January 2015
| Business World
83
boundaries and demonstrating leadership in
the engineering world in regards to sustain-
ability,” says Stuart.”One of our core values
is to be a leader in deep green engineering
projects, so it’s very rewarding to be recog-
nized for that. Frankly, it’s just the tip of the
iceberg in terms of what we’re doing to bring
that level of design and engineering excel-
lence to all of our projects.”
The VanDusen Botanical Garden Visitor
Centre is regarded as both a Vancouver land-
markand as one of the city’s top tourist des-
tinations.The $22 million renewal project
− which features a beautiful new garden pa-
vilion −incorporates numerous innovative
features to achieve a net-zero carbon foot-
print, such as the use of geothermal heating
systems that extract heat from the earth in
the winter and put heat back into the earth
during the summertime.
“We designed that building according to
the Living Building Challenge, which is the
pinnacle of the green building movement,”
Stuart explains. “The Living Building Chal-
lenge doesn’t allow for the burning of any
fossil fuels in the building, so we use a heat
