News

LEED Certification

CaGBC lends its support to rebuilding efforts in Calgary and Lac-Mégantic

Canada Green Building Council to provide free LEED registration and certification for rebuilding projects in Calgary and Lac-Mégantic. Ottawa, ON – April 15, 2014 – The Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) is pleased to announce it is working with regional partners to lend support to the rebuilding efforts underway…

LEED Certification

Habitat for Humanity 'Our House' fundraiser concert

The New Frontiers School Board in Ormstown, Quebec has been documenting the design process of a high performance home that will be built by their students, then donated to famillies in need through Habitat for Humanity. This project is garnering tons of attention from the Quebec media, and their fundraiser Jamboree…

Renewable Energy

The best desk we've ever seen - pedal powered

boutrThe benefits of a bicycle desk are plenty: from generating your own energy, to optimizing your health, to reclaiming that time you might have spent at the gym on the way home. There's just no way to lose with a bicycle desk. Excercise while you work with the pedal powered desk This desk hack is just too…

LEED Certification

Webisode # 2 following a carpentry school that is making big waves in Quebec

As they set out to build a LEED Certified house that will be donated to Habitat for Humanity, a very excited group of students and teachers can't wait to break ground. When the New Frontiers School Board decided they wanted to be a leader in teaching green building practices, it’s doubtful that they could have…

Commuting

The Scrooser: eco cruising in style

Navigating the urban core never looked better. Transportation in a congested urban core can be challenging, frustrating and tough on the environment. Electric scooters have always been a functional way to skirt a crowded throughway, with a Scrooser it can. Enter the Scrooser. The Scrooser is a German engineered…

Architecture

Bosco Verticale, the world's first vertical forest

Vertical forests and vertical agriculture have long been dreamed of to help meet the need for urban food production and green space, but nothing ever got past the blueprints. Bosco Verticale in Milan is the first to break ground. Canadian cities are relatively clean, green and few are severely overpopulated. Even in…

Architecture

Perkins + Will Named One of 2013's Most Innovative Companies in Architecture World Wide.

Congratulations to Perkins + WIll for securing their spot on Fast Company's list of the top ten most innovative architecture firms in the world. Having admired their work on numerous occasions we are not at all surprised that Perkins + Will made the Fast Company list of the world's top ten most innovative companies…

Architecture

The VanDusen Botanical Garden Visitor Centre

Designed to exceed LEED Platinum status, architects Perkins + Will are pursuing the Living Building Challenge with the The VanDusen Botanical Garden Visitor Centre. The 19,000 square foot VanDusen Botanical Garden Visitor Centre creates a harmonious balance between architecture and landscape from a visual and…

Products and Materials

A new high performance wall system makes inroads into the Ottawa construction market

With the help of The Healthiest Home in Ottawa, a couple in Aylmer, Quebec are the first in the National Capital Region to build a home with an innovative wall panel system from a U.S. company called K-Tect. Brian Allemekinders and Deidre Yukich say that despite their new home being twice the size of their previous…

Urban planning

Toronto bylaw to mandate green roofs

Toronto will soon see an explosion of green space in the downtown core as residential and commercial buildings comply with new bylaws. In the process we will see a cooler city, cleaner air, cleaner water and lower utility costs. All that and a great place. Green roofs on downtown office buildings It's becoming…