The Green Gold Standard |
BACK In the 1980s when Tom Sutherland was a bright-eyed university student, a group of professors were teaching pupils that buildings should work with the environment rather than against it. Sutherland listened to their views, but didn’t put much stock into their preaching. “To us kids who didn’t grow up in the ’60s, their talk sounded like a dying ember,” says Sutherland.
Photography by Ray Steinke Photography, Text by Tracy Hyatt
Company: PCL Constructors Inc.
Dimensions: 2,700 m2
Architect: Cohos Evamy Partners
Those teachings, as it turns out, were the kernels of today’s environmental movement. So it’s a good thing that Sutherland was paying attention in class. Today he’s an architect and partner with Cohos Evamy Partners, and one of the lead architects of the first private-sector LEED Gold certified building in Alberta, the PCL Centennial Learning Centre. The building, located in a nondescript section of southeast Edmonton, was built to celebrate the 100th anniversary of PCL, Canada’s largest building contractor.
From outward appearances, the PCL Learning Centre looks like any conventional building. There’s a grand hall, complete with a fireplace, that faces a beautifully landscaped garden, a respite from telephone calls and e-mails. A meeting room with funky designer chairs resembles something out of sci-fi movie.
Only after a 30-minute interview do the building’s green features become obvious. Sounding more like a physicist than an architect, Sutherland explains the mechanics of the solar chimney. Fresh air is drawn into a concrete tower that sucks the air far enough down into the earth, where the temperature remains about 13 degrees Celsius year round. In the winter, air is tempered and distributed throughout the building, and in the summer, the air is cool enough to be pumped straight through the space.
A solar chimney creates natural ventilation when cool air comes in at a lower level and hot air is exhausted through dampers at the top of the chimney. Passive cooling is an alternative to mechanical cooling because it helps reduce energy use. Rarely is the air conditioning turned on. “There’s only a period of a week or two in the summer when we have to air-condition the building,” says Sutherland. “The air outside is too hot to provide any relief.” For employees and visitors, the environment is so much more comfortable.
There are six categories in which a project can earn LEED points, ranging from design innovation to materials and resources. To earn points in the water category, low-water fixtures, waterless urinals, dual-flush toilets and solar collector faucets were installed in the PCL Learning Centre. “Everything about the building is geared toward using a minimal amount of water.”
Even the picturesque garden that faces that grand hall adopts a low-water strategy. Water is collected off the roof and pumped into a cistern to irrigate the landscape. “We’re not using any drinking water. It’s all collected rainwater.”
As Sutherland talks about the gee-whiz features of the PCL Learning Centre, he uses books and movies as reference points. He’s back to his university days when he makes reference to E.F. Schumacher’s 1973 bestseller, Small is Beautiful. And then the conversation slips back to last year’s independent movie Who Killed the Electric Car? when he discusses the electric car regeneration stations that were added to PCL’s parking lot. Even the much-talked-about book, The 100 Mile Diet, which urges people to eat food grown within 100 miles of their home, gets a nod. Turns out that the PCL Learning Centre was on its own diet – the 500-Mile Diet. All of the materials selected, such as lumber and cement, come from local sources. The building phase is when large amounts of energy are consumed transporting materials to the city and to landfills, says Sutherland.
The Centre is thoughtfully unified space that embraces sustainable design. “It merges aesthetics, functionality and sustainability seamlessly,” says Sutherland. It’s a model for the next generation of buildings. Although the office is characterized by its openness, Diamond and McMaster still had to contend with the issue of privacy. The solution, which has turned out to be the office’s showpiece, is the raised consulting room. The box-like room is made up of glass panels divided and held by birch beams. The abundance of birch also sets up an interesting contrast to the concrete and glass surfaces.
“Concrete is a fairly raw and unrefined material,” says McMaster, “so by adding earthy wood details, we warmed up the space and gave it a needed sophistication and refinement.”
The middle panels are frosted to provide privacy for the room’s occupants, but light still pours in during the day. Without being too Big Brother-esque, the windowed room allows Diamond and his office manager the ability to peruse the office. Two enclosed operating rooms are used for more extensive dental work that require surgery.
For employees, everything works brilliantly too. Storage is arranged in an orderly fashion, reducing movement and steps that waste time and productivity. Water taps, dryers, drawers and waste baskets can be accessed with a tap of the toe.
Most clients, says McMaster, wouldn’t be up for this kind of design because they put limitations on themselves, but Diamond was open to any suggestion, right down to the the pool table in the waiting room. Instead of trying to get patients through the door, the only problem Diamond has these days is getting patients to leave.
