2023 Summer Issue of Urban Land - 89

Located just outside Vancouver's Yaletown district, the Artist Hub is a 21,000-square-foot (1,950 sq m) all-electric, near-zeroemissions
facility that will offer gallery space, affordable production studios, and office space for nonprofit organizations in
the city.
buildability, and the building is integrated
with the surrounding environment
with appropriate construction
systems, materials, and finishes.
Passive Design
Passive design principles should be
employed to the greatest extent
possible. Passive design focuses on
creating indoor climate-conditioning
systems that are driven primarily
by natural phenomena rather than
parasitic power sources. Conventional
solar heating, ventilation, and cooling
(HVAC) systems for space conditioning
are considered to be active
because of their use of motorized
mechanical components to move
fluids and air in and through a building.
Passive-designed buildings, on
the other hand, use few, if any, conventional
sources of energy for these
functions.
Ideally, passive design and regenerative
building principles can be
applied any time a new structure is
being planned, because the reuse/
adaptation of buildings virtually
always has less environmental impact
than new construction. In fact, the
long-term economic and carbon savings
that can accrue from retrofits
can be significant, while a regenerative
building approach can also play
an important role in promoting social
inclusion, community resilience, and
overall environmental sustainability.
Building designs-whether for
new-build or retrofit projects like
Castellana 66-must also respond to
local climate conditions as a critical
first step toward high-performance,
sustainable operation. In essence,
buildings need to be designed so as
to touch the land lightly, minimize
negative ecological impacts, and
maximize the positive.
The Artist Hub on Pacific Street
in Vancouver, British Columbia, is
an excellent example of a newbuild
passive design project that
reflects the persona of the community
it serves and its distinct needs.
Located just outside Vancouver's hip
Yaletown district, the seven-story,
21,000-square-foot (1,950 sq m)
building is an all-electric, near-zeroemissions
facility that offers muchneeded
gallery space, affordable
production studios, and office space
for nonprofit arts organizations in
the city. Fitted with an electric air
source heat pump to efficiently
deliver domestic hot water, along
with space heating in the winter and
cooling in the summer and adherence
to many other Passive House
design principles, the award-winning
facility provides real-time energy-use
data to inform development of future
sustainable urban buildings in the
region.
Clean-Energy, High-Performance
HVAC Systems
In most climates, it is not possible to
heat and cool buildings solely using
passive strategies, so integrating
passive with mechanical systems for
heating and cooling is often necessary.
While the use of mechanical
systems may be unavoidable in many
instances, it is still our responsibility
as designers to design buildings
as efficiently as possible by combining
high-performance mechanical
systems with high-performance
envelopes whenever possible. This is
particularly true for buildings running
on a clean energy platform-such
SUMER 2023
URBAN LAND
89
LANDWRITES
COURTESY ARCADIS (FORMERLY IBI GROUP)
2023 Summer Issue of Urban Land

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of 2023 Summer Issue of Urban Land
