Today our seminar group was visited by Claire Bennett from the Sustainability Office in the Laurier Physical Resources Department. She introduced herself and the sustainability office’s role in environmental initiatives at Laurier such as programs to meter the various campus building’s power, water and gas usage. Claire also works to integrate sustainability programs into old and new buildings at Laurier. As part of her master’s degree at the University of Waterloo, she participated in the design process for the new “ENV 3” building. The goal of the design was to ensure that the new building was certified to L.E.E.D. platinum standards. The objective of L.E.E.D. is to design buildings with the utilization of natural resources, little maintenance costs, and a reduction in overall energy use.
Following this introduction, we walked to the University of Waterloo for a tour of the Environmental 3 building and its facilities. The building utilises a grey water system that replaces potable water in the building’s toilets. This grey water is recycled rain water that is filtered through a simulated wetland then stored in a cistern to be pumped into the building’s plumbing.
The building also has a unique architecture that takes advantage of natural light. Daylight is used to light interior offices, which would otherwise be artificially lighted at greater cost. To improve air quality in the building a “nature wall” is utilized to naturally filter the building’s air. The filtering results in small but significant change in the air quality of the building. A “nature wall” is a wall of plants that are embedded in a foam base and sustained by a hydroponic nutrition system. The building’s clever design puts the stairway front and centre at the main entrance promoting its use over the somewhat hidden elevator. All these designs create a very impressive whole that achieves a sustainable objective.
An unexpected encounter with 2nd year planning students allowed us a chance to tour the planning design studio and hear about the students experiences in the program. One of the students we talked to had actually been sleeping in the studio for over a week because of the amount of time spent on his group’s planning project. The projects were large models of proposed plans for the improvement of downtown Kitchener, complete with miniatures of the buildings and landscape; all sizes were to scale.
Our walk home, Dr. Sharpe took us on a nice adventurous walk alongside the Waterloo Park Petting Zoo. We as a group stopped here to enjoy the environment and the company of nature as we had fun interacting and petting emu’s and donkeys.
By: Chris Porter and Brayden Libawski
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