The University of British Columbia (UBC) has opened the most sustainable building in North America, a $ 37 million “living laboratory” that will help to regenerate the environment and advance research and innovation on global sustainability challenges.
The Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) is one of only a handful of buildings worldwide that will provide “net positive” benefits to the environment. It reduces UBC’s carbon emissions, powers itself and a neighboring building with renewable and waste energy, creates drinking water from rain, and treats wastewater onsite.
CIRS will be an international centre for research, partnership and action on sustainability issues, including green building design and operations, environmental policy and community engagement. Researchers will study users’ interactions with the facility to improve building performance, maximize the happiness, health and productivity of its inhabitants, and advance best green building practices at UBC and beyond.
“With the world’s urban population projected to jump by two billion people in 20 years, universities have a crucial role to play in accelerating solutions for the sustainability challenges facing society,” said UBC President Stephen Toope. “CIRS is a flagship project in UBC’s ‘living laboratory’ concept, where researchers, students, operational staff and partners develop sustainability innovations on campus to be shared with society.”
Partners have committed more than $ 23 million in support for CIRS, including the federal government ($ 8.4 million), the provincial government ($ 5.7 million), BC Hydro ($ 5 million), and Modern Green Development, China’s largest green real estate developer ($ 3.5 million). CIRS also has strategic partnerships with corporations such as Haworth, for adaptable workspaces, and Honeywell, for building controls and automation – both of which made in-kind contributions to the facility.
“Our Government is pleased to be celebrating today’s [November 3, 2011] opening of the CIRS,” said the Honourable Lynne Yelich, Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification, on behalf of the federal government, which provided support through the Canada Foundation for Innovation ($ 4.5 million), Sustainable Development Technology Canada ($ 2.4 million) and Western Economic Diversification Canada ($ 1.5 million). “This facility will be crucial to the continued growth of our emerging clean technologies sector as a driver of the Canadian economy, opening up new avenues of opportunity, creating jobs and delivering environmental benefits.”
“B.C. is a climate-change leader, and CIRS brings together the people and the technology to take that leadership to the next level,” said Dr. Moira Stilwell, Parliamentary Secretary for Industry, Research and Innovation, on behalf of the B.C. government, which contributed $ 5.7 million from the B.C. Knowledge Development Fund ($ 4.5 million) and other grants. “Our investment in CIRS will pay dividends in jobs for British Columbians as new technologies are developed, and improved environmental stewardship the world over.”
Built to exceed LEED Platinum and Living Building Challenge standards, CIRS is one of the few commercial buildings constructed primarily of certified wood and beetle-killed wood (currently B.C.’s largest source of carbon emissions). Its wood structure locks in more than 500 tonnes of carbon, offsetting the GHG emissions that resulted from the use of other non-renewable construction materials in the building such as cement, steel and aluminum.
Major features of the four-storey, 60,000 square-foot facility include: the BC Hydro Theatre, which has advanced visualization and interaction technologies to engage audiences in sustainability and climate change scenarios, the 450-seat Modern Green Development Auditorium, indoor environmental quality and building simulation software labs, a building management system that shares building performance in real-time, and a café that uses no disposable packaging and serves local and organic food.
Designed in collaboration with Perkins+Will architects, CIRS will house more than 200 inhabitants from several academic disciplines, including applied science, psychology, geography, forestry and business, and such operational units as the UBC Sustainability Initiative (USI), which works collaboratively to integrate the university’s academic and operational efforts on sustainability. CIRS website makes building technical information and performance available to the public.
“This is a place for big ideas with global impacts,” said USI Executive Director John Robinson, a co-author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore in 2007, and the leader behind CIRS creation.
“Unsustainable buildings are 100-year mistakes that affect us all, so accelerating the adoption of green building practices is crucial,” added Robinson, a Professor in UBC’s Dept. of Geography and Institute of Resources, Environment and Sustainability. “CIRS will serve as an agent of change, providing cities and builders a model to learn from, improve on and ultimately surpass.”
CIRS is one of four flagship projects – valued collectively at more than $ 150 million – of UBC’s transformation into a living laboratory for sustainability. Innovations that result from CIRS and other UBC sustainability projects will help UBC to achieve the most aggressive carbon-reduction targets at any major research university: a 33 per cent reduction in Vancouver campus institutional GHG emissions by 2015, a 67 per cent reduction by 2020 and 100 per cent by 2050.
