The Centre for India and South Asia Research (CISAR) invites submissions for the 2016 Prem Goel Memorial Award. The annual award of $1,000 is given to the UBC graduate student judged to have the most promising research program related to South Asia.
All students pursuing an MA or PhD at UBC-Vancouver are eligible for this award. Please submit a statement of no more than 1,000 words on the questions, objectives, methods, and significance of your South Asia-related graduate research work. You may write about a research and writing project that is already underway or a project that you propose to conduct. Be sure to include a statement on how you intend to use the funds. One additional page is allowed for references, notes, and citations. Also required is a copy of your (unofficial) UBC transcript and current C.V.
The submissions will be judged by an interdisciplinary panel of UBC faculty and will be assessed on clarity, rigor, and originality. Please be sure to avoid jargon that may be unintelligible to an interdisciplinary panel of readers.
Submissions of no more than 3 PDFs are due by 4 p.m. on Friday, October 28, 2016 and should be sent to helena.zhu@ubc.ca.
The winner of the 2016 award will be announced in early November and is expected to join at the celebratory dinner on Sunday, November 13.
For more information, please contact: Helena Zhu at helena.zhu@ubc.ca.
The Service Employees International Union is recruiting activists for the launch of our October 2016 Vancouver Organizing Apprenticeship Program. We are seeking energetic individuals to lead our efforts to organize and empower low wage workers.
The Second Carleton Graduate Conference on Research in China (Feb. 23–24, 2017) is seeking paper submissions from PhD and advanced MA students who share an interest in Chinese studies from the following disciplines: political science, economics, sociology, international relations, or business. Proposals from other social science disciplines will also be considered.
The Guangdong University of Foreign Affairs is a major international university in South China known for its global-minded faculty and student body and its research on international languages, literature, culture, trade and strategic studies. The Canadian Studies Centre is looking for 1 or more Researchers with Ph.D. completed or in progress in the following areas: Canadian Politics, Canadian Economics, Canadian Sociology or with an interest in Canadian Studies generally. If you are interested in pursuing your academic career in China, please visit the website (in Chinese) for more information.
By Bronwen Ledger
Article reprinted with the permission of Canadian Architect. The article appeared in the July 1996 issue of the magazine.
From the first planning meetings in 1993, the C.K. Choi Institute of Asian Research on the West Mall at UBC was designed to be a “benchmark in sustainable design.”
As in any truly green building project, collaboration between all the consultants from the beginning was vital, since the work of each discipline affects another. Design charettes were held with the university administration, users and all the consultants making a contribution, and gradually the building began to take shape as a long, 30,000 s.f. structure, dominated by a series of swooping metal roofs and with a many-windowed brick facade.
Five atria below the curved roofs create a stack effect for natural ventilation. Air enters through operable windows and fresh air vents, rises and is carried up and out of louvers near the roof. The building relies entirely on this natural ventilation for cooling, with just a few fans to help push the air. The atria, windows and narrow floor plan also ensure that the building has large amounts of daylight, reducing the need for artificial lighting. Heat in winter is provided by the campus steam plant.
About 50 per cent of the materials in the building were reused or recycled. Heavy timbers were brought in from the nearby demolished Armouries building, and the cladding is reused red brick. Composting toilets enable the building to be disconnected from the campus sewer system, and save 1,500 gallons of potable water per day.
The occupants have been in the building since February, and so far it is working well. The director of the Institute, Terry McGee, is particularly pleased with the amount of natural light. He finds it has “really good light … even in the darkest days of a Vancouver winter.”
Reprinted with permission from Canadian Architect, July 1996, Volume 41, No. 7, pp. 12-13.
What would a sustainable would be like? Imagine a reduced and stabilized population, no more culture of consumerism, an economic framework that fully incorporates environmental impacts, significantly reduced use of resources, and the concept of waste eliminated. We are far from existing in such a world now, but we are in the early stages of a period of reappraisal and change which will extend well into the next millennium. Designing in this transitional period as society realigns itself to meet the dictates of sustainability is quite different from designing in an era in which an environmental ethic has fully matured.
No architect would intentionally design a building which degrades the environment. The adverse environmental consequences of buildings derive from the collective impacts of a host of small choices and actions, each made without knowledge or concern for their aggregate effects. And design decisions are made for a society which has different priorities and is ignorant of the environmental effects.
Architects cannot easily change the context in which they operate, they can and should address the issue of greater environmental responsibility and awareness. We can design environmentally responsively and responsibly today it just requires different design priorities and different knowledge.
Changes are already occurring within architecture, ranging from improving energy performance through to material re-use and on-site waste water treatment, which suggest considerable environments are attainable on all buildings in our time.
Forward to Basics
Energy is, and will remain, central to sustainability. Natural Resources Canada’s C-2000 program has created a new benchmark in energy performance, which is 50 per cent below that of the ASHRAE/AES 90.1 standard. The program has also made tentative steps to address other environmental issues. Projects such as the “Green on the Grand” office building in Kitchener and Bentall’s office building in Richmond, British Columbia have now been completed under this program, and they meet or exceed the C-2000 requirements. The natural conditioning of building interiors is regaining acceptance. The School of Engineering and Manufacture at De Montfort University in the United Kingdom uses natural lighting, high thermal mass, natural stack ventilation and simple heating techniques to condition a wide range of different spaces, including laboratories and lecture theatres. Michael Hopkins’ design for the Inland Revenue facilities in Nottingham, England uses similar strategies and has received one of the highest performance rating in the U.K. building environmental assessment program, BREEAM. The Earth Sciences Building by Busby and Associates at the University of British Columbia, now in schematic design, also reverts back to simple, straightforward, user controls such as operable window walls and closeable insulating shutters, and wherever possible relies on natural system.
The transition to sustainability will go hand in hand with a more effective use of non-renewable resources, and will eventually lead to a conversion to renewable resources. Buildings should be designed so that they can be modified to accommodate solar and other renewable energy collecting systems. And the design should take a comprehensive approach where energy is matched to the end use, and where waste heat from one process can be usefully employed in another.
Whereas solar buildings of the 1970s typically focused on passive measures for space heating, and active systems for domestic hot water heating, recent projects such as the Boyne River Ecology Centre in Ontario by Douglas Pollard Architect (CA June 1994) use a carefully integrated range of strategies such as photovoltaics, wind and small scale hydro for electricity, solar collector systems for domestic hot water, and passive solar to offset winter heating.
Mineral Switch
We have begun to substitute problematic materials with greener equivalents. If all the possible material substitutions were made to the way we currently design buildings, we could reduce the overall embodied energy and attendant environmental impacts of building by approximately 15%-20%. Material substitution is the most direct approach to sustainable building and one which interests both design professions and the materials industries. It is a critical first step for all architects as they enter into environmentally responsible design.
Make it Last
Longevity is central to environmentally responsible building design, and it applies to whole buildings as well as their material parts. A building that can be adapted and reused saves building new. Its components can be recycled material or salvaged materials. The common aim throughout is to keep materials within the materials cycle as long as possible without the need for further processing.
Increasing discussions about life-cycle analysis, and books such as Steward Brand’s How Buildings Learn have stimulated the growth of awareness of how important it is to think of the future implications of design decisions. One can distinguish strategies which result in immediate environmental benefits, such as reusing existing buildings and materials, from strategies where the benefits are deferred to the future, such as designing so that materials can be recovered, and with increased floor to height ratios to allow greater adaptability to other uses.
More with Less
Build space is a critical resource and most is currently underused. Hot-desking, where employees use any available desk rather than having their own is beginning to be explored as communications and globalization continually emphasize the need for the 24-hour office. Hot desking reduces car travel as well as demand for built space.
Mixed use buildings also give opportunities for creatively intensifying the use of space. Antoine Predock’s Thousand Oaks Civic Centre in California, for example, elegantly combines such diverse uses as the city council chambers and a theatre for a local repertory company into a single space civic business by day, theatre by night.
Less is More
Since the industrial revolution made commodities cheaply available, we have had a century or so for cultivating the notion that “more is “better.” Indeed, increased affluence has made it possible to satisfy an apparently insatiable demand for whatever we want. Design problems have typically been solved through an increased palette of materials and more sophisticated technologies. The downside, of course, has been greater use of resources and ecological degradation, and a tendency for users to be less understanding and less involved in their buildings’ operation.
Reduction is the primary method of conservation. If the scale of demand for energy, materials and other resources is not managed, then other strategies such as reuse and recycling will ultimately prove irrelevant. Reducing our use of resources also means reassessing our expectation. This change in our attitudes will be an absolute requirement in the transition towards sustainability.
We are beginning to witness the deliberate exclusion of traditional interior finishing materials. For example, the amount of drywall in the Strawberry Vale School in Saanich, B.C. (Patkau Architects) was reduced by limiting it to specific areas in the classrooms where it would be most effective at reflecting daylight. This strategy was consistent with a broader architectural notion that the richness of a building derives, in part, through expressing how it was built.
Upgrading the existing building stock will become imperative during our transition to sustainability. And existing buildings are a vast source of future building materials. We are already seeing materials being salvaged and reused in projects like the C.K. Choi building for the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia. This project represents the most adventurous reuse of salvaged materials to date. It incorporates a heavy timber frame recovered from a previously demolished campus building, reused brick cladding and a host of other salvaged interior finish components.
Meeting of Minds
A sustainable building will be recognized as much by the integration of the various environmental strategies it uses, as by the strategies themselves. This integration requires architects, engineers and all other involved in the production of buildings to transcend their professional boundaries and work as a team from the outset. The C-2000 program has already demonstrated that such changes in the design process result both in improved building performance and cost savings, and these benefits will most probably be even greater when extended to a broader range of environmental issues beyond energy.
Buildings currently rely on a single throughput of resources. Potable water, for example, is used once and discharged directly as waste through the sewer. Energy is supplied, typically in a high grade form, and dissipated as waste. Materials are used once and then sent to the landfill. Buildings should be designed to draw the most use out of every resource in a cascading effect, from their highest quality upon supply, until they leave the building. Martin Liefhebber’s winning entry to the CMHC Healthy Housing Competition (CA May 1992) now under construction in Toronto has rainwater collection, filtering, purification and storage for drinking and washing by the occupants. This water can then be recycled for dish washing and toilet use, and the resulting waste is filtered and biologically treated on sit. Clean water enters and clean water leaves.
New Knowledge
Architects must develop new skills, knowledge and attitudes to support both environmental and renovation issues. Yes, there is a proliferation of environmental information. Yes, the quality of information is improving as are mechanisms for finding one’s way through the sheer amount of it. And No, we will never find the right information, at the right time, to make the best possible environmental choice. But there is simply no excuse for inaction.
pp. 22-23 Design for a New Millenium, ed. E. Laquian (1996).
Institute of Asian Research, Vancouver.
In this age of accommodation, very few things are carved in stone. Yet in the Asian plaza at the southeast corner of the C. K. Choi Building there are at least five. These are Chinese characters engraved on huge stones shipped all the way from Taishan (Mt. Tai) in Shandong Province (China) where Confucius was born. They form the centerpiece of the Stone Garden. Each character represents a virtue extolled in the Confucian Analects, with supporting quotations from a variety of ancient sources, here summarized.
Ren (humanity, benevolence)–as shown in compassion, sympathy, respect, understanding, respect and honor for one’s parents, and love for others as one loves oneself–is the essence of all virtues and the ground of human dignity. This is the ultimate foundation of Confucianism.
Yi (righteousness)–is the principle of conscience as well as the just relationship of human beings. To be unbiased and impartial, to conduct matters in an appropriate manner, and to respect people of virtue and to be tolerant of others–is to be upright and selfless. The realization of yi is attained when humankind sees righteousness as superior to profit and the society takes justice as superior to property.
Li (propriety, rites)–There are 300 rules of rites and 3,000 rules of dignified behavior. If one is well-behaved like the compass and carpenter’s square for drawing circles and squares, then one can establish oneself. Hence a social system based on interpersonal relationships can be established.
Zhi (wisdom, knowledge)–Wisdom can see things not yet materialized. It covers all matters. It enables one to distinguish between right and wrong and to respond to a situation in an appropriate and moral way. The ideal of zhi is wise decision making.
Xin (trustworthiness)–The four virtues of benevolence, righteousness, propriety and wisdom are at the four directions while trustworthiness is in the middle. The centre’s attribute is the element earth. All living things cannot flourish without the earth just as the four virtues cannot be established without trustworthiness. If one can keep it vigilantly without losing it, one will have many blessings for a long time to come.
Concept for the Asian Plaza
The Asian plaza at the south end of the C. K. Choi Building is the gateway to UBC’s Asian Precinct–the north-west corner of the campus comprised of the Asian Centre, the Nitobe Gardens and the new C.K. Choi Bldg. for the Institute of Asian Research. It has a small courtyard paved with recycled pavers rescued from a brick yard that was about to break them into pieces for other use.
An arrangement of huge stones forms the nucleus of the plaza. When the wooden crates containing the stones were crowbar-opened at UBC, the architects, the structural engineers, and the landscape architect immediately saw a problem: “How do you make these huge stones stand on their ends?” The rocks vary in size, shape and balance. The point at which each rock was supported required a special support in order for the rock to appear that it is balanced from a small point at the base.
Many minds quickly went to work. Early ideas considered the use of various exposed supports but these options were rejected for not fulfilling the desired look. Sheets of calculations and drawings later, a solution was found and Read Jones Christoffersen Ltd. structural engineers translated it into action. Each rock is supported by a concrete footing with dimen-sions 4′ x 4′ x 1′. From the footing a 3 1/2″ steel pipe projects 18″. A 4″ diameter hole x 18″ long was drilled into the base of each rock. The holes were then filled with liquid grout and then lowered onto the pipe projecting from the footing. Landscaping was used to bury the footing and base of each rock. Though the solution looked simple, the execution was not. The largest rock stands six feet high and weighs approximately 5000 lbs. The smallest rock is four feet high and weighs approximately 4000 lbs.
The Confucian virtues inscribed on the stones were chosen by the major donor of the building, Mr C. K. Choi, in order to share with the community the traditional Confucian philosophy that has guided him in his life. Firmly believing that in cultural exchanges between East and West, both can merge more harmoniously for mutual benefit if guided by ethical principles and values, Mr. Choi hopes people would learn some guidelines from these Confucian virtues.
Seven paperbark maple trees have been planted around the square and will eventually provide a canopy of shade for those who wish to sit on the stone benches and meditate on the meaning of interrelationships among human beings and their relationship with nature.
p. 18. Design for a New Millenium, ed. E. Laquian (1996). Institute of Asian Research, Vancouver.
Script for an Asian Landscape is a sculpture comprised of six separate but interrelated units which can be found outside the west entrance of the C.K. Choi Building as well as in five locations in the central entrance and stairwell of the building, and in the dome of the reading room.
It must be considered that Asia is not a unified entity and contains cultures as widely different as does any vast continent. Attempting to find one symbolic element to represent those cultures is an impossible task. This sculpture instead derives its imagery from that which is shared by all in Asia — the land. Land remains throughout time and history. Its surface holds memory, the imprint of human habitations that have come and gone. As a metaphor, it represents our deepest yearnings for belonging to the continuum of life. Its beauty can provoke a profound response that carries us beyond our own lives into realms without borders and cultures, uniting us through a universality of experience. Hence, the sculpture takes the form of a journey in a landscape where elements are placed in six locations in the main circulation axis of the building and are encountered in different sequences as one walks into and through the building.
Perhaps the first element of the sculpture to be encountered is a large, rounded boulder on the floor of the eastern entrance lobby, placed as if left casually by someone on the way into the building. This stone is fixed to the floor and has carved on it, in Thai, the word for “granite.”
An individual approaching the building from the west along the path between the Asian Centre and the Choi Building will find adjacent to the path, some little distance from the building, four similar rounded granite boulders in a grid arrangement. These boulders have works in four different Asian scripts, all giving a different interpretation of the concept of “granite stone.” The scripts are Chinese, Japanese (Kattagana), Korean, and Hindi.
The third element of the work can be found on a support post next to the stairs as one walks up the central staircase to the second floor It is a small glazed box constructed of zinc and inset flush with the face of the post. In the box are engraved zinc images of the leaf, fruit, and seed of the gingko tree, identified with a label with the Latin botanical description, Gingko biloba L. The trees planted along West Mall in front of the building are gingko trees, an ancient species also known as the Chinese temple tree.
Upon reaching the third floor, and stepping through the door at the top of the staircase, there is an image of the Ganges River carved into the concrete surface of the hallway. This map-like rendering of the river has been filled flush to the floor level with a green colored epoxy and bronze powder mixture. Adjacent to the river, on the nearby wall, is an engraved zinc plaque in English: “The Ganges River”
In the reading room, there is a brightly colored yellow and black bird, a black-hooded oriole, Oriolus xanthornus, fashioned from epoxy plastic and metal, mounted upon the rim of the dome over the lounge area. This particular bird has a wide range in southern and eastern Asia and it is known for its beauty and melodious song. In the bird’s bill is a small ring. If the viewer follows the natural inclination to sight through the ring, a similar larger ring, mounted on a perch-like metal device projecting outside beyond the rim of the dome, can be seen. Sighting through both rings one is looking out, day or night, toward Polaris, the North Star, an element of the landscape all of us in the northern hemisphere know and share.
There is a second ‘artwork’ consisting of five traditional philosophical stones with text in both Chinese and English. This grouping is located on the plaza at the south end of the building. This work is a distinct piece in itself and not part of the Script for an Asian Language.
By Gudrun Will
Reprinted with permission from the writer. Vancouver Courier, pp. 1,4-5. Vol. 87, No.48, 16 June 1996
A striking building stands behind a row of young gingko trees in the northwest corner of the University of B.C. campus. Five silver, arced roofs rise along its length, giving the impression of a ship’s sails billowing towards the North Shore mountains. The unusual, purplish colour of the brick cladding contrasts with the 100-foot coniferous forest looming behind.
This is the C.K. Choi building, a structure thoroughly planned to reduce ill effects on its surroundings, one of the most advanced in use in B.C. Completed early this year, it functions as a normal component of the campus, containing the Institute of Asian Research.
It’s an embodiment of new standards for sustainable design, construction and operations, goals set at a pre-design meeting by university planning representatives, its future users and assorted consultants. Its novel environmental features have drawn calls and visitors from around the world. So far, its innovations have been recognized with the B.C. 196 Earth Award, presented by the Building Owners and Managers Association.
As the piece de resistance among the few local environmentally sound structures, the Choi building is notable for having made it off the drafting table and onto a piece of property. While Vancouver has a relatively large contingent of professionals working in the field of environmental design, the difficulty of convincing people who influence building decisions to “go green,” the few financial incentives, and the lack of political will, remain a formidable, if passive, opposition.
Matsuzaki Wright Architects, the firm that designed the institute, gave environmental attention to every possible aspect of the building. From the high percentage of recycled materials used in construction to the natural ventilation, the designers rejected industry standards and came up with site-specific solutions.
“The Choi building is fantastic in what we were able to achieve,” said project architect Joanne Perdue, reflecting on the process while sitting at her company’s glass boardroom table, a 24th-floor view of Burrard Inlet behind her. “At the front end of the project it seemed like a horrendous goal.”
Four categories make up the environmental targets: reducing consumption and environmental impact; minimizing the energy and pollution needed to produce building materials; lowering operating energy needs; and creating a livable work space.
Fitting into the first category, the Choi building’s flushless, composting toilets provoke more curiosity than any other feature. Completely disconnected from the sewer system, what goes in ends up as fertilizer for the surrounding plants. The process from point A to point B involves a system of five trays at the bottom of the toilets’ 14-inch stainless steel chutes. Maintenance staff throw in wood chips to aid the composting process, and red wiggler worms burrow through the muck to turn human digestive by-products into topsoil.
The liquids, called composting tea, join the building’s used water in a sub-surface “greywater trench” that runs along the side of the building, where it is naturally cleaned by micro-organisms on plant roots before being stored for summer irrigation. The system saves more than 1,500 gallons of water a day, as well as eliminating a potential load on the sanitary system by the same amount.
The building’s two distinctive visual features fall under the second category, carrying on local history in a new location. The exterior bricks used to be downtown pavement at the turn of the century, and the visible, heavy timber structural beams come from the former Armouries, a 1930s campus structure familiar to recent generations of students where they wrote final exams. Other items like railings, bathroom fixtures, doors and door frames were salvaged from torn-down buildings.
The builders aimed to use 50 per cent recycled material, but the actual amount is impossible to gauge without an in-depth research project, said Perdue. Building components such as steel, insulation, and even the polished concrete floors contain recycled material, but the ingredient percentages vary.
On the energy-reduction front, the Choi building maximizes daylight use and natural ventilation. Work stations are located beside large windows that let in plenty of light — a situation made easier by the building’s narrowness–even on overcast days. A control system dims electric lights if adequate natural light is available, or turns them off if a room is vacant. The building uses less than half the amount of lighting required for typical office buildings.
The five atria topped by curved roofs that rise up beyond the three-storey height have north-facing windows–natural light wells that help illuminated second- and third-floor areas, and facilitate ventilation. Air drawn into the building through vents under each window warms and rises to the top of each atrium, where louvres open to release air once it reaches a certain temperature. The relative openness of the building allows air to circulated freely, aided by a few fans.
The most sustainable aspect of the building, however, had to be that people would enjoy working in it. To achieve that, the designers aimed to control the interior finishing as rigorously as they did the air and light requirements. Materials were chosen for their lack of “off-gassing,” or chemical emissions. No adhesives were used to lay natural-fibre carpets, the paint is acrylic, and photocopy machine areas were designed with extra venting to combat toner chemicals.
The achievements of the Choi building can easily be considered desirable in a time of growing public environmental awareness, and the focus on creating a healthy workplace a welcome response to “sick” buildings. Yet the experience of the people trying to widen environmental boundaries shows the path is anything but straightforward.
“It was hard,” Perdue states simply. “People are used to doing things a certain way. We’re creatures of habit; we don’t change unless there’s a reason to change.”
She described the lack of understanding among some of the people peripheral to the project. A plumbing inspector not originally from Canada questioned the wisdom of installing composting toilets. “Why do you want to go backwards?” she recalls the man, who grew up in a country without sewage infrastructure, asking.
While some architectural firms like Matsuzaki Wright might be environmentally forward-thinking, people who commission building designs don’t necessarily have such inclinations.
In the case of the Choi project, that problem didn’t exist. Freda Pagani, UBC campus planning and development’s associate project development director, is a driving force behind the environmental consciousness of the new buildings being constructed there. She and her co-workers are the reason that a benchmark project such as the Choi building was considered for the site.
In her well-organized campus office, Pagani agreed with Perdue that fear of change limits the growth of environmental building practices. “It’s a concern about the unknown,” she said. “When you’re doing things that don’t conform, people are worried they will cause problems.”
Getting approval for new technologies and determining the safety of second-hand materials topped the list of hurdles. Health officials, for instance, took a thorough look at the composting toilets before giving a go-ahead, and still required a sewer connection to be laid in case it needs to be hooked up in the future.
Confirming the safety of recycled materials was also a stumbling block, because the amount of money saved by using them shrinks with the coast of research and inspection.
Perdue gave working examples of this situation. In the long search for appropriate cladding bricks, she contacted demolition companies and learned about the variety of brick quality present in old buildings. Former street pavers worked out best. The ungraded wooden beams from the old Armoury presented another problem. Initially, the grader said that 80 per cent of the wood wasn’t usable, but later all but a small percentage was deemed structurally sound. The wood had checks, or cracks, and the grader hadn’t been convinced that these didn’t affect the beams’ integrity, given that new wood doesn’t have them.
The perception of increased cost was another aspect of environmental construction that Pagani had to address. The Choi building was built with the same fixed, dollars-per-square-foot budget as any other campus building. Some materials were more expensive while others were cheaper, and the overall technological expense was lower because there was no need for an air-duct system for ventilation. Savings due to energy-efficient design also come into play in the long run, she said.
Perdue is adamant that not having money to spend on expensive materials like granite flooring doesn’t mean that a building is not attractive. With its openness, white reflective surfaces and exposed timber beams, the Choi building has the airy, modern feel of a remodelled warehouse.
Extra time spent on research was controversial, Perdue added, because the expense fell to the architects. Since the building was destined to be a model of possibilities, she and co-workers felt the pressure to be perfect.
“We had to be sure. We had to do enough research. (Any failure) would be a failure for our team but also a setback to others.”
Describing it as a labour of love, she said Matsuzaki Wright took on the project because the firm believes in the goals it set.
Citing a United Nations scientific study that confirms climactic changes have occurred through human intervention, Pagani believes the world’s environmental situation is critical. Nevertheless, she doesn’t support the idea of legislation to change the war people build. Rules are restrictive and don’t foster innovation, which she says is exactly what is needed.
The Choi project is a perfect example, having been set in motion by her and others’ personal engagement. She acknowledged that governments are uninspiring and provide few incentives for developers to turn to environmental construction.
“There is no larger body with a focus and a mandate to look after larger interests,” said Pagani. “Vancouver has got a long way to go.”
Matsusaki Wright Architects
pp 11-14, Design for a New Millennium,
ed. E.Laquian (1995) . Institute of Asian Research, Vancouver.
At the onset of the 21st century, the world faces global warming from greenhouse gas emissions, a thinning ozone layer, depletion of natural resources, an inadequate supply of fresh water and reduced capacity for food production. All of these issues are exacerbated by a steadily increasing population. “Our human values and institutions have set mankind on a collision course with the laws of nature” (Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions Ehrlich, Ehrlich, Holdren). In 1993 when the University of British Columbia commissioned Matsuzaki Wright Architects for the design of the C. K. Choi Building, a mandate was set to attain a new benchmark in sustainable design. The project team was composed of:
Architects: Matsuzaki Wright Architects Inc.
Structural Engineers: Read Jones Christoftersen
Mechanical Engineers: Keen Engineering
Electrical Engineers: Robert Freundlich & Associates
Landscape Architect: Cornelia Hahn Oberlander
Landscape Contractor: North by Northwest Landscape
To achieve the goal of sustainable design, the project team challenged industry standards at every step of the project. From their own design process to University standards, each decision was assessed for both its immediate and long term impact on the environment. Four key issues addressed by this project are:
Reducing Impact and Consumption
The component of this building that has piqued the most interest is unquestionably the use of composting toilets. From a water conservation perspective, the system not only saves all the water that would be used for flushing a conventional toilet, it also reduces the wastewater volume sent to the sanitary sewer system by a similar amount.
This waterless toilet system enabled the building to be disconnected from the sanitary system. An objective of the continually ventilated composting toilet system is to reduce the volume of waste by up to 90%, and produce a humus-like product that is rich in nitrogen and other useful elements. Researchers and operations staff have monitored the system since installation and have found that while these toilets have achieved their water conservation objectives, the solid and liquid outputs that are produced need to be handled differently than originally intended in order to destroy potential pathogens.
Embodied Energy in Construction
Reused heavy timbers from the Armouries building previously located across the street and reused red brick cladding from the streets of Vancouver give the Choi Building an aesthetic that is rich in history and energy efficiency. Many additional reused and recycled materials are also incorporated in the building. (See Appendix A in book)
The exact total of energy saved from extraction, transportation, refining and production of these materials has not yet been tallied. This number is expected to be substantial as it is estimated that more than 50% of the total materials are reused or recycled. Benefits in reduced greenhouse gas emissions are important as are the savings to the earth’s limited supply of natural resources.
Operating Energy Over Time
Inside the Choi Building, spaces are so filled with daylight that the power consumption for lighting is less than half that required for typical office buildings. Offices have manual light switches; however, controls systems dim lights if adequate daylight is available or turn off lights if a room is vacant.
Operating energy is also reduced by the elimination of a traditional ducted air system. The building relies on natural ventilation with a few fans to assist when necessary. Operable windows and fresh air vents under each window allow a continual flushing of fresh air through the building. The cool fresh air rises as it warms through a series of high atria. When the warm air exits the building through louvres high in the atria, fresh air is simultaneously drawn in through the window vents. In total, the energy saved from the Choi Building in one year will power four Vancouver residences. (See Appendix B in book)
Liveable Working Space
For any building to achieve longevity and in turn be sustainable, it must be a place where people like to work or live. The occupants of the Choi Building enjoy natural daylight to work in and 100% fresh air at all times. Air quality within the building is improved through careful selection of building materials, finished products and construction practices. For example, the carpet is laid without adhesives, millwork is constructed from formaldehyde-free materials and finishes are solvent-free, low emission products. Features such as direct venting of the copy machines areas help to maintain good air quality over time.
As a leader in the community, the University of British Columbia sets goals and values for the community to emulate. The C. K. Choi Building is an example of a sustainable approach in the building industry. It is rewarding to see that interest to date has come from not only the local community but also from many corners of the world. As the construction of this project is finished, it is now those who will occupy and maintain the building who will face the next challenge of this project: to set new standards in sustainable operations.
Award-Winning Features
The C. K. Choi Building has won the 1996 Building Owners and Managers Association’s Earth Award. The BOMA Earth Award is a new opportunity to recognize and promote “environmental friendliness” in commercial buildings. The following environmental aspects of the building were considered for the award:
Energy Usage: Based on a Building Simulation Energy Study, this 30,000 sq. ft. office building exceeds its Ashrae 90.1 prototype building by 57%. The total electrical savings are 191,603 kWh per year. For this achievement, B.C. Hydro provided a $44,121 incentive to the Owner under the New Building Design Program. Some of the key energy savings features include: retaining an existing stand of trees along the 300 foot western edge of the building to reduce cooling loads; utilizing building forms that enhance internal stack effects to provide air change through natural ventilation and localized fans (no large mechanical air handling system); utilizing building forms that enhance daylighting to reduce reliance on electric lighting and reduce cooling loads; incorporating daylight sensors and occupancy sensors to minimize unnecessary use of lights; incorporating high efficiency luminaries with lower ambient lighting levels and task lights where appropriate; exceeding the R-values suggested under Ashrae 90.1 for walls, ceiling and glazing; careful attention to detailing and construction methodology to minimize heat loss through thermal breaks etc.; utilizing waste heat in an existing steam vault adjacent the site to preheat domestic water. (See Appendix C in book)
Water Conservation: Significant water savings are realized through a series of features. Composting toilets installed in this project do not require water for flushing. City water is generally only required for the low flow lavatory faucets (spring loaded to further reduce waste) and kitchen sinks. Collected rain water (stored in an 8,000 gallon subsurface cistern) provides irrigation for site landscaping. Projected water usage is approximately 300 gallons per day.
Waste Management: Sanitary wastewater is reduced through the use of the composting toilets. The composting toilets dramatically decrease the amount of wastewater that is sent to the sanitary sewer from the building. To manage the risks of pathogens from the composting toilets, the partially-composted contents of the toilets are periodically pumped out for separate processing off campus. The small amount of excess liquid generated is sent to the sanitary sewer. Based on experience to date, pumping out is expected to be required no more than every 18 months. In the original design, the plants and microbial community of the outdoor greywater recycling trench were used to treat greywater collected from sinks for irrigation. Because greywater from sinks is collected together with liquid from the toilets, the greywater is now also sent to the sanitary sewer. Water from the subsurface rainwater holding tank is fed to the greywater recycling trench to ensure that the plant life in the greywater trench is never left dry.
Construction Waste Management: The significant amount of reused materials and products with recycled content in this building (60% of primary wood structure, 100% of exterior brick cladding) address waste management by diverting materials from landfills. In addition, a comprehensive waste management plan was implemented during construction. The site separated and recycled waste materials diverted more than one half of the waste generated on site from the landfill.
Ozone-Depleting Substances: In addition to being free of CFC’s as required under provincial regulations, efforts were made on this project to select systems and products that minimize impact on the ozone layer. For example, rigid insulations are expanded boards foamed with pentane (not ozone depleting) versus extruded boards expanded with an HCFC, and natural ventilation eliminates the need for refrigerated coolants. The significant amount of reused and recycled materials in this project also greatly reduces the use of fossil fuels (otherwise required to extract, transport and process new raw materials) and thus reduces carbon dioxide emissions, the largest single component of current greenhouse gas emissions.
Indoor Air Quality: Three strategies were taken to ensure good indoor air quality. Material selection was carefully reviewed. For example, all millwork is constructed from formaldehyde-free medite, all finishes are solvent-free, low VOC products, carpet is laid with a tack strip method versus adhesives. Construction sequencing was specified to ensure flushing of the building during drywall installation and finishing, painting, caulking, and during the installation of carpets. As people produce carbon dioxide and everyday operations add VOC’s to buildings, the natural ventilation system in the building was designed to provide 20 cfm per person of 100% fresh air at all times. In addition, copy machine areas are direct vented. Being continually flushed, the building does not experience peaks and valleys in lAO often found in traditional mechanized systems that operate with reduced air changes during low occupancy hours.
Building Waste Management: The Choi Building incorporates a comprehensive approach to management of building waste and surface water on site. Graywater is collected in the building and directed to an exterior subsurface graywater recycling area. The graywater recycling trench contains plant material and in turn, microbial plant life known for their capacity to neutralize bacteria in the graywater. The recycled graywater is then used for site irrigation. A subsurface holding tank is incorporated for storage of rainwater collected from the roof area. This water is used for summer irrigation of the site and to ensure that the plant life in the graywater trench is never left dry. This design results in no city service connection for graywater waste from the building and no use of city water for site irrigation. The addition of composting toilets to this system allows this building to be “off grid” for sanitary waste.
Environmental Management: The first step in environmental management was to enhance the ambient conditions of the existing site. Existing trees were retained for their capacity to remove C02 from the air and the shade they provide on the west elevation. The building replaces an existing parking lot and the dynamic building form capitalizes on the benefits of the different climatic conditions at each orientation. The second stey was designing a building that minimizes consumption and impact on the environment. The total operating energy savings for this project are 50% greater than what is achieved under the new Energy By-Law of Vancouver. An energy meter enables the building owner and users to monitor actual energy use in the building and make adjustments in operations as necessary.
Tenant Awareness Program: Part of the commissioning process of this project includes educating users about building features and items over which they have control. For example the building has operable windows and user control over heat in work spaces. Understanding the way the stack effect for ventilation works or the operation of daylight and occupancy sensors, enables the users to participate in energy efficient operations and ensure that good IAQ is maintained.
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design.”
incorporates environmental impacts, significantly reduced use of resources, and the concept of waste eliminated. We are far from existing in such a world now, but we are in the early stages of a period of reappraisal and change which will extend well into the next millennium. Designing in this transitional period as society realigns itself to meet the dictates of sustainability is quite different from designing in an era in which an environmental ethic has fully matured.
These are Chinese characters engraved on huge stones shipped all the way from Taishan (Mt. Tai) in Shandong Province (China) where Confucius was born. They form the centerpiece of the Stone Garden. Each character represents a virtue extolled in the Confucian Analects, with supporting quotations from a variety of ancient sources, here summarized.
Building as well as in five locations in the central entrance and stairwell of the building, and in the dome of the reading room.
length, giving the impression of a ship’s sails billowing towards the North Shore mountains. The unusual, purplish colour of the brick cladding contrasts with the 100-foot coniferous forest looming behind.
inadequate supply of fresh water and reduced capacity for food production. All of these issues are exacerbated by a steadily increasing population. “Our human values and institutions have set mankind on a collision course with the laws of nature” (Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions Ehrlich, Ehrlich, Holdren). In 1993 when the University of British Columbia commissioned Matsuzaki Wright Architects for the design of the C. K. Choi Building, a mandate was set to attain a new benchmark in sustainable design. The project team was composed of: