Page 195 - Green Building Through Integrated Design

HIGHER-LEVEL CONSIDERATIONS: THE TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE 171

Figure 9.2 The Manitoba Hydro office building in downtown Winnipeg is
aiming for a LEED-NC Canada Gold or even Platinum certification. © Tom Arban
Photography.

swing of 70°C (126°F), not counting the wind chill in the winter when temperatures
get to 40° below (astute readers will note that minus 40° is the temperature in both
Centigrade and Fahrenheit)! Winnipeg is perhaps the windiest large city in North
America, and it has cold, dry winters and warm, humid summers. To help the design
team, the owner and architect called in one of the world’s leading climate engineering
firms, Transsolar of Stuttgart, Germany to help with the mechanical systems design
philosophy and approaches. To understand the project better, I spoke with Tom
Goldsborough of Manitoba Hydro, the client’s project manager and Bruce Kuwabara,
principal of KPMB Architects in Toronto, the design architect.*
The project began in 2002 with research into sustainable design projects, followed
by an international design competition. The owner’s stated goals were five-fold:

1 Demonstrate energy conservation, by saving 60 percent of the energy of a normal
building built to Canada’s Model National Energy Code; this goal was important
since the owner is an electric utility looking to encourage others to save energy.
2 Create a productive and healthy work environment for Manitoba Hydro’s 1800
employees, all of whom would be consolidated into a new headquarters building.

*Interviews with Tom Goldsborough and Bruce Kurabara.