Vancouver Olympic Village - August 2009 Update

[mr.x]

The best Olympic Village yet?

Posted by SFU Vancouver at SSP

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Athletes Village as seen from the north side of False Creek.

The Community Centre at the heart of the Olympic Village will serve the larger Southest False Creek neighbourhood. The Community Centre has been designed to achieve LEED Platinum on the Canada and US Green Building Council Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) ranking system. An important component of this is the building’s sedum green roof. It is already looking lush and just imagine how verdant it will look after a few years of growth.

The Olympic Village as seen from Science World at the end of False Creek.

The busy seawall connects the Science World precinct of False Creek to the new Olympic Village area.

While the Community Centre’s green roof will be inaccessible there is a large landscaped terrace that is adjacent to the centre’s daycare. Children will be able to run around and play on much of this glassed-in terrace. The balance will be attached to general purpose space within the community center. I imagine more than a few weddings and receptions will be held up here before too long.

The front entrance to the Community Centre will feature a double height multi-hued glazed atrium.

This shows the nice balance that has been struck for much of the shoreline for the Olympic Village. The naturalized shoreline is still highly accessible thanks to the numerous boardwalk viewing platforms. At the same time, if people want to scramble down to the water’s edge the plants that have been chosen and the design of the shoreline are both more than hearty enough to endure some adventuring.

The naturalized shoreline section of the seawall has been lushly landscaped with local drought-tolerant plants. Now in their second growing season many plants have self-seeded to fill in the gaps between initial plantings.

Looking across the new small bay towards the buildings on the west side of the Olympic Village. The pedestrian bridge on the right is called Canoe Bridge, after its resemblance to the First Nations’ canoes that were historically used in False Creek and all along the West Coast.

These are the west set of buildings that front onto the Village square and the extensive public realm facing the new bay, Canoe Bridge, and False Creek. On this side of the plaza there will be a large-format private liquor store, and several smaller stores, possibly including a Starbucks.

[mr.x]

The plaza at the centre of the Olympic Village is starting to take shape. To the left is the Community Centre and seawall. Ahead are the mass of buildings on the east side of the Village. At the ground level of these buildings will be a medium-sized grocery store (Urban Fare), a medium-format pharmacy/department store (London Drugs), and almost surely a Starbucks.

The historic Salt Building is being restored and the nearly completed buildings on either side now give a good sense of enclosure without being overbearing. In the Salt Building there will be a large multi-story brewpub, a community-use gathering space, and possibly another Starbucks.

This shot shows the three tiers of movement for the public realm. The asphalt “wheels” path is for cyclists, skateboarders, and inline skaters (old school skates welcome too). The adjacent path with the gray permeable cement pavers is for walkers and joggers, basically people who are going somewhere. Finally, the graciously apportioned boardwalk zone is for people who are just meandering about, enjoying the scenery, and looking for a good place to sit. Understandably there is no street furniture for sitting on the asphalt wheels path, limited amounts on the walking path, and loads of it on the boardwalk.

The granite “steps” that lead down to the waters of False Creek.

While I doubt that anyone will go swimming any time soon it is remarkable that the waters of False Creek have been cleaned up so much that thousands of herring spawned on the kilometer of shoreline adjacent the Village. There hasn’t been a herring spawn in False Creek since they started keeping records.

Every building in the Olympic Village is achieving LEED Gold, with the Community Centre and the net-zero senior’s home both surpassing this level.

The pedestrian Canoe Bridge across the small bay. The bridge was designed to be fun to cross, with metal grating on the floor to allow one to look down into the water and a natural curving shape that is human-scaled, instead of vehicle-scaled.

Looking back at the seawall, Community Centre, plaza space, and granite steps into the water.

The wood for the boardwalks were recovered from the original piles and decking of the industrial-era wharves that were on the site prior to construction.

This photo highlights one of the many pedestrian mews that cut through the larger blocks to make them more permeable to people and light.

[mr.x]

Looking back again at the bridge, naturalized shoreline at the entrance of the bay, and the heart of the Olympic Village.

All buildings in the Olympic Village have green roofs and it was a requirement of their design that each building lot must have a minimum of 50% of its area be planted or permeable. Of course requirements for density, massing, set-backs, public realm treatment, etc., all made a 50% planted lot with the building on the other half totally impossible and green roofs the only choice. This was a sneaky way of getting around the insurance liability the City could face if they had come right out and required green roofs, only to find themselves getting sued ten years down the line for fostering leaky ceilings.

The late Arthur Erickson’s twin twisting mid-rise super luxury buildings.

Another mid-block pedestrian mews. In the foreground an elaborate waterfall and pond can be expected between Erickson’s twisting mid-rise buildings.

The phallanx of the Olympic Village's west "bookend" buildings. The massing strategy of the Village is to have two sets of taller buildings on the edges of the precinct and then the heights dip down towards the Salt Building and plaza at the centre of the Village.

Habitat Island is starting to look quite natural after a couple years of undisturbed growth.

The wetland to the west of the Olympic Village is turning out brilliantly. I have learned more about it and my initial understanding, that it was a daylighted stream, is incorrect. It is instead the heart of the neighbourhood's stormwater management system.

The Olympic Village is not connected to the City's normal storm sewer system in the normal fashion. Instead all of the local storm sewers drain into this wetland, which is full of plants that will filter the water while providing habitat to waterfowl, invertebrates, and insects, before it spills over into False Creek.

There is the infrastructure to have storm water overflow into the normal storm sewer system but I believe the wetland system has been designed to accept everything, even hundred-year storm events like the ones we had in 2005.

Recycled potable fresh water is pumped into the wetland to ensure that it is viable year round, and the wetland will slowly overflow into False Creek via the small dam beneath the seawall bridge. This dam keeps salt water out of the freshwater wetland. The overflowing water will drain into the intertidal channel beside Habitat Island and the mainland. This shot shows the intertidal channel, in the foreground of the photo, at a fairly high tide.

[mr.x]

The Olympic Village as seen from the deck of the Cambie Street Bridge.

In the foreground a large grass playing field with a baseball diamond at each end will eventually be built as part of evolution of the larger Southeast False Creek precinct. Privately developed residential projects will fill out the rest of the space per the Southeast False Creek Official Development Plan.

The Southeast False Creek Neighbourhood Energy Utility (NEU) is being constructed beneath the Cambie Street Bridge. This facility will siphon latent heat from the City's sanitary sewers to provide hot water heating for the larger Southeast False Creek neighbourhood and the Olympic Village. An ultra-high efficiency natural gas boiler will bring the sewer heat-warmed water up the last bit of the way to the desired temperature when required.

All of the buildings in the neighbourhood are required to be designed with either baseboard hydronic radiators or in-slab hydronic radiant heating and the necessary equipment to plug into the NEU hot water network. The water is on a closed loop and is drawn back into the NEU for reheating. When demand for heating is greatest on the coldest of winter days the natural gas boiler will undoubtedly kick in. However the system works in reverse and on hot summer days cold water will be pumped through the NEU loop to help cool the buildings in lieu of air conditioning. The returning water will be warm and this latent heat will be dissipated into the City’s sanitary sewer system.

This the one of the pipes that will carry hot water throughout the Southeast False Creek neighbourhood and the Olympic Village for heating purposes.

The flue stacks for the NEU are deliberately being made visible from the bridge deck and a LED lighting system will be installed on the flue stack tips to visually illustrate how much hot water is being used to heat the neighbourhood, and possibly how much of it is being heated by green power vs natural gas.

This shot looks down First Avenue from the deck of the Cambie Street Bridge. The wide centre (soon to be grass) median is earmarked for the downtown Vancouver Streetcar. The trial Olympic Streetcar Line will run from the new SkyTrain Olympic Village station on the other side of the bridge to Granville Island. The alignment of the streetcar through the Olympic Village and on into Chinatown, Gastown, Coal Harbour and Stanley Park has been approved by Council and all the roads, and in some cases viaduct roads, have been designed to accommodate a modern streetcar system. On the right are The Exchange and Foundry. The Exchange is named this because the brick office block housed the city's original telephone exchange.

The west “bookend” buildings of the Olympic Village as seen from First Avenue before it jogs around the corner.

The wetlands from the First Avenue side.

Looking down First Avenue away from the Cambie Street Bridge. The green fritted glass-clad low-rise building on the left is one of the non-market apartment buildings in the Olympic Village.

[mr.x]

This unique building has a cladding system that utilizes fritted glass panels instead of metal paneling over top of the normal weatherproof insulated wall assembly. The building will be home to families that receive income assistance and have had their living arrangements made for them, likely by the Provincial Ministry of Children and Families or possibly the City.

This is the site of “Crane Park”. The immense gantry crane from Domtar Steel was saved and is being refurbished for use on this small pocket park. Domtar Steel made much of the steel that was used in the Second Narrows Iron Workers Memorial Bridge, BC Place, the Boeing Aircraft Assembly Hall in Seattle, and many of the major steel skyscrapers in downtown Vancouver. The park fronts onto First Avenue and is surrounded by two of the non-market housing buildings in the Village.

I love that the Salt Building is being restored to its original intense hue of red and that it has in turn inspired the architects of the Olympic Village to go way outside their normal comfort zone in their use of colour for the buildings that front onto First Avenue.

The brillance of the new paint job on the Salt Building has actually made me re-evaluate my preconcieved notions of what Vancouver must have looked like in its industrial heyday. I knew that brightly coloured industrial buildings were common but the black and white or sepia photography never gives one a glipse of this.

This striking building is part of the "modest market" program of the Olympic Village, which means rental apartments. The developer, Millennium, has committed to these apartements being available for rent at market rates for the next twenty years. After that time they may apply to the City for permission to renovate and then sell them as strata-title.

The east “bookend” buildings as seen from First Avenue. The white rental apartment building is to the left. The sizable garage door that adjoins the two buildings is the sole access point for the grocery store and drug store that are in the podiums of the buildings facing onto to plaza and Salt Building.

Looking down First Avenue towards the Cambie Street Bridge. The Salt Building is slightly visible at the halfway mark. This shot gives one a good idea of the length of the Village.

One of the non-market buildings in the Village is being built for the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), which is Canada’s national housing body. This is rather remarkable because since the late 1990s Canada has had no national housing strategy (we’re the only developed country in the world without a national housing strategy by the way) and CMHC has not actually built anything. All of the responsibility for social (non-market) housing has been downloaded to the provinces so that the Federal Government was able to balance its books and start paying down our deficit (also the only developed country to be doing this; an odd coincidence?). This building is for low-income senior citizens who can live independently and CMHC decided to really put on a show with this one by striving to become the first “net-zero” building of its kind in Canada.

What they mean by “net-zero” is that over the course of a year the building will be carbon neutral in its use of energy and water. It will accomplish this by capturing and utilizing rainwater for non-potable uses, employing a very large solar hot water array to generate all of its domestic hot water, siphon waste heat from the grocery store below to supplement and offset the need to use the NEU-supplied heating hot water, and the building will create an equal or greater amount of oxygen in its extensive rooftop garden than it released as carbon dioxide throughout the year.

The building exceeds LEED Platinum on the Canada and US Green Building Council LEED scorecard and CMHC is wiring it up to be a living laboratory to test out elements of the next generation national building code that it is authoring.

[mr.x]

The east “bookend” buildings of the Olympic Village.

[Rafa]

This might put London's village in second place in terms of buildings and their design etc.

[Rafa]

after viewing all the pics, its so awesome its just silly.