From the world’s largest hydrogen bus fleet to a six-acre multi-use Olympic Oval, British Columbia appears determined to host the “greenest games ever” in Vancouver come February. The city has constructed a series of stunning sustainably-built structures in preparation for upcoming events, and has also kicked off its naturally:wood website, which offers a free digital tool kit for Building Green with Wood and insight into how BC’s sustainable forestry helps LEED the way for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. Read on for just a few of the Olympic buildings boasting impressive LEED certification standards.
The Richmond Olympic Oval is a sexy crown jewel of a speed-skating hall with three levels and a massive wood wave roof inspired by local ecology, using lumber affected by the Mountain pine beetle. The venue features energy-saving refrigeration and rainwater collection, and the CAD $16-million oval roof claims one of the world’s largest clearspan wooden structures, around the size of four and a half football fields.
Vancouver Convention Centre will host the Winter Games Secretariat’s International Media Centre and a six-acre living roof of 400,000 native plants, free of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, that also captures rainfall to use within the building and for irrigation. The venue also features seawater heating and cooling, on-site water treatment, marine habitat built into the foundations, and shoreline restoration.
The 2010 Commerce Centre is certified as a LEED Gold structure, connecting two distinct spaces for multimedia and community affairs and decked out with submerged Douglas-fir logs and concrete countertops utilizing post-beetle mania pine chips.
As intended, Vancouver’s Olympic buildings will remain alive and well even after the games have ended.
http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/12/09/vancouver-2010-promises-greenest-games-ever/
