at
Jack Poole Plaza The West Building is directly adjacent to Canada Place and consists of total interior space including of convention space, of retail space along a public waterfront promenade, and 450 parking stalls. Surrounding the building are of walkways, bikeways, public open space and plazas, for a total project area of of land and over water. The project also supplies infrastructure for future water based developments including an expanded marina, a float plane terminal, and water-based retail opportunities. The design architect for the expansion is
LMN Architects of
Seattle, in association with Vancouver firms MCM Architects and
DA Architects + Planners.
Morrison Hershfield ensured quality assurance and conducted enhanced field review during construction of all
building envelope components including innovative curtain wall glazing and
green roof. On February 9, 2010, the building was certified
LEED Platinum by the
Canada Green Building Council. The West Building opened to the public on April 4, 2009, and had a final cost of $883,000,000 CAD (exclusive of land). The building hosted the
International Broadcast Centre for the
2010 Winter Olympics and
2010 Winter Paralympics. Connecting to the centre is the
Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel. Adjacent to the West building is the "
Jack Poole Plaza" (formerly known as Thurlow Plaza), in honour of
Jack Poole, who died of
pancreatic cancer in 2009. He was responsible for securing the bid of the
2010 Winter Olympics and
2010 Winter Paralympics for Vancouver.
Sustainability The new West Building expansion is certified
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Platinum (LEED) and is designated a PowerSmart Convention Centre by BC Hydro. It was awarded a "Go Green" certificate from the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) for industry-approved, environmental best practices in building management. The living roof, seawater heating and cooling, on-site water treatment and fish habitat built into the foundation of the West Building make it one of the greenest convention centres in the world. The Centre recycles an average of 180,000 kilograms of materials annually, nearly half of the total volume of waste generated. It avoids canned goods, disposable utensils and dishes, and donates leftover food to local charities. The "
living roof" is the largest in Canada and the largest non-industrial living roof in North America. The roof landscape is designed as a self-sustaining grassy habitat characteristic of coastal British Columbia, including 400,000 native plants and 4 colonies of 60,000 bees each which provide honey for the public plaza restaurant. No public access is allowed to the roof, which made it possible to create a fully functional ecosystem with natural drainage and seed migration patterns using the roof's architectural topography. The landscape functionally connects to nearby
Stanley Park via a corridor of waterfront parks. Irrigation to the roof is provided by the building's wastewater treatment plant. In the event that the roof irrigation demands exceed the capacity of the wastewater treatment plant, make-up water can be provided by a reverse osmosis desalinization plant drawing and treating seawater pumped from the harbour as well as municipal water through an air gap connection to the storage tanks, as needed. All wastewater from washrooms, retail, and restaurant activities in the building is reclaimed and recycled for use in toilet and urinal flushing, and green roof irrigation. The treatment facility uses a membrane bioreactor process, manufactured and supplied by GE/Zenon, consisting of two 2-zone (anoxic/oxic) bioreactor tanks (with internal recycle) and an ultra-filtration (hollow-fibre) membrane tank, followed by a chlorine contact tank that serves to remove colour and disinfect the
reclaimed water. The treatment system is designed for an average daily flow of per day, and maximum flows of up to per day. With the City of Vancouver 2012 commercial metered water and sewer rates at $2.803 and $1.754, respectively, the convention centre can save over $21,000 per month in utility fees through
water reuse. One of the biggest operating challenges when the facility first started up was the ability to maintain the treatment plant bacteria in a healthy condition during lengthy periods (e.g. late December through mid-January) with limited wastewater to feed the treatment plant due to limited convention activity and concurrent wastewater generation within the building; however, once the restaurants in the building were established this challenge was resolved. The building's heating and cooling system feeds through the deep water of the harbor, using it as a constant temperature base to reduce the amount of energy used for heating and cooling. Along the waterfront, the shoreline ecology is fully restored from its previous brownfield state and supports a historic salmon migration path. An artificial reef structure rings the building perimeter, consisting of a series of concrete steps. Each step is planted with marine species adapted to a specific depth below the water, resulting in a
kelp forest characteristic of the natural shoreline and supporting a diversity of harbor fauna. Underneath the building, which is set on pier foundations, runnels are set into the tide flats creating a tidal ecosystem zone that flushes daily and feeds the reef. The site of the expansion is a former marine and rail industrial area, most of which was covered in impervious surfaces and contaminated. The expansion led to a decrease in the site's impervious surfaces by almost 30 percent, mitigating total suspended solids and phosphorus content from stormwater and reducing the site's heat-island contribution. == Awards ==