The Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) recently announced that DIRTT Environmental Solutions has been named the inaugural winner of the CaGBC Green Building Product of the Year Award for their interior wall system, Enzo™.
Product submissions were assessed based on four key areas: sustainability, transparency and verification, innovation, and application. The jury of experts from across Canada chose DIRTT’s Enzo line of prefabricated modular building interiors due to its ingenuity and application, particularly as a benefit to health-care facilities. Health-care facilities have unique design challenges due to the regular need for space adaptations; acoustical issues associated with privacy; infection control requirements; limited budgets and other factors. DIRTT developed the Enzo line to meet these design challenges, and have also managed to reduce the environmental impacts of the product.
The product is modular and flexible, reducing the burden and waste of regularly reconstructing health-care interiors. Among its sustainability features, DIRTT completed a life-cycle assessment (LCA) for the product, created a global Product Category Rule (PCR) and had a third-party verified Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) completed. This information provides consumers with an extended degree of comfort that sustainable design claims are realistic and accurate.
“I’d like to congratulate DIRTT Environmental Solutions for winning our inaugural Product of the Year Award. They have taken a truly holistic approach to sustainable design and development with their product. DIRTT has been able to provide a product that meets the needs of the market and provides documented third party environmental declarations, which shows leadership and an understanding of the future of green design,” says Thomas Mueller, President and CEO of the Canada Green Building Council.
“We are truly humbled that DIRTT’s Enzo Approach has been honoured as the CaGBC’s inaugural Product of the Year,” says DIRTT co-founder and Vice-President of Product Development, Geoff Gosling. “The fact that the CaGBC – a thought leader in high-performing, healthy green buildings – cited Enzo’s sustainability, transparency and innovation is affirmation that DIRTT’s sustainable construction philosophy and methods are indeed the way to build better.”
Runners-up for the 2015 Green Building Product of the Year Award are: GlasCurtain Inc. for the creation of a fibreglass framing product for glass curtains that offers better energy performance than conventional aluminum framing, while increasing the lifespan of assemblies by reducing expansion and contraction; and
MSL Fibre for its SONOclimat eco4®, a rigid insulation panel that provides a continuous insulation sheathing layer for wood frame construction, made from 100% recycled wood fibres that are 100% recyclable at the end of its life.
The panel of judges for this year’s Product of the Year Award was comprised of: Kevin Henry, Senior Mechanical Engineer at HDR Architects; Rodney Wilts, Partner, BuildGreen Solutions (A Windmill Developments Company); Sheila Brown, Sustainability Expert; Max Richter, Senior Architect, Perkins+Will; Ellyn Berg, Registered Interior Designer; and Mark Hutchinson, Director, Green Building Programs, CaGBC.
For more information, please visit www.cagbc.org/News/EN/2015/20150604_News_Release_2.aspx