Commercial and Workplace Design
Environment Canada Offices
Public Works and Government Services Canada
Environment Canada Offices at PWRC
The Pacific Wildlife Research Centre (PWRC) located on Westham Island, Delta BC, is on a site of 720 acres surrounded by inland water and dykes. Environment Canada (EC) acquired the property from the Reifel Family in 1972 and currently houses 48 staff consisting of EC employees and research associates from Partner NGOs and Simon Fraser University. By 1972 the value of the real estate, the wildlife habitat value of the Reifel homestead, waterways, farm fields and Sanctuary was recognized as something to be conserved. By a combination of land sale and donation to the federal government, the site is now managed and protected by the Canadian Wildlife Service and is designated as the Alaskan Wildlife Area (NWA).
The project replaced an existing one-storey structure with a new two-storey building consisting of main floor library and meeting rooms and a second storey with twenty new workstations for scientists, biologist, planner/coordinators and technicians. The addition is visually distinct by designing the building utilizing green building features.
The new building utilizes a narrow depth office floor plate for superior daylighting and an efficient naturally ventilated opening windows.
The window pattern and structural grid are generated from the planning module for workstations in the open office allowing a direct connection between users and the nature sanctuary.
The windows were protected from solar overheating by an exterior sun control system. The sustainability features included designing within an existing building footprint to minimize site disturbance, integration of LEED design principles including daylighting, natural ventilation, solar sunshades at windows and exploration of geo-thermal heating/cooling.
The new office building is sensitively designed in response to its setting in a wetlands area that is a bird sanctuary and fish habitat.
In addition, the site has a heritage building that connects to the new building. In 2014, the project was featured in the City of Vancouver’s Bird Friendly Design Guidelines Exhibition for its sensitive siting and use of Ornilux glass that minimizes bird strikes.
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