Kinark Sustainable Living Centre

Introduction

The Kinark Outdoor Centre's Sustainable Living Centre was designed to be a living example of the leading edge in sustainable building design and construction. It was designed and built by the 2006 Sustainable Building Design and Construction class of Fleming College, led by instructor and program coordinator Chris Magwood. Structural engineering was provided by Anthony Spick of Blackwell Bowick Partnership.

This was an exciting project to undertake, as it represented a surprisingly rare circumstance in sustainable building: a client whose desire was to have a building that was as sustainably built as possible. Often, clients wish to embrace certain aspects of sustainability, but don't wish to pursue this goal in all aspects of the building. This makes the Kinark project very unique. Coupled with Kinark's desire to have the building exist as a teaching tool for a wide range of learners, this building is rare and valuable indeed.

In sustainable building, the goal is to create beautiful, functional and comfortable space using materials and methods that have the least possible effect on the environment during construction. The finished building should continue to operate in a manner that keeps its environmental impacts as low as possible, should serve its function for a long time, and should be able to be dismantled at the end of its life with many reusable components and little or no toxic waste.

Why should we strive for sustainable buildings? Building construction, maintenance renovations and operations use as much as 40% of all energy and material flows in our society. Construction waste represents 20- 40% of all solid landfill waste. A further 16% of all water use and 40% of all electricity use is also attributed to our buildings [Worldwatch Paper #124, Worldwatch Institute, Washington, DC].

In more personal terms, the construction of a single 2000 square foot home in our country uses approximately 500,000 kBtus of energy, or the equivalent of nearly 68,000 litres of gasoline. That's enough to drive around the world more than 20 times! By comparison, a building like the Kinark Sustainable Living Centre can cut that construction energy use by 90% [Investigation of Environmental Impacts, Ann Edminster, University of California, Berkeley, 1995]. Coupled with a reduction in ongoing energy use of 60% [U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), 1995], we can have a very significant effect on the degradation of our environment without sacrificing the building's comfort or functionality.

A key part of the design of this building involved keeping costs low. There is no point in designing sustainable buildings that nobody can afford to live in. The Sustainable Living Centre cost about the same as a conventionally built structure on a per square foot basis. In general, sustainable buildings have lower materials costs and higher labour costs, reflecting the fact that processing materials requires a lot of fossil fuel energy, while labour uses the most renewable of all resources: human energy!

Another important reason for considering sustainable building is for our own health. Many modern construction materials and methods involve the use of chemicals that can have both short and long term health effects on workers and occupants. Sustainable building seeks to eliminate most if not all of these products, resulting in built spaces that do not harm those who create or occupy them.

The following guide will lead you through the key structural and mechanical components of the Sustainable Living Centre. For each component, we will consider the design intent and the materials and methods used, look at questions that arise from these choices (including maintenance issues) and look at options and improvements that could be made. Sustainable building is a very new field of endeavour (at least in our modern context), and much is learned from projects like the Sustainable Living Centre. The ongoing lessons from this building will inform many projects in the future as we strive to create an entirely sustainable built environment.

As you consider the Kinark Sustainable Living Centre and all of its individual components, we invite you to consider ways in which you can incorporate some of these strategies into your own buildings, and your own life. The rewards are tangibly financial and environmental, as well as intangibly emotional, as we reconnect with local, natural materials and become active participants in the functionality of our buildings.