Home • About Green Buildings • Our Building • Our Team • Links & Resources • Construction Cam Our Building We admit it: we're experts at raising animals, not buildings. While a growing animal is not unlike a building - both use energy and resources, and create waste - nature is a far more efficient planner. Our building’s design actually mimics some of these efficient natural systems. Cool as a Killer Whale Our building has its own network of “blood vessels”: a system of pipes embedded in the concrete ceilings that carries hot or cold water throughout the building, heating and cooling each room far more efficiently than conventional heating or air conditioning. It's a “whale” of a way to save energy!
A New Use for Seawater Like a giant sea star, the Aquarium pumps in seawater from the ocean and distributes water to many areas. But unlike a sea star, we’re also cooling our home with seawater, which can absorb enormous quantities of heat. A "heat exchanger" in the basement cools the building in summer by transferring energy from the water in the building’s “tubes” to the incoming seawater.
The Air We Breathe Our building's ventilation system uses convection to improve the quality of the air we breathe. Fresh air is pumped into each room through vents near the floor. The air rises as it warms, and eventually exits through vents near the ceiling. This upward airflow ensures that fresh air constantly replaces stale air, and creates a more comfortable and energy-efficient space.
Reusing Rainwater Our new building collects rainwater and passes it through a "living wall" of plants that provides habitat for insects and small animals. Some of this diverted rainwater also irrigates the building's landscaping, reducing our need for city water. And because the plants and soil filter the rainwater and return it to the sea, our building generates less surface runoff and sends less rainwater into the city's stormwater system.
Conserving Freshwater Our new building doesn’t come with kidneys, but it does conserve valuable freshwater with efficient plumbing fixtures such as low-flow faucets and toilets. These water-saving devices minimize our use of the city’s drinking water supply. Reducing Waste When we demolished an existing building to make way for the Discovery Education Centre, we salvaged over 75% of that building's materials including concrete, steel, glass, and frames. During construction, we poured our concrete it into reusable steel "forming pans" instead of disposable plywood frames.
The concrete itself was supported with "rebar" made from 97% recycled steel, and was cured with fly ash - a byproduct of natural gas production that replaces cement, the "solidifying" ingredient in concrete, which requires a lot of energy to manufacture. Both the rebar and the fly ash were locally supplied, supporting the local economy and producing fewer greenhouse gases during shipping.
|
Wetlands are special places: in addition to providing important habitat for plants and animals, they also collect and filter enormous amounts of freshwater before returning it to the sea. This global biofiltration service stops many sediments and pollutants from entering the oceans.