INNOVATION July-August 2012

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF PERKINS+WILL ARCHITECTS CO.

UBC’s Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability is estimated to sequester the equivalent of 600 tonnes of CO 2e .

Making a Positive Impression

Living lab’s environmental footprint goes beyond net zero

Suzanne Morphet

People are likely to be standing in front of four video screens in the atrium, discussing data on the building’s energy and water use, displayed in real-time. Or, if it’s lunch time, the building’s occupants and visitors might be found at The Loop, the on-site café that uses no dis- posable packaging and sources food as locally as possible, some as close as UBC’s farm just down the road. No matter where you turn, which way you look, everything about this building contributes in some way to making it “the greenest building in North America,” according to those who conceived the idea and thought it through construction. The Path to a Sustainable Building While remarkable, it’s not surprising that an idea for such a building would take root at UBC. After all, it

From the outside it looks deceptively ordinary. You might even walk past the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and think it’s merely an attractive building where people talk about “green” ideas rather than live them. Little about its exterior shape or size or design cries out: “I’m extraordinary.” Yet, step inside and you realize this is no ivory tower with professors cloistered behind doors, their heads in the clouds. Instead, you walk into a light-filled atrium where a wood and glass staircase draws the eye up and around a bright, open space. Light floods through large windows on both sides of this living laboratory, bathing the solid wood beams in a warm glow. Look up and you’ll notice solar photovoltaic panels on the skylight of the four-storey building, converting sunlight into electricity.

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