The Sustainable Building Challenge (SB Challenge) is an international co-operative process promoting innovative sustainable building design and seeking an improved understanding of building performance assessment tools from a national and international perspective.
SB Challenge will form a key part of the Seventh World Sustainable Building Conference (SB11) to be held in Helsinki, Finland from October 18-21, 2011 (www.sb11.org).
A Canadian team has been formed under the International Initiative for a Sustainable Built Environment (iiSBE). It has searched for examples of the most sustainable buildings designed and developed in Canada over the past three years. Two projects have been selected for comprehensive evaluation and presentation to the international audience at SB11. The new 2,150-square-metre office building for Enermodal Engineering in Kitchener, and a new 7,335-square-metre sustainable trades training building for the Penticton Campus for Okanagan College have been selected for detailed assessment and presentation.
The iiSBE Canada SB11 Team is now inviting submissions for poster projects to be displayed at SB11 to complement the pair of detailed project assessments (poster projects do not have to undergo a detailed evaluation). These poster projects will provide SB11 attendees with a more complete understanding of the progress of sustainable building in Canada and enhance our country’s participation in the conference.
If you are a Canadian architect, engineer, building owner or commercial developer, you are invited to submit your most environmentally advanced project to be presented in poster format at the SB Challenge in Helsinki.
Benefits for participants are as follows:
- Gain exposure for your project and organization to a wider global and domestic audience. Results of SB11 will be widely disseminated to industry journals and publications. Participating projects will also have an opportunity to be profiled at national and local conferences across Canada.
- Learn about how your project compares to high performance design and construction strategies in use elsewhere in the world.
- Contribute to raising awareness of high performance building issues and stimulating international demand for environmentally conscious building design and construction.
With respect to eligibility, commercial, institutional and multi-unit residential building types from the public or private sector will all be considered for the SB Challenge. Minimum size is 1,000 square metres. Projects not yet completed or occupied will be considered but only if they have completed design documents.
Each poster project submission should outline how their project has addressed the following issues:
- site selection, project planning and development
- energy and resource consumption
- environmental loadings
- indoor environmental quality
- service quality
- social and economic aspects
- cultural and perceptual aspects
Poster projects will be selected based on: potential exemplary and balanced sustainability performance; comprehensiveness of how the issues above has been addressed; and architectural quality.
The selection process will take place at the end of the first week in April 2011. If your project is chosen, you will be advised within one month of selection of the final presentation format that will be required for display at SB11. Preparation of the poster images in a PowerPoint file format is the minimum submission requirement. Up to ten (10) projects will be considered, although not all submissions will necessarily be accepted. The Canadian team would be pleased if those whose projects were presented as posters could attend the conference, but attendance is not mandatory.
All submissions become the property of iiSBE Canada and will not be returned to proponents.
An application fee of $150.00 CDN is requested for each poster project. To be considered as a poster project for SB11, your submissions must be received no later than 4:00 pm EDT on Thursday, March 31, 2011.
If you require additional information or have questions about the SB Challenge, please contact Gord Shymko, Captain of the iiSBE Canada SB11 Team at gshymko@gfshymko.com or at 403.254.4776.
For submission details, please visit http://gallery.mailchimp.com/963471311d67cb8a5a1515d23/files/SB11_Canada_Call_for_posters_Addendum.1.pdf