Lisa Bate and Mia Lehrer talk about putting roads on diets, how to make a city as developed as LA more sustainable, and the award winning, tangible benefits of the Humber College Building NX retrofit
Lisa is regarded as one of Canada's global ambassadors for sustainable design and is a champion for gender parity in the architecture and design professions. She’s the former Director and Board Chair of the Canada Green Building Council, and is a Board Director and the Immediate Past Chair of the World Green Building Council.
She led the facilitation of the 2020 - 22 World GBC three year strategic plan and was a representative on the United Nations' Environmental Protection, Sustainable Buildings and Climate Initiative.
Lisa leads teams to deliver advanced sustainable and high performance built environments around the world. Most recently, she led the design team responsible for the Humber College Building NX deep energy retrofit, the first Net Zero Carbon Design Certified Retrofit Building in Canada and winner of the CaGBC Green Building Excellence Awards 2020.
Mia founded Studio-MLA with a vision to improve quality of life through landscape architecture.
She has led the design and implementation of public and private projects including the Hollywood Park Racetrack redevelopment and its new SoFi Stadium, Dallas’ Fair Park Community Park, the LA County Natural History Museum Gardens, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, and many urban river-related projects including the Rio Tietê in São Paulo, Brazil, and the Los Angeles River Taylor Yard G2 River Park and Upper Los Angeles River and Tributaries Plan.
Mia is internationally recognised for progressive landscape design, advocacy for sustainable and people-friendly public places, and catalysing work for a climate-appropriate future. She is the newest Commissioner of the all-female Los Angeles Department of Water & Power, has served on Obama’s Fine Arts Commission and was honoured with the ASLA LaGasse Medal.
Humber College Building Nx
B+H Architects
Building Nx is an ambitious deep energy retrofit located at Humber College’s North Campus. The renovated 1980’s building has achieved Passive House EnerPHit Certification and Zero Carbon Building Standard – Design, in addition to receiving the 2020 Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) Green Building Excellence Award as an Existing Building.
B+H was tasked with implementing a complete replacement of the building envelope and the existing mechanical and electrical systems.
Over its lifetime of use, Building Nx shifted from its intended use as a campus library to faculty office spaces. Following this use change, longer-term occupants quickly learned the building was drafty, and workstations suffered solar glare and uneven lighting due to the extensive use of glass blocks and poorly performing sandwich panels.
To improve this, the new windows were located to prioritize views and head and sill heights were optimized for usage.
The overall window-to-wall ratio was reduced significantly.
The reduction of glass and optimized placements, combined with high-performance triple-glazing and exceptional building envelope thermal performance and air tightness, addressed glare issues, improved access to daylight, and provides exceptional thermal occupant comfort.
Two key strategies were implemented to reduce energy and GHG emissions.
First, the building enclosure maximizes passive design strategies and significantly reduces the amount of active heating and cooling required from the building systems.
Second, the HVAC system is based on a dedicated outdoor air system (DOAS) with localized heating and cooling and heat pumps for space conditioning.
Additionally, the PV rooftop array provides an onsite renewable resource that assists in offsetting the already extremely low energy usage of the building.
Overall, a 70% reduction in energy use intensity, a 90% reduction in GHG emissions, and a 97% reduction in heating energy is achieved compared to the existing building.
Building Nx is now the most efficient building on campus, performing 80% better than the average building.
Built with Shorthand