Explore Vancouver’s Green Buildings

 

Green Building Audio Tours

Green building audio tours are audio guides to Vancouver's green buildings. Each three-minute recording takes the listener on a virtual 'tour' of the building's green design features, guided by the architect or member of the design team. The Vancouver Green Building Audio Tours were created through a partnership between City of Vancouver Sustainability Office and the Open Green Building Society. Keep your eyes peeled for audio tour signage around town (see right).

The tours

Listen now: You can hear the tours online or using your phone - details below.

• Vancouver Olympic & Paralympic Centre at Hillcrest Park

  4575 Clancy Loranger Way – See map

  Call: 604.673.8150 [code: 01]

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  The Vancouver Olympic/Paralympic Centre will be the home of competition curling events during the 2010 Winter Games. After 2010, the venue will be converted to a community facility for the residents of Vancouver, housing a new community centre, ice rink, curling club, library, preschool, field house and offices, as well as an aquatic centre with indoor and outdoor pools. The entire complex is fully accessible.

• Southeast False Creek Neighbourhood Energy Utility

  1890 Spyglass Place – See map:

  Call: 604.673.8150 [code: 02]

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  The SEFC Neighbourhood Energy Utility (NEU) is an environmentally-friendly community energy system that provides space heating and domestic hot water to all new buildings in Southeast False Creek. The NEU's primary and renewable energy source is heat recovered from an adjacent sewer line. As a back-up energy source the system is augmented by high efficiency natural gas boilers.

• Southeast False Creek Community Centre

  1 Athlete’s Way– See map

  Call: 604.673.8150 [code: 03]

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  During the 2010 Winter Games this community centre will be used as office space for the Olympic and Paralympic mayor, management staff and Four Host First Nations, and also host amenities for athletes. The building is located on the waterfront at Southeast False Creek, part of Vancouver’s Olympic/Paralympic Village. After the Games, the facility will become a two-level community centre, child-care facility, non-power boating centre and restaurant. The seawall skirts the north side of the building and provides easy access for cyclists and pedestrians.

• Southeast False Creek & Olympic Village

  Map coming soon.

  Call: 604.673.8150 [code: 04, 05, 06]

  PLAY

   Social

   Water

   Buildings

  Temporary home to 2,800 athletes during the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games, the Village features 1,100 residential units and a wide range of commercial and recreational amenities. All buildings at the Olympic Village are designed to meet LEED Gold standards.

• Trout Lake Rink

  3350 Victoria Drive – See map

  Call: 604.673.8150 [code: 07]

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  One of the stunning new venues of the 2010 Winter Games is Vancouver’s Kensington-Cedar Cottage neighbourhood. Trout Lake rink will be home of figure skating training sessions during the Games, and afterward will be converted to community recreation use.

• Crossroads Mixed-use Development

  507 West Broadway - See map

  Call: 604.673.8150 [code: 08]

  PLAY

  The Crossroads Mixed-use Development is located between 8th Avenue and Broadway along Cambie Street in Vancouver. Due to its size, street frontages, sloping topography and ready transit access, the site is ideally suited to a mix of uses. The project houses large-format food and drug stores, commercial retail units, rental office space, a bank, two restaurants, and market residential uses.

• Mount Pleasant Community Centre

  1 Kingsway - See map

  Call: 604.673.8150 [code: 09, 10]

  PLAY

   Interior

   Exterior

  The Mount Pleasant Centre is a gleaming multi-service civic centre with virtually everything under the roof. The heart of the building is the new Community Centre, featuring a gym and climbing wall, a fitness centre, dancing studio, multi-purpose rooms and outdoor space. Mount Pleasant Centre also houses a new Vancouver Public Library, Child Development Centre, café and market value rental housing.

• Sunset Community Centre

  6810 Main St - See map

  Call: 604.673.8150 [code: 11]

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  The new Sunset Community Centre is 30,000 square feet, over 20 percent larger than the existing centre. Major programmable space includes a full-sized gymnasium, two multipurpose rooms, a fitness centre, aerobics/dance room, arts and crafts room, youth room and two pre-schools.

• Vancouver Convention Centre

  1055 Canada Place – See map

  Call: 604.673.8150 [code: 12]

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  The convention centre was built on a 3.25 hectare site (plus extension into Burrard Inlet) just to the west of Canada Place. Existing facilities were renovated and the two sites have been linked, forming a new integrated convention and exhibition centre. These newly expanded facilities will be the International Broadcast Centre for the 2010 Winter Games.  The expansion adds 359,000 square feet of exhibit space, meeting space, ballroom space and a signature room, to the 133,000 square feet of available convention centre space, more than tripling the total function space.

 

 

 

Green Building Construction in Vancouver

Vancouver has a wide range of green buildings. In fact, an entire sustainable community is being built in Southeast False Creek (SEFC). It is a large-scale green construction project unlike anything ever undertaken in Vancouver. See a presentation on this project.

Other places to see green buildings are at the University of British Columbia, the City's National Works Yard, B.C. Cancer Agency Research Centre plus expansions to the Vancouver Aquarium and the Vancouver Convention Centre - or check out the Vancouver Economic Development Commission's Green Buildings in Vancouver Report.

• Looking for more? Check out the sea-to-sky green guide online. Find, share, edit and add leading-edge information on "green" buildings, neighbourhoods, infrastructure, open spaces, programs and technologies that are part of the evolving sustainability story of the Sea-to-Sky region.

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