Green Party of Ontario Candidate

What you may not know about the Vale Living with Lakes Centre:

I will be openly honest about my bias in this blog.  My life-partner has spent the last four years of our life researching for the Cooperative Freshwater Ecology Unit, and so I have spent a lot of time hearing about the new Vale Living with Lakes Centre.  Needless to say excitement is generated when you hear about something that interests you for a long time, and to finally see pieces of it start to come together.  On August 25, 2011 it all fell into place with the official opening at Laurentian University.

There was a lot of spectacle and excitement around the opening.    Speeches were made by the major funding bodies Jody Kuzenko (General Manager, Sustainability for Vale’s North Atlantic Region), Dominic Giroux (President of Laurentian University), Rick Bartolucci (Liberal Candidate for Sudbury), Marianne Matichuk (Mayor of Sudbury), and finally the co-leader of the project Dr. John Gunn.   Major media outlets were in attendance in greater numbers than I have ever seen before.  What was the big draw to this particular building?  It was not just that the school opened up any type of new building.  It was that this building is a LEED Platinum building. 

LEED is the acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.  It is a designation system that measures the efficiency of buildings.  The more efficient a building the higher a LEED standing it gets. Platinum is VERY good.

So after many weeks of drooling over the building, and having numerous tours through it from my partner, I finally got the John Gunn tour.  I had waited a long time for this day.

Dr. Gunn explained the designs and technologies that this building uses to get it’s designation as LEED Platinum, and the reason why it is winning awards all over the place. 

The whole building is built out of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified wood.  The FSC certifies that the wood has been harvested sustainably (not to mention the amount of trees that members of the Freshwater Coop have been responsible for planting in the past and those that will be planted in the future).  The wood panelling you can see from the road was cut in an old shut down sawmill that was brought back to life just for this project. 

The inspiration for the weaving design of the building was to follow the lines in the lakeshore that were cut by ancient glaciers carving up the land as they moved across it.  This was Sudbury’s and much of the North’s history and so important enough to be reflected in the building.

The building uses a sophisticated geothermal heating system that traps heat in the summer to warm the building in the winter, and by the same technology keeps the building cool in the summer.  The abundant windows all have solar reflectors which direct warm light into the building in the winter when the sun is low, and direct light away in the summer when the sun is hot.  The thermal mass of the building helps to maintain temperature to keep heating and cooling energy fluctuation low.

The natural light from the windows is the primary source of lighting.  However, natural light can be supplemented when it is weak or unavailable with the motion sensor lights.

Almost all of the research being done in this building has to do with water.  So it was philosophically very important that when water comes in contact with the building, the water is to run into the lake cleaner then when it first hit.  So the green roof, limestone brick, and series of stone layers in the parking lot filter the water that leads into the cistern.  Some of that water from the cistern is pulled out and reused before it is again filtered back into the cistern and then released into the lake.

The labs are beautifully designed so that they can be moved around to accommodate a large number of researchers from the Ministry of Natural Resources, Ministry of Environment, and students and scientists from many universities.

 There are separate rooms to ensure that noises and gases are contained and kept away from the people working in the rest of the building.  Speaking of gases, all the furniture and materials used to build and decorate the building were purchased with the intent to prevent off-gassing.  The building is truly designed with the people and the local environment in mind. 

It is not just the technologies involved in making the building energy efficient that is enticing.  As Dr. Gunn stated the principles in the buildings designs “have been around for ages,” the masterpiece is in the simplicity of the designs and what the building represents. 

The media was interested in the appeal of the building’s ideology.  The critical work that will come out of this research facility will help to heal ecosystems, and assist humanity in coping with climate change.  It is a place where students and scientists from around the world will be able to come for education and inspiration.  That is why the media was so interested.

Hopefully there will be enough inspiration in the community to see more buildings retrofit or built with the simple techniques used in this building to help residents conserve energy and money.  The Vale Living with Lakes Centre has become a shining example for the north and the rest of the world.