Two Canadian facilities are 2017 winners of ASHRAE Technology Awards for innovative building design that enables sustainable and energy-efficient operations. Toronto’s Humber River Hospital is recognized for excellence in the health care sector, while Montreal’s Centre de transport Stinson receives the honour for industry facilities/processes. Both categories are new this year as ASHRAE marks the 35th anniversary of the awards program.
“Throughout the lifetime of the Technology Awards, ASHRAE has demonstrated how innovative design becomes the standard of care for the built environment,” says Scott Wayland, a past chair of the judging panel. “The showcased projects offer lessons learned from both the design and post-occupancy phases.”
ASHRAE member, Kurt Monterio, an engineer with Smith + Andersen in Toronto, wins accolades for Humber River Hospital‘s lean, green and digital performance. Completed and occupied in the fall of 2015, it was designed to exceed the 2007 edition of the ASHRAE 90.1 energy standard by 40 per cent.
Notably, 100 per cent fresh air, with no recirculation, is delivered for maximum infection control and indoor air quality, while energy recovery systems and related high-efficiency HVAC design counterbalance the energy impact of that air intake. The 1.8-million-square-foot, 656-bed complex also boasts Canada’s largest modular green roof and the largest installation of electrochromic glass in North America.
ASHRAE member, Julien Allard, a mechanical engineer and project manager with Bouthillette Parizeau in Montreal, is recognized for his work on Canada’s first LEED Gold bus depot. Centre de transport Stinson, owned by the Société de transport de Montréal (STM), accommodates 300 buses in a space roughly equivalent to seven football fields.
Designed for energy and water efficiency, it incorporates high-efficiency condensing boilers, energy recovery ventilation and destratification fans in high-volume areas. Nearly 75 per cent of water is recaptured from the bus wash-bay and reused for pre-rinsing, augmented with rainwater harvested on the facility’s 86,000-square-foot green roof.
This year’s five other Technology Award winners include: the YKK80 Building in Tokyo, Japan, in the commercial buildings category; the Parnassus Services Seismic Replacement Building at University of California, San Francisco, in the institutional building category; the John Hopkins University Undergraduate Teaching Laboratories in Baltimore, in the educational facility category; the Cincinnati District 3 Police Headquarters, in the new commercial buildings category; and 435 Indio Way in Sunnyvale, California, in the existing buildings category.
The awards will be presented at the upcoming ASHRAE 2017 Winter Conference, Jan. 28 to Feb. 1, in Las Vegas. More than 300 ASHRAE members have been recognized for their work on projects that exemplify and advance energy efficiency and sustainability since the awards were launched in 1981.
One of the inaugural honourees, ASHRAE Life Member, James Lange, lists several technologies introduced in that year’s award winning Western Life Insurance Building in Woodbury, Minnesota, that are still prevalent today, including: variable air volume terminal boxes; heat recovery chillers; thermal storage tanks; and DDC controls that include airflow measuring stations.
“I felt that this building would demonstrate many energy-conserving features that had not been used on other projects,” he recalls.
Image: Humber River Hospital,Toronto.
