also developed the BC Energy Step Code ACP so that LEED projects in BC can now have the local code authority’s energy review recognized if they achieve Step 2 or beyond under the BC Energy Step Code. The technical evaluations required to secure this ACP approval were funded through FortisBC, while BC Hydro provided support for market engagement. These addenda likely represent the last significant updates to LEED v4.1 BD+C and ID+C before going to ballot, likely in 2021. SEE A LOT MORE PRODUCTS at SABMag’s Directory of Sustainable Products and Services for Sustainable, high-performance building organized by product category and by LEED category.

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