Lou Ampas didn't have a minute to spare.
It was a Friday morning in January, 2007, and the architect needed to get to the ferry terminal serving Toronto Island Airport as fast as he could so he could catch a mid-morning flight to Ottawa.
If he didn't, six months worth of work would go to waste, and the chance would be lost to build three unique townhouses in downtown Toronto that would produce as much energy as they consumed in a year.
"I just grabbed everything, jumped in my car ... and hightailed it," says Mr. Ampas, a principal of Coolearth Architecture Inc.
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But he was too late. As he whipped his car into a parking space near the terminal, the ferry was pulling away and he started to panic.
The proposal he clutched in his hand - a document he and a room of architects, engineers, professors and students had worked through the night finishing - had to get to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. by 2 p.m., and the last means of getting it there was leaving without him. "It was like a nightmare," he recalls.
In July, 2006, CMHC had called for proposals for its EQuilibrium sustainable housing competition, an initiative created to promote dwellings that produce as much energy as they consume.
Mr. Ampas joined a team of like-minded Ryerson University professors, students, and other industry professionals to submit a proposal. To set themselves apart, the team - known as the Sustainable Urbanism Initiative - wanted to prove that an energy-efficient house could be built smack in the middle of a densely populated urban neighbourhood.
So Mr. Ampas twisted the arm of long-time friend and developer Spero Bassil to get involved in the project.
The team selected a piece of land Mr. Bassil owned on the corner of Davenport Road and Dupont Street in the Annex - next to a 3½-storey apartment that Mr. Bassil also owns - as a potential site.
They called the project Top of the Annex Townhomes, and designed three, 2,300-square-foot freehold condominium townhouses to be built on the infill site.
"That was our objective," says Professor Mark Gorgolewski, one of the initiative's leaders and a Ryerson University professor of architectural science. "Not to show that you could do it out in the suburbs or somewhere on optimal sites, but [that] you can do this in really difficult locations.
"We felt that it was paramount to show that you can live in the downtown area in a sustainable home, you could walk to work, you could walk to shops - you don't need to have a car, or even if you want to have a car, you don't need to use it most of the time," Prof. Gorgolewski says.
The project had appeal - and would get an injection of $50,000 from CMHC, but only if the team made the entry deadline.
So as the ferry pulled away on that day in January, Mr. Ampas dashed to the edge of the terminal and started hollering for it stop.
"My heart was coming out," he says.
That's when two men standing next to him attempted to calm him down. As luck would have it, one was Porter Airlines president Robert Deluce and the other was one of his employees. A distraught Mr. Ampas explained his predicament, and both men calmly pulled out their cellphones, and, after a few calls, the plane was put on hold for the architect.
Mr. Ampas caught the flight, the team made the deadline, and Top of the Annex Townhomes was selected a month later as one of 12 winners in the competition. (Another Toronto model, the Now House - a Second World War-era house in the Topham Park area of East York - also won.)
"We're at the bottom of this curve that will grow exponentially when it comes to green housing and sustainable living," Mr. Ampas says.
So how did the team design a series of townhouses that will generate as much energy as they consume - especially considering that other buildings and trees in the urban area will limit the amount of sunlight the site gets?
Essentially, everything in the townhouses - down to the shower water that's filtered and reused to flush toilets - is intended to maximize energy efficiency.
The insulation of the walls, windows and ceilings in the three-bedroom units will be about 2½ times that of a regular house, the team says. That will help the house retain a significant amount of heat in the winter months and keep the house cool in the summer.
The main living spaces - kitchen, dining and living rooms - are on the third floor, immediately above the bedrooms and two storeys above the ground level's "flex space," which the team says could be a spare bedroom, an office, or a combination of both.
"We purposefully put the living accommodation at the highest level because heat rises and you tend to want to have the warmest spaces in the living spaces," Prof. Gorgolewski explains.
The team will use low-emission and recycled construction materials to build the townhouses, and two types of solar panels to generate most of the energy they require. Photovoltaic panels will convert sunlight to electricity, and thermal panels will convert sunlight into the heat needed for hot water.
The other major renewable energy source is the earth's thermal energy. A geothermal system will use natural heat below the ground to moderate the temperature of the buildings.
The system, which will cost about $25,000 to $30,000 to build, will pump a heat-transfer fluid (water or antifreeze solution) through a network of pipes buried in the ground, running to and from the house. During the winter, the system will extract heat from the earth and pump it into the house.
In the summer months, the process will be reversed, and heat will be extracted from the house and deposited in the ground.
And because the Sustainable Urban Initiative's research indicates that the townhouses (which are not off the grid) will generate more energy than they consume, homeowners will be able to sell excess power to the grid.
"We will be monitoring them to see how well they perform once they're built," Prof. Gorgolewski says. "Students will be installing equipment in them to monitor their performance ... but the modelling shows that there should not be any energy needed."
The team has also tried to address broader ideas of sustainability. The location of the townhouses, for instance, is such that owners won't have to use a car to get from place to place. And the marketing campaign to sell the homes will use as little paper as possible - no pamphlets or business cards.
"People are building sustainable housing in the suburbs and then getting in their cars and driving," Prof. Gorgolewski says. "That doesn't deal with the bigger picture, so we wanted to show how you can develop a sustainable lifestyle."
The construction of Top of the Annex Townhomes, expected to take nine to 12 months, is set to begin later this year, after the team has resolved some issues with the city about parking, the building's orientation, and the space between the existing apartment and the new building.
Recently, one of the townhouses was listed for $1,395,000. (One of the remaining two will be open to the public for educational purposes for about nine months after construction is completed, and the other will be listed once the team gets a better feel for the market.)
Mr. Bassil, the developer, admits he could build anything in the Annex and it would sell because of the affluent area's market value. But if the early phone calls and e-mails inquiring about Top of the Annex Townhomes are any indication, the market exists for green living, too.
"We're now realizing that people today care about the environment, and they are willing to put their money where their mouth is," Mr. Bassil says.
What's more, the project has inspired the members of the Sustainable Urbanism Initiative to continue with the green theme in their respective fields.
In the coming months, Prof. Gorgolewski and other Ryerson professors and students will be studying pockets of the city to see how they could initiate more sustainable practices in them. And Mr. Ampas joined with a few other architects this year to form Coolearth Architecture, which has plans to design dwellings similar to the Annex homes across the country. Mr. Bassil, meanwhile, is in the process of acquiring more land to build energy-efficient houses.
"From a business perspective, I think it's going to serve me," the developer says.
Sources: Globe and Mail Article by MATTHEW TREVISAN June 13,2008
Anne Lok is a Realtor with Homelife/ Realty One Ltd. Toronto. She understands architecture, design, resource-efficiency, sustainable design for healthier environments, comfort and value for modern living. Her services are not only limited to design conscious homes, she also has expertise in helping you source and market all aspects of conventional properties that suit your individual needs in Toronto's hip, vibrant and socially responsible communities.
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