An innovative multi-family residential development has been proposed for West Vancouver’s Ambleside area, just steps from the waterfront.
A preliminary development application submitted by Delta Land Development and designed by Perkins + Will Architects calls for the redevelopment of 2204 Bellevue Avenue [...].
— Urbanized Vancouver
The proposed eight-story mass timber tower was designed by Perkins and Will for Delta Land Development and aims for Passive House sustainability standards, reports Urbanized Vancouver.
One year ago, P+W made headlines with another wooden tower design proposal: Canada Earth Tower could rise up to 40 stories and, if realized, bring the coveted title of "World’s Tallest Timber Building" from Norway back home to Vancouver.
3 Comments
Hey look, its the architectural equivalent of buying a brand new $100,000 Tesla and running around telling the world how sustainable and eco friendly you are!
These are ~3000sf whole floor luxury apartments. It doesn't matter how sustainable you claim this is, what is much more sustainable is housing at least twice as many people using the same resources, materials and energy! Yeah it better be energy efficient, if you are heating all that floor space for the two, maybe three people that may or may not be living there full time.
I would be interested to see a full life cycle resource and energy calculation per resident for that building and compare it to your standard generic glass box condo, I suspect it wouldn't be much different. Do any sustainability metrics exist that include the resources/energy used per occupant?
These luxury apartments and your Tesla might be better than their alternatives but are still far from being truly "sustainable".
I mostly agree with your point, but also it's worth remembering that the high cost of emerging technologies makes it prohibitive for all but these types of applications - at least at the beginning. Pretty much every advancement (not just in architecture) has come from using the wealthy as R&D / Proof of Concept, until the technology is understood enough to scale production and bring cost down to the average or affordable user. Passivehaus and mass timber are both relatively new. I hope in the coming years we'll see these things start to be delivered in masse (Much like the $100,000 Tesla leading to the development of 20-30,000 models)
Mass timber construction will also become much more affordable when the environmental impact of other construction methods will make those too expensive. Similarly, because electricity is subject to taxation but kerosine for airplanes is not, airplanes have an unfair competitive edge over trains, but hopefully not for long.
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