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Vancouver's goal to become the world's greenest city by 2020 seems evermore reachable with the development of buildings like the VanDusen Botanical Garden Visitor Centre, one of the most sustainable in the country. Achieving net-zero energy through its wealth of onsite renewable sources, the building is the first in Vancouver to be awarded Living Building Challenge Petal Certification by the International Future Living Institute.
The bestowment brings the building into a special and limited group of projects across British Columbia that have received certification. Petal Certification is the most advanced measurement of sustainability in the built environment, recognizing projects in performance categories called Petals. In 2014, World Architecture News named the structure the "most sustainable building of the year."
Built in 2011 and designed by Perkins+Will, the $22 million Visitor Centre establishes a visual and ecological balance between architecture and landscape. Its single-storey envelope meanders and undulates across the garden like a flower's petals, leading into a central oculus that marks the building's zenith. Under the non-orthogonal roof is a cafe, library, garden shop, offices and flexible classroom spaces.
The Visitor Centre employs a number of innovations including geothermal boreholes, solar photovoltaics and solar hot water tubes to achieve net-zero energy on an annual basis. Wood building materials, rainwater harvesting, a green roof and bioreactor treatment of blackwater — then released into a percolation garden — are some of the centre's innovative features.
The 22-hectare VanDusen Botanical Garden boasts over 250,000 plants from around the world, representing ecosystems from tropical South Africa to South America, the Himalayas, the Mediterranean and Canada's Boreal forests. The Vancouver Park Board and the VanDusen Botanical Garden Association jointly operate the attraction.
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