VANOC and Architects Recognized for Leadership in Building Green Venues – Feature Stories – Vancouver 2010
Today the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) received the Excellence for Green Building award from the Globe Foundation and the World Green Building Council. The award — handed out during a ceremony at the newly constructed Trout Lake Arena — is in recognition of the Organizing Committee’s leadership in establishing green building criteria for the 2010 Winter Games venues. In addition, 15 architects who designed the venues also received awards of recognition for their excellence in green building practices.
Walter Francl is one of the leading venue architects to receive the award for work on the Trout Lake Arena, a figure skating training venue for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games. His work there began approximately four years ago with several groups including the forward-thinking clients of the surrounding Trout Lake community and the Vancouver Park Board.
“They’re a very kind and giving community group that spends a lot of volunteer time organizing and fostering the recreational and social activities in the community,” says Francl. “The ability to deliver to them something that they really see as a big improvement and something that they, as a community, can be proud of is something that I take a lot of personal pleasure in. That’s the most satisfaction you can get in this profession. And there’s the fact that it happens to be related to the Olympics in some small way. That is nice as well.”
Francl says the biggest challenge in creating an environmentally low impact arena is exactly that: it is an arena. Ice rinks are essentially big refrigerators with a hungry appetite for energy and a producer of much excess heat. To alleviate the situation, the waste heat from the rink will be used to heat the soon-to-be-built swimming pool in the community centre next door. Francl is presently working on the plans for the new pool system and the community centre that will be revamped post-Games in 2010.
Sound Solutions
Much of the careful planning included tearing down the old arena structure and using the already existing footprint as the foundation for the new arena in the bog-like geology. Not only was it an environmentally sound solution, but more cost prudent also. And you wouldn’t know it by looking at it, but the wood beams spanning the ceiling inside the building come from salvaged trees that were blown down during wind storms in Vancouver’s Stanley Park almost three years ago.
For Francl, a building’s environmental footprint is a big responsibility, and as wisely as you can steward that consumption, the better you are.
“We are all responsible for what we consume and all that we do not consume, and what we leave to future generations,” says Francl. “That’s the attitude we take in our building style.”
British Columbia — World’s Greenest Olympic District
Dan Doyle of VANOC (L) and Vancouver Olympic/Paralympic Village architect,
Roger Bayley (R). (VANOC photo)
VANOC and its venue partners, such as the City of Vancouver, Resort Municipality of Whistler and the City of Richmond, shared the commitment to find innovation solutions to deliver the 2010 Winter Games venues as environmentally friendly structures that the venue communities would be proud of. Following through on the bid commitment for the Games, every new venue is built to a minimum silver rating of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building standard. Not only that, but by design, green buildings have operational efficiencies that make the buildings cheaper for the community to operate as a legacy in the long term.
The venue program wasn’t possible without the support from VANOC’s government partners —the 0 million venue construction budget for the Games is equally funded by the Government of Canada and the Province of British Columbia.
Mitigating Environmental Impacts
Canada and BC’s investment in the 2010 venue construction program also includes some overseeing of the Games environmental assessment process. Aside from construction, each Vancouver 2010 competition venue has undergone some level of environmental assessment to conserve natural environments to manage, mitigate and offset negative impacts. The Ministry of Canadian Heritage and the Province of BC’s Environmental Assessment Office have been working with VANOC and its venue partners to ensure environmental impacts for many of the key Games venues have been assessed, and plans are in place so impacts can be managed from the start of construction until the venues are decommissioned many years later. Visit the environmental assessment page at vancouver2010.com/sustainability to learn more about the environmental assessment process for the venues.
Powering the Venues with Minimal Carbon Impact
The power for the 2010 Winter Games will have little to no net carbon impact. BC Hydro will provide clean power for the Games, which means carbon dioxide emissions from power generation for the venues will be reduced close to zero net carbon emissions, the lowest level yet for an Olympic Winter Games.
About the Award
Award recipients. (VANOC photo)
The award for Excellence in Green Building Practices is a one-time award being presented to architects in the form of a handcrafted parallam clock. Vancouver woodworker David Gilmore was commissioned to create the clock, which is made from salvaged British Columbia wood. Representatives from the following architectural firms received awards in connection with 2010 Winter Games venues: Walter Francl Architecture, Acton Ostry Architects, Hughes Condon Marler Architects, Nick Milkovich Architects, Merrick Architecture, GBL Architects Group, IBI/HB Architects, DA Architects + Planners, MCM Partnership, LMN Architects, Cannon Design, CJP Architects, Stantec, Hottson Bakker Boniface Haden architects + urbanistes, and Burrowes Huggins Architects.