Architecturally Speaking
Architecturally Speaking pulls back the curtain on the ancient profession of architecture. Through interviews with industry leaders, it explores how architecture impacts our lives each and every day. It is presented by the Ontario Association of Architects and hosted by Ryan Schwartz.
"The views shared by the host of Architecturally Speaking, or the guests, do not necessarily reflect those of the OAA or its governing Council"
Architecturally Speaking
Sustainable Architecture: Insights & Tips for Greener Homes
In this episode of Architecturally Speaking, host Ryan Schwartz interviews architect Karl Van Es about sustainability in architecture. Karl, who works at BDP Quadrangle, discusses the difference between working for a small residential firm versus a large global company, and how being part of the green team at BDP Quadrangle allows him to contribute to solving global environmental challenges. Tune in to learn more about sustainable design and tips to make your home a greener one.
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Speaker 1: [00:00:04] Hello and welcome. You’re listening to Architecturally Speaking, a podcast series created by the Ontario Association of Architects. We’ll be pulling back the curtain to explore the architectural profession, what architects to, and how their buildings affect our lives each and every day.
My name is Ryan Schwartz, I'm a licenced architect here in Toronto and your host for this series, and today we’ll be speaking with Karl Van Es, about all things sustainability including some things you can do to improve your own home. Karl is an architect in Toronto with a big interest in sustainable design. He’s worked on a variety of large projects locally and internationally. And right now she's an architect and project manager at BDP Quadrangle. Karl, welcome. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2: [00:00:44] Thanks for having me, Ryan.
Speaker 1: [00:00:47] So our last guest was a sole-practitioner architect. She had her own firm basically ran the show herself, and now you’re kind of at the opposite end of the spectrum working for Quadrangle, which is a huge company with offices all over the world, hundreds of employees. So how is that different? How do you feel working there?
Speaker 2: [00:01:05] It really feels like you're part of a global community and solving problems at a city and global level, I guess. I came from the small residential industry previously. And that was really nice because you got to see how a building was built at a really small scale. At BDP Quadrangle we really are just seeing how cities and countries are really developing, which is exciting to be part of, really.
Speaker 1: [00:01:36] That’s cool. You’ve become scaled up in terms of the company and also the projects and the scope of work and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: [00:01:43] Yes.
Speaker 1: [00:01:45] And you're also part of the Green Team at BDP Quadrangle, so can you explain a little bit what that is?
Speaker 2: [00:01:52] So we're a group of six or seven people who consult on sustainability both within our own practice and for our clients. So a client may come to us with a sustainable problem, or they may not know what they're looking for on their project. So we’ll sit down with the project lead on the project and the client directly and talk about what their needs might be to achieve their goals. A lot of the time they don't even know what they're looking for. So that’s kind of where we come in.
Speaker 1: [00:02:26] That’s fair. So a client comes to you and they have a new project and they say they want to be sustainable or build in a sustainable way, but we don't even know where to begin, and that’s where this consulting team comes interest.
Speaker 2: [00:02:38] Exactly.
Speaker 1: [00:02:40] OK. So the climate change emergency, this is quickly becoming one of the defining challenges of our time right? And as we look back it’s only going to become more and more important, I think. So the OAA, which regulates architecture for the public interest, they've actually introduced climate action for their over-riding thing for basically everything for the next five years as part of their strategic plan. So this is clearly something that’s important to the profession.
So how are climate change and architecture related? Because I think it’s kind of this quiet culprit that a lot of people don't think about. A lot of the time it’s vehicles and emissions, but then buildings account for such a huge portion of climate change that a lot of people don't even realize. So how are these related?
Speaker 2: [00:03:28] Well the building industry itself is probably the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, pretty much out of any of the other industries. And a lot of people when they think about architecture they just think about the finished product and the buildings that people use. But it really starts onsite when industries and – it’s essentially extracting those raw materials out of the ground and then taking those materials, producing them into components that make up a building, such as windows, doors, structure, what have you. And then there’s the construction process which contributes to a lot of the emissions we have as well. And then that kind of just goes right through into the operation of the building and through its disassembly.
So when we’re thinking about buildings and [covert? 00:04:21] emissions it’s not just the building and its life and operation. It’s the entire process really from start to finish. And there’s a lot of ways that we do emit carbon. The best way to put is, we design our buildings quite poorly by code as a standard, and the amount of energy we need to essentially operate our buildings is so far in excess of what we actually needed if a building was done or designed properly. So we end up creating a lot of problems for ourself in just building to minimum standards. And so – sorry, I've forgotten the question. I'm a little nervous.
Speaker 1: [00:05:19] No that’s great. And you mentioned building codes, and that was something I was going to jump into later, so we can just touch on the now and how it’s really just a minimum standard. This is the bare minimum that you can build a building to. But then is that enough? Obviously things can be better so maybe you can speak to that for a minute.
Speaker 2: [00:05:39] Yes, so they definitely need to be better and should be better. There’s a lot of different ways we can do that. And a lot of people are aware of different rating systems and things like that to kind of guide us through the process. Some of the most – some of the leading sustainable rating systems are, like, LEAD and Passive House, which is starting to really become more in the public eye. And they have two completely different ways of viewing sustainability. Which we – well the LEAD, for example, is what we would call a reference standard, versus Passive House which is more of a performance metric. And the way to think about it is with LEAD and a reference standard you’re essentially just trying to create a better building based on a reference project that may or may not be good. So.
Speaker 1: [00:06:40] It’s more of a checklist right? You’re just trying to check boxes as a point system, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 2: [00:06:47] Yes, exactly. I mean LEAD was one of the first teams to kind of come up with a green system. So they did a lot of the heavy lifting kind of at the beginning of the green revolution. But you know, in my opinion it’s quite a flawed system because if you’re kind of benchmarking off of an already poor building it’s no indication of whether or not you're doing a good job actually. So I'm more a proponent of a performance based metric, such as Passive House, and the City of Toronto through the teachings TGS has taken a similar approach. And with performance targets you’re not kind of basing it on a poor performing building that might have been a standard or how we would have built something in the past. It’s looking at what are the targets for energy use in our buildings that we actually need to achieve to hit a good threshold for design.
Speaker 1: [00:07:44] OK. And you mentioned TGS. Can you explain what that is for those who don't know?
Speaker 2: [00:07:49] Yes, that’s a local Toronto term, but it stands for the Toronto Green Standard. It’s a municipal standard that all essentially new developments in the city need to adhere to. But it also forms as a benchmark for other municipalities who may just be starting to think about green standards for their municipalities. We often refer to the TGS – I mean it’s a little bit Toronto-centric, but it does kind of set the standard for the municipal.
And there's different things within TGS dealing with different types of the buildings, things to do with energy use. Things like that.
Speaker 1: [00:08:37] And that’s more performance based then as well?
Speaker 2: [00:08:39] Yes, it is.
Speaker 1: [00:08:42] OK. And then you also mention Passive House. And that's – again, kind of more performance based as opposed to the LEAD standard. So that’s something that people may have heard of. So what is a passive house? What does that even mean?
Speaker 2: [00:08:56] So Passive House really just deals with post-heating and post-cooling a space. And that’s a fancy way to just say, how do we look at an occupied space after we've supplied heat in a building, or cooling in a building. So rather than just continually relying on generating new heat and new cooling to serve a space, how can we reuse the heat and cooling that we've already generated just to make more efficient use of what we already have.
And maybe if you don't mind I’d like to kind of take a step back and just maybe talk about the TGS again because there’s three kind of core metrics within the TGS that I think are really helpful for understanding how buildings function and how we look at building performance as it relates to climate change, and the [00:09:56] first metric is EOI, which stands for energy use intensity. And that’s really – energy use intensity is really just an indicator of how efficient your building is.
So imagine your house. You have certain requirements for energy, whether it be to charge your phone, to charge your microwave, to run a furnace. All of the things in your house take up energy. So a house will have a different EOI target versus, like, an IT hub or some kind of science building with a lot of technology and software and heating and cooling load. So EOI is really just a measure of how much your building needs. So the goal with the EOI is to bring that number down as close to zero as possible, so that, you know, the [00:10:56] less energy you’re using the better. And there’s a lot of different ways we can do that in buildings, whether it’s a house or some science centre. It’s the lightning use. Like, are we using efficient lighting? How good is our envelope? Is there a lot of insulation? Is there not a lot of insulation? Is it airtight? What kind of mechanical systems are we using? So there’s a lot of different things we can do to architecturally to decrease EOI.
The second metric is called TEDI, which stands for thermal energy demand intensity. And that’s a little bit like EOI in that – except it only deals with heat demand in a building. So how much heat you need to supply into a space. So imagine you’re in your house or in your condo and think about all of the different [00:11:56] ways that heat –
Speaker 1: [00:11:59] Is escaping?
Speaker 2: [00:11:59] – heat is escaping, and the amount – the ways heat is being generated. So in terms of heat’s generation, we obviously have the sun that comes through the windows and heats our space. We have our lightbulbs, our laptops and electronics and our body heat. So that’s all different types of heat that contributes to heating a space. And then like you said, we have our heat losses. And those usually happen through our walls or windows or slabs or roofs. And generally speaking, because our buildings are poor performers, generally speaking, the heat losses generally outweigh the heat gains that we have. So TEDI is the amount of additional heating demand you need to bring your space to an equilibrium and suitable [cross talk 00:12:47]
Speaker 1: [00:12:47] OK.
Speaker 2: [00:12:50] And then the last metric is GHGI which stands for greenhouse gas intensity. And that’s just a measure of your greenhouse gas emissions in terms of energy that’s produced by your building through space heating and things like that. And the critical thing to think about with greenhouse gas intensity is it’s all about fuel selection. We as an industry are really just trying to move away from fossil fuels in general. And it really becomes a choice whether we should go with natural gas or electricity. And the carbon emissions in natural gas far outweigh electricity. So the simplest way to solve the GHGI issue, or greenhouse gas emission issue from an energy perspective is just to choose electricity as much as possible. Houses specifically love natural gas because they have that ability for the chef’s kitchen, a gas stove. It’s [00:13:50] really attractive to people, but we really need to start changing people’s mindset and getting them onto electric stoves specifically. And just for energy generation in their home.
Speaker 1: [00:14:04] And how would you say something like a house, a small scale house, because obviously we live in Canada where it can be cold, but how would you say the difference – or what is the difference, I guess, between a house, like a small building, and say a larger project like an office building. Because I know in a house it’s trying to keep it warm, but then an office building could be the exact opposite and really trying to keep it cool some of the time. Is that correct?
Speaker 2: [00:14:29] Yes, I would say the biggest difference between a single family house and a large building is that there’s – single family housing is – so I'm trying to find a way to – OK, so single family housing, you think of, like, a stick frame house, right? And we put our insulation in between the studs and then we add our vapour barrier, our moisture barriers and our cladding. And you know, that’s the house. But there’s a lot of air leakage heat loss that happens in these – in our houses because while the insulation might be very good in terms of retaining heat, there’s a lot heat transferred through our studs. So while you know, you may buy a house or buy some insulation that says it’s R whatever. Like say R10 or 20 or 30, the actual performance [00:15:29] of the wall is a lot less than that because of the heat loss through the studs.
So one of the ways we can mitigate that is by adding insulation on the outside and improving air tightness so that you’re creating more of a winter jacket around your house and allowing heat loss not to happen as much. And I guess the difference between that and a larger building is that we tend to do that already on larger buildings. Where that becomes a little bit muddy is with window wall systems and these really large glass buildings that we see in Toronto where these buildings are just 100 per cent glass and there’s no insulation. So that’s really where we're seeing the breakdown in the larger buildings is making sure we're providing enough of a real envelope or enough insulation on the outside so that [00:16:29] we're giving the building the ability to retain heat.
Speaker 1: [00:16:33] Right. Do you see – because yes, exactly what you said, a lot of these downtowns are all glass buildings. Do you see us moving away from that a little bit in the future? Will it be less glass or just maybe more efficient glass?
Speaker 2: [00:16:46] We're being forced to by a lot of different parties. So obviously the TGS locally, or Toronto Green Standard is one way. You simply cannot get away with building a glass towner anymore. You will just not meet your energy performance targets. But when you think more globally there are a lot of organizations and countries that are working to mandate that as well. So like in 2015 there was the Paris Agreement. And that was san agreement between 195 countries, Canada included, to emit to global warming by 1.5 degrees Celsius. And so the [unintelligible 00:17:36] essentially just set the global benchmark for what the standard in terms of emissions and global [00:17:46] warming can be. And then every country – there’s a lot of organizations that have kind of taken that as a mandate and started to either enforce or recommend that.
In our industry one of the leading organizations is Architecture 2030, and one of their jobs is to provide guidance as a global group of architects to the global architectural community to see how we can reduce our building emissions as an industry. And so between organizations like 2030 and the TGS there’s a lot of people working to –
Speaker 1: [00:18:34] Shift things.
Speaker 2: [00:18:34] – to shift things, yes.
Speaker 1: [00:18:37] And how receptive are clients to this? Because it’s one thing to force people and regulate them and that works, but do you find that client – is this something that they weren't to do when they come to you and say, “Oh, we're looking to build the new office tower. You know, we're thinking of building sustainability,” or is this something that you have to push on them?
Speaker 2: [00:18:57] It really depends on the clients. We get some clients that are fantastic and really want to be the game-changers because they see that not only is it the right thing to do, but as a marketing incentive because the people that are buying houses are younger and more knowledgeable on sustainability matters. So they are starting to demand more of that. And developers, most of them are recognizing that. There are some that kind of want to do it the way they've been doing it for 30 years.
Speaker 1: [00:19:30] Right, the old guards, yes, that doesn't want to change.
Speaker 2: [00:19:33] But the good news with that is that we do have – at least in Toronto – mechanisms to kind of enforce a certain level of good behaviour. Like the TGS. So I think one of the larger problems is just as an industry within Toronto and Canada is we have been doing something the same way for so long that we do have to educate and build up the industry to accommodate it. Like even if we wanted to all just do net zero buildings today it would take a generation to get the infrastructure in place to do it. So it’s really just about acting now and getting people on board. But the good news is that society seems to be taking it more seriously now, and purchasers and developers are leading that.
Speaker 1: [00:20:25] You're right. It’s a very slow moving industry, right? Construction – it hasn't changed very much in the last hundred years, so how do you educate clients or just the general public on this kind of stuff. When someone comes to you and maybe they don't want to, you know, for financial reasons or something, they don't want to introduce something green. How do you kind of educate them?
Speaker 2: [00:20:48] Well it’s really just about tailoring the solution to their needs. Like, when people think about sustainability they tend to think about the flashy things like solar turbines or solar panels or – wind turbines, excuse me, and solar panels. But generally speaking that’s kind of like the last thing you want to do in terms of providing a good building. The best thing you can do on a building is just improve your insulation and airtightness so you’re not dealing with a lot of heat loss through your walls. And that’s something very basic that a lot of people can understand and get behind.
Where it gets challenging in the residential market, which is my expertise, is the difference between, say, like a condo building versus a rental building or a home that someone would own. So with the condo building or a house that someone’s developed there’s no [00:21:48] long-term investment in that building, so they just want to build it as – “they” being the developer or the whether it be a big building or a small building. They just want to get it built and out.
Speaker 1: [00:22:01] Head it off.
Speaker 2: [00:22:03] Yes, and head it off. So there’s no long-term kind of investment into that property. But with a rental building where a developer has long-term ownership of the building, energy performance matters because they have to take care of the operation of the building, all of the maintenance costs, and the same would apply for a single family house. So, when you’re dealing with a client, whether it be for a house or a building that’s going to have a long-term ownership of that project it’s a much easier discussion because they care about their building and they want it to do well if not anything but for the money they're saving long-term in their building.
So the challenge is really on the condo side or the developer side, and how do you get those people to pay attention and to do the right thing? And I keep defaulting back to the Toronto Green Standard, because it’s such an effective tool we have to enforce change, and [00:23:03] a lot of people don't like that, but when it comes from the government it’s a lot easier to do the right thing because you’re forced to. So it’s educating those clients about, “OK, this is what you have to do. So if you have to do it, let’s just do it in the most economical way that makes sense for your project while doing the right thing.
Speaker 1: [00:23:27] So a lot of this, I guess, is driven by budgets and finance it seems. And here’s kind of loaded question, I guess, like, is it more expensive to build in a sustainable way or a green way? And I guess there’s two ways to frame that because there’s kind of short-term like you mentioned, you know, the upfront costs of building the building, but then generally if someone’s building a building they want it to last for a hundred years or more, and so there’s kind of the long-term perspective and the energy saving. So what would you say, is it more expensive? What would y say?
Speaker 2: [00:24:02] It is, I mean I think it’s best to be honest. It’s more expensive, at least, at the time of building the building because generally speaking you are paying for more insulation, maybe better quality materials, things they wouldn't have to put in in just a base building. But if you look at any kind of long-term finances, no matter what the size of the building, the payback in the savings you get in energy costs and operation costs and maintenance costs, there’s no question which is the better thing to do.
Generally speaking the upfront costs to doing, like, a Passive House building, for example, or something that’s better than code, can be anywhere between 2 and 10 per cent, I would say generally. [Cross talk 00:24:51] –
Speaker 1: [00:24:51] [Cross talk 00:24:51] that’s not very much. Actually.
Speaker 2: [00:24:53] No, not very much. Especially like on a large building that’s, like, multi million dollars’ worth? What's 2 per cent to do a good building? It can be a harder challenge on a single family house where if you only have a limited amount of savings and you want to renovate your house or – you don't have this huge portfolio of buildings. Every dollar matters, that counts. But when you’re staying in a space for more than the time it takes to build it, the payback is substantial.
To the point where there’s a lot of conversations about net zero buildings. Which is essentially you’re just producing as much energy onsite as you are using it. But there’s a step further you can take, which is net positive, where you're producing more energy than you need, and in cases like that you can actually [00:25:53] sell that energy back to the grid and make money. So it doesn't always have to be about losing money. It can be about the wins too, and what your building can go – and not just in the money making sense but also in the – all the other benefits that a sustainable building will give you, such as better lighting, better ventilation, better interior comfort. So not only you paying this extra 2 to 10 per cent for better building performance, you’re getting all these added benefits too. So it’s really a no-brainer.
Speaker 1: [00:26:32] It’s those intangibles that are hard to quantify, it’s a healthier building, you feel better, but maybe you’re making money on the side by selling energy on the side [cross talk 00:26:42]
Speaker 2: [00:26:42] [Cross talk 00:26:42] in there.
Speaker 1: [00:26:46] So what can people do to their own house? Say you’re building a new house today or you're renovating, what are some things that people can do to their own house? And where’s the value? What are they going to get for the most bang for the buck? Or what makes sense in your eyes?
Speaker 2: [00:27:02] Well it always comes down to insulation and air tightness, whether you’re building a new building or have a building that you’d like to renovate. Like I had mentioned before, the way we've kind of built in the past – you know, I live in a hundred-year home that doesn't really even have insulation. So you know, I'm actually a very poor example. I haven't actually done it myself. But the best thing – and the houses that do have insulation only have it between the studs, typically. So while the insulation’s doing a good job, there’s a lot of heat loss through the studs. So the best thing people can do is to over-clad the studs with more insulation, if it’s possible, so you’re creating a kind of a thermal blanket around your house. And then making sure that your building’s airtight. Because a lot of heat loss is just caused by different pressure, air pressures [00:28:02] between the inside air and the outside air, as well as the wind.
So all of those different things kind of contribute to heat moving from inside to out. And one of the worst things is moisture. Like a lot of old houses have a lot of rot or mould, and even newer condos, they get a lot of mould and that’s not due to lack of insulation as much as it is moisture being transferred from inside and out. And that’s airtightness. And making sure you have an airtight building is critical for that. When you think about moisture you tend to think about rain or snow or things from the outside coming in. But the worst offender is actually the moisture in our mouths. Like when we're speaking we're kind of just spraying a bit, right? And in our leaky buildings, that different in air pressure [00:29:02] is kind of pulling that moisture into the walls and creating the mould. So the air barrier essentially just stops that.
So to answer your initial questions, getting improved insulation and R-value [unintelligible 00:29:19] with airtightness is the best thing you can do. And once you've achieved that, you can start to look at things like solar panels and things to kind of offset that.
Another thing you can look at is HRVs, which are heat recovery ventilators. And the best way to think about an HRV is that it’s an air conditioner that goes two ways. It does cooling and heating, but it has a third benefit in that it ventilates as well. So not only is it providing hot air, cold air, it’s also providing fresh air ventilation into the suites. So it’s – if you have a house with an air conditioner, the [00:30:02] best thing you can do is just swap it in for an HRV, because you’re getting way more benefit out of a system that is far more energy efficient.
Speaker 1: [00:30:12] OK, that’s great, nd that’s kind of doing the same thing but you’re getting way more out of it.
Speaker 2: [00:30:17] Yes, and in the case of a Passive House, what’s great about HRV is if you design a Passive House the building envelope is, in theory, so airtight and so well-insulated that you don't really need a traditional furnace. You could get away with an HRV if it’s that well performing or offset it with a smaller system like a heat pump, which just essentially just takes stale air or heat and recirculates it.
So with Passive House systems, or with sustainable design in general, the mechanical systems tend to get smaller because your envelopes are getting better. So you don't need as much mechanical [equipment? 00:31:04] because it’s not doing as much work.
Speaker 1: [00:31:07] And there’s less things to break down in the future and less issues.
Speaker 2: [00:31:11] Yes, exactly. So essentially these houses take care of themselves if they're designed properly
Speaker 1: [00:31:16] That’s very cool. And what about any new emerging materials or technology – and one that I was going to bring up was mass timber. This is kind of a new thing. I was just wondering if you could speak to that for a moment.
Speaker 2: [00:31:30] Yes, mass timber is really exciting. So the best thing about massive timer, or mass timber is that it’s a renewable resource. Like we can essentially take it from the earth and in theory grow something back in its place, versus steel or concrete which take a lot of energy to extract and procure. Mass timber generally has about half of what we call the embodied carbon, which is the carbon it takes to essentially extract the materials –
Speaker 1: [00:32:08] [Cross talk 00:32:08] the material.
Speaker 2: [00:32:09] Yes, exactly. So mass timber is really exciting in that sense because it is a natural material. It’s generally readily available. There are some drawbacks. Because it is such a – we stopped building with woo, like, a generation ago on large buildings and it’s starting to come back, and the science isn’t perfect and that’s also kind of what makes it exciting. But when we're designing buildings there are real questions about how sustainable it is, and some of that may come down to was it harvested from a proper forest or was it – was it harvested unsustainability? Where is it coming from? Are we getting our wood building in Toronto – the wood from like a Norwegian forest or Vancouver? So there’s transportation costs that go into that.
So it’s really [00:33:09] exciting but there's a lot to think about when thinking about using mass timber. But as I was saying, as the industry starts to take this on more it’s – a lot of these questions become a lot clearer and there’ll me more opportunity to do it more sustainably.
So I'm not sure if you’re leading me here, but one of the projects our office has done is [IDI? 00:33:41] Atlantic and it was built just a few years ago and it’s recently won a Governors’ General Award, and it was the first commercial building built in Ontario in a generation. It’s a five-story mass timber building made out of glulam which is just laminated – or sorry, not glulam, GLT, glue laminated timber, which is essentially just timber that’s been glued together.
Speaker 1: [00:34:10] Lots and lots of sheets or strands, I guess it could be either.
Speaker 2: [00:34:15] Yes, exactly. So it’s a really exciting project for us because of all the benefits of timber. And the fact that we can show people that timber and wood is safe to build with. Like, a lot of people tend to like the security of steel or concrete buildings because it’s rough, it’s solid.
Speaker 1: [00:34:40] It’s tried and true.
Speaker 2: [00:34:42] Yes, tired and true. But – and there’s just a lot of thoughts around timber that just aren't true. Like, it’s a fantastic building material and we live in, like, a contemporary society and the fears of like the Chicago Fire happening here is – with mass timber –
Speaker 1: [00:35:04] I don't think that could happen anymore. We sort of solved the issue.
Speaker 2: [00:35:09] Yes, exactly. I mentioned it to you before we got off the air a few days ago, but the best way to think about timber in a building is imagine starting a fire and putting a giant log in it. Like, you could try and light it for hours and it’s just not going to burn because it has such a low rate of combustion because it’s so dense.
Speaker 1: [00:35:36] It’s a heavy piece of material.
Speaker 2: [00:35:38] Yes, exactly, steel and concrete are going to fail well before a mass timber building. But a lot of it is just public perception and getting people comfortable with the idea that not only is it safe, it's the best thing we concern do for our planet is to build with ore timber.
Speaker 1: [00:35:59] OK that’s great. And where do you see the future of buildings and architecture? And you can kind of set the timeline wherever you want to, 20 years, 50 years, 100 years. Where are we headed?
Speaker 2: [00:36:10] Well, to kind of look to the future you have to look to the past, and I think we're leaving an architectural age of the [star-chitect? 00:36:119], where it’s these grandiose buildings of amazing forms and showy architecture that may wow people, but you look at any of these buildings and they're terrible performers.
Speaker 1: [00:36:33] Leaking and they're cold.
Speaker 2: [00:36:35] Yes, they emit tons of greenhouse gases, tons of carbon emissions. They’re terrible, the future has to be in more responsible architecture, I believe, and designing their buildings to meet their own needs first. And that's not the exciting answer, but it’s the answer that I think we need to start having with ourselves and how we can design better buildings collectively and just taking care of your own building, your own site before anything else.
Speaker 1: [00:37:14] Yes, that’s great. So now we're going to just quickly move into some little rapid fire questions and then we can kind of wrap up and go from there. So, do you have any favourite buildings or cities to visit in terms of architecture?
Speaker 2: [00:37:29] OK, so my favourite building – this isn't a sustainable building, but I have to say it. My favourite building is the Sagrada Família by Antoni Gaudí [unintelligible 00:37:39] Gaudi. And it’s been under construction for hundreds of years and it’s still unfinished. But –
Speaker 1: [00:37:46] Not done.
Speaker 2: [00:37:47] No it’s not done, but it’s the building that got me – made me fall in love with architecture because there’s just such exquisite detail in every corner of the building and you can't go in that building or around it without being filled with a sense of wonder.
Speaker 1: [00:38:08] So people should check that one out. The Sagrada Familia. So if t her was no budget or building code constraints, you actually kind of alluded to this a little earlier, what would you change about your house, aside from insulation maybe.
Speaker 2: [00:38:23] So I'd definitely insulate it and make it airtight. It’s a row house in Toronto. Brick building. And then I would definitely take out my furnace, swap out my air conditioner with an HRV, and then look at a heat pump to offset any kind of additional heating requirements I might need. And then you know, if I've got a few extra bucks laying around I’d probably add some solar panels. But that’s probably what I’d do. And what’s great is that we also have in Canada the Greene Homes Grants. So if there’s other people like me that are interested in doing it, the government’s very interested in helping people out. You can get grants up to $5,000 for retrofits, and I think loans for – tax-free loans for up to $40,000. So there’s green sources out there for other people to.
Speaker 1: [00:39:22] OK, people should check that out for sure. What was it called? The Green Homes Grant.
Speaker 2: [00:39:25] Yes, I have it on my other window, let me check it out. Yes, Canada Greener Homes Initiative.
Speaker 1: [00:39:32] And OK, fill in the blank here. The best buildings are blank.
Speaker 2: [00:39:39] Comfortable.
Speaker 1: [00:39:41] And for people that want to learn more about architecture, are there any resources you could recommend? Books, website, anything like that?
Speaker 2: [00:39:51] Well yes, there’s lots. I've talked about, like Passive House. I think if people are generally interested in learning more about sustainable design you don't have to be an expert to understand Passive House, but Passive House is probably the best place to look. There’s –
Speaker 1: [00:40:15] That’s house with an H-A-U-S, I believe.
Speaker 2: [00:40:18] Yes, that’s the German spelling it was started in Germany.
Speaker 1: [00:40:22] OK, well that’s great. And that we’ll wrap up this episode of Architecturally Speaking. We've been chatting with Karl van ES. He's an architect at BDP Quadrangle in Toronto, and an expert in sustainability. Thanks again for sharing your time and your thoughts. Where can people find out more about you or get in touch?
Speaker 2: [00:40:44] You could find me at the BDP Quadrangle website. My contact’s there. I'm also on Twitter and Instagram under the names you just said.
Speaker 1: [00:40:52] OK. Great. And we’re recording many more episodes of this podcast over the weeks to come. If you have a question about architecture or know someone who would make a great guest, or just weren't to offer some feedback, please drop us an email at podcast@oaa.on.ca. You can also find out more about the Ontario Association of Architects and how it regulates architecture throughout the province by visiting OAA.on.ca.
And if you enjoyed this episode, leave us a review, tell your friends. Architecturally Speaking is available wherever you get your podcasts and also on the OAA’s YouTube channel. Be sure to check that out for the full video version. Like and subscribe to be notified when the next episode comes out. And until next time I'm Ryan Schwartz and this is Architecturally Speaking.
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