The new convention centre, an entirely self-sustaining carbon neutral building, is more impressive than I predicted and is proof that environmental sustainability can actually coincide with beauty. That might not seem an unlikely pairing, but in this city things go wrong architecturally on a daily basis. The centre’s environmental elements include a living (green) roof, seawater heating and cooling, on-site water treatment, and fish habitat built into the foundation. The green roof, which covers a surprisingly large area, keeps the building cool in summer and warm in winter. The roof is brown right now, thanks to this strange late spring heat wave, but generally it’s grass green. Most of the photos here are from the centre’s own Flickr stream – click on any photo to be taken to their set. The use of sustainable hemlock wood in the interior is extremely pretty – some of the shots here show the building still under construction and you can see the stacks of boards that were eventually cut to produce the textured end-grain walls.
In the photo above the new convention centre is the slanted glass building to the right, and you can just see its green roof at the top right. Vancouver’s old convention centre, which will remain in use, is the white structure behind with the five paired “sails.”
Photo above by highplains on Flickr. It’s the only photo I could find that actually shows how the building and roof are intercut with each other, to admit light and to allow views of the green roof.
I’m hoping to attend a convention in Vancouver in July (2013) — when I heard it was in Vancouver, I figured I’d search your site to see if there was any info — it looks really interesting! I’m hoping to be able to spend a few days in Vancouver before/after the convention, as I’m particularly interested to see the city since reading your blog for a few years. 🙂