Vancouver's Platinum Venue

The Vancouver games are in full swing by now, so it's time to check out one of the venues that led the city to boast its Olympics would be the "greenest games ever."

The Vancouver Convention Centre, formally the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre (VCECE), functioned as just that from the 1986 World's Fair Expo. The waterside venue hosted about 300 events a year -- everything from the massive International Conference on AIDS to a private meeting between Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton.

But in order to function as the Olympics media hub and accommodate some 7,000 media members from around the world, Vancouver had to expand the center, according to the VCC and Inhabitat. Now, five years later, two times over budget, but quite stunningly, the center is a showpiece of the games. It overlooks Vancouver's harbor and has enough glittering glass and jutting angles to be the perfect focus for the sweeping helicopter shots that open an evening's coverage.

The updated building is the first LEED Platinum-certified convention center (a type of building usually best characterized by acres of carpeting, frigid air conditioning and sprawling parking lots). It of course features all the standard green accoutrements: energy-efficient fixtures, local materials, low-VOC flooring and integrated natural lighting and ventilation. A heat pump latches on to the harbor water's stable temperature, while black-water treatment minimizes the center's overall water use.

But the coolest features are those that lie above and below the rest of the building. A 6-acre (24,281-square meter) green roof is the largest nonindustrial living roof in North America. Green roofs help regulate a building's temperature while also absorbing storm runoff that would normally inundate a city's sewage system. What looks like a terraced park in an aerial view is much more than a wash of sedums upon closer inspection. Insects, birds and small mammals populate the 400,000 indigenous grasses and plants that cover the surface. An apiary featuring four beehives provides honey for the center's kitchen (which also serves exclusively British Columbia VQA wines). An artificial reef serves as the building's harbor-side foundation. Five tiers of habitat should attract mussels, starfish, crabs, fish and barnacles.

After the games, the space will revert to that of a conference center, ballroom and exhibition hall -- but the public walkways, bike paths and harbor views will likely keep it a top Vancouver destination.

Thanks to Coolest Stuff on the Planet's Amanda Arnold for suggesting this topic.

Image: The Vancouver Convention Centre's green roof (© iStockphoto.com/HeliRy)