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UBC AQUATIC CENTRE

Advanced sustainable design strategies improve performance in this challenging building type

Completed In 2017, this 8000m² hybrid competition and community aquatic facility replaces an aging indoor and outdoor pool complex, no longer capable of meeting the University of British Columbia’s changing needs. The challenge was to create a facility that would balance the high-performance training requirements of the university successful competitive swim program, with the increased demand for lessons and leisure opportunities from the rapidly expanding residential communities on campus.

By Jim Taggart

The Aquatic Centre is divided north south into four linear program ‘bars’ – lobby and change rooms, community aquatics, competition aquatics, and bleachers. Daylight is used to differentiate between the two aquatic halls. A line of Y-shaped columns supports a continuous six-metre wide skylight that bisects the aquatic hall, delineating competition and leisure areas. A translucent screen creates a luminescent barrier between the two principal spaces, making it possible to control the uses, and have two different activities or events taking place simultaneously.

The architectural composition consists of three distinct elements: a tessellated standing seam metal roof that hovers over an inclined black concrete base, and is separated from it by a continuous ribbon of fritted glazing. The roof rises and falls according to the functional requirements of the spaces below, its slopes and projections providing rain protection, solar shading, and control of daylight penetration as required. The building has become an integral part of the university’s new student hub, adjacent to the bus loop and a few steps from the new student union building.

As a building type, aquatic centres present some major challenges from the sustainability perspective, including water conservation, air quality, energy optimization, light control and acoustic performance.

Water Conservation

Of these, water conservation is the most significant, standard practice being that pools are emptied and the water discarded every time the pool requires maintenance. For the project team, not only did this seem an outdated practice from an environmental point of view, it also seemed incompatible with UBC’s reputation as a leading proponent of sustainable design.

In fact, water conservation has been an important consideration for the UBC Properties Trust for two decades, with new buildings now required to reduce water consumption by 30% relative to the reference standard. This is part of an overall requirement that all new projects are built to LEED Gold standard.

With the university currently conducting research on regenerative neighbourhoods, the project team began looking for ways in which the building could contribute positively to the infrastructure requirements of the community as a whole.

The answer was to create an underground cistern that could not only collect all the pool water during maintenance, but also supply the fire department should the need arise, or accommodate storm surge water for the north campus precinct, so relieving pressure on the existing storm sewer system.

The cistern, which has a capacity of 900,000 litres, is divided into three compartments according to the amount of filtration required prior to reuse. Another of its functions is to collect rainwater from the roof and the adjacent transit plaza, reusing it for toilet flushing, irrigation and poll top up.

  • PROJECT CREDITS
  • Client  UBC Properties Trust
  • Architects   MJMA & Acton Ostry Architects
  • Photos  Shai Gil; Ema Peter

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Resilience planning for communities to thrive in an unpredictable and changing world

Across Canada, we are witnessing tremendous change, not only in our climate, but also in the urbanization of our cities. As our cities grow, we are experiencing greater pressures on our housing stock and community-wide infrastructure. In an often unpredictable and changing world, resilient design and planning is needed for our cities and communities to endure and thrive in both the short and long-term.

By: Kathy Wardle and Viren Kallianpur

While we must be aware of potential short and long-term shocks and threats facing our communities, as design professionals we have both a responsibility and an opportunity to implement solutions that offer hope to Canadians. This article offers a perspective on resilient design: the guiding principles, best practices, and tools that are available to practitioners today.

There is both commonality and differences in the various Canadian cities in terms of their stressors and threats. With four out of five people in Canada living in cities, the resulting higher density and population in urban areas mean that cities are both agents for climate impacts and solutions.

Growing population through migration and immigration, the rising demand for transportation, and the growing need for infrastructure to provide safety, comfort, and security all combine to create different pressures on our cities.

The global nature of the world we live in also means that stressors and threats faced by other nations have either a direct or an indirect impact on our cities. While global in nature, these impacts need to be resolved at the local level through political will, technical expertise, and individual commitment and responsibility. The effort to find solutions to these issues or problems lie in a more collaborative and collective approach through leadership, community engagement, and collective action.

While climate change is one of the most important drivers for discussions regarding resilience, the conversations should not be limited to climate change; resilience needs to be looked through social, economic, and environmental lenses to identify risks—natural and manmade, acute and chronic—and respond through design and operations planning. Resilience needs to be addressed at multiple levels from a single building, to a district, city and regional level. Policies, strategies, and initiatives at each scale influence the resilience and performance at other scales.

Kathy Wardle, LEED BD+C RELi AP, is Associate Principal, Director of Sustainability, and Viren Kallianpur, AICP, LEED AP BD+C, RELi AP, is Associate, Urban Design Practice, both of Perkins+Will in Vancouver.

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LEED Canada Buildings-in-review: Highlighting LEED®-certified buildings in 2017

MEETING CANADA’S GHG EMISSION REDUCTION TARGETS, ONE BUILDING AT A TIME

Welcome to the eighth edition of the LEED in Canada: Buildings in Review supplement, produced in partnership with SABMag. In this supplement, you will read about some of the most innovative and efficient buildings in Canada. LEED certification provides a critical third-party seal of approval in the marketplace, and ensures that a building has gone through a rigorous process to verify their environmental performance targets.

Continue reading “LEED Canada Buildings-in-review: Highlighting LEED®-certified buildings in 2017”