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http://www.archdaily.com/631845/4-techniques-cold-climate-cities-can-use-to-make-the-most-of-their-waterfronts/ 4 Ways Cold-Climate Cities Can Make The Most Of Their Waterfronts Chaudière Island project in Ottawa. Image Courtesy of Perkins+Will Urban waterfronts have historically been the center of activity for many cities. They began as economic, transportation and manufacturing hubs, but as most industries changed their shipping patterns and consolidated port facilities, many industrial waterfronts became obsolete. In Europe, smaller historic ports were easily converted to be reused for leisure activities. However, in North America, where the ports were larger, it was more difficult to convert the waterfronts due to logistical and contamination issues. Over the past 40 years or so, architects and urban planners have started to recognize the redevelopment potential for waterfronts across the United States and Canada, and the impact they can have on the financial and social success of cities. Though cold-climate cities pose a unique challenge for waterfront development, with effective planning waterfront cities with freezing winter months can still take advantage of the spaces year-round. Treasure Island project in San Francisco. Image Courtesy of Perkins+Will Many cities in the northeastern United States and Canada are applying “California design principles” – design tactics that allow individuals to spend time outside 365 days a year – to redevelop their waterfronts and make them accessible to the public all year long. At Perkins+Will we have been active in this change, applying lessons learned in San Francisco and the Bay Area to colder cities such as Toronto, Ottawa and Buffalo. Here are four design principles that can help cold-weather cities make the most of their waterfronts: Treasure Island project in San Francisco. Image Courtesy of Perkins+Will 1. Planning for winter sun Areas with sun are easily the most well-loved places in any city, but in dark, winter months, they can be especially hard to find. City spaces should find ways to plan for winter sun from the beginning of new development because individuals need, and are drawn to, the warmth that sunlight provides. Maximizing available sun in the winter is key to creating spaces where people love to be. Solar study for Lower Yonge project in Toronto. Image Courtesy of Perkins+Will San Francisco is a good example of this. In 1984, San Francisco voters passed Proposition K, a historic “Sunlight Ordinance,” specifically to protect the city’s parks from the shadows of new buildings. When Perkins+Will worked on the Treasure Island project—an urban design project to transform the island into a vibrant new San Francisco neighborhood—we implemented that same design principle. We wanted to ensure on chilly days visitors to the small island, opposite the city on the San Francisco Bay, would have access to the sun. However, many cold-climate cities do not have these same regulations, so when we work on projects outside the Bay Area, like the Lower Yonge project in Toronto, we have to bring with us the sentiment that buildings should be designed to protect access to winter sun in public spaces. Lower Yonge project in Toronto. Image Courtesy of Perkins+Will Our Lower Yonge project was the last piece of undeveloped waterfront near Toronto’s downtown area. Before beginning the project, we analyzed not only the existing buildings and transit systems, but also the site’s winter sun patterns. This helped us identify a patch of winter sun in the middle of the site from 10 am to 2 pm on December 21, the shortest day of the year, when the least amount of sun is available. To protect this important asset, we located a public park there—a major open space the site was lacking before—to encourage pickup football or soccer games and winter activity. We then used 3D digital design tools to shape the urban form of this new development ensuring that we would always have that same patch of winter sun. Lower Yonge project in Toronto. Image Courtesy of Perkins+Will 2. Creating plazas that block wind In winter months, wind can make cold climates feel 10 to 20 degrees colder than they really are. For people to feel comfortable outside during winter months they have to be protected from cold winter winds. Cities can provide that protection with street patterns and structures that break up and block the wind. Chaudière Island project in Ottawa. Image Courtesy of Perkins+Will Over one hundred years ago the U.S. Army implemented this design principle at San Francisco’s Presidio. The Army strategically planted more than 300 acres of large trees that helped block the harsh prevailing winds to protect the officers who resided there. When we recognized the brilliance behind this design principle, we carried it over to Treasure Island, where we planted trees and methodically placed buildings to help block the wind. Similarly, we took this California design principle and applied it to Chaudière Island in Ottawa. Solar diagram for Chaudière Island project in Ottawa. Image Courtesy of Perkins+Will Like the work we did in Toronto, we surveyed Chaudière Island before we designed anything. In addition to identifying several plazas that receive winter sun, we analyzed the prevailing wind patterns that were acting on the island. To protect those plazas from the harsh winter winds, we designed the streets that led to the plazas so they were oriented away from the prevailing wind. We designed streets that were not straight, but instead meandered to prevent the wind from channeling down the streets. This helped create calm, sunny plazas on the island, even in the harsh months of winter. 3. Breaking up outdoor spaces with comfort stations In freezing winter conditions, people typically only feel comfortable walking outside for about 60 seconds. Providing a small destination for them every minute helps break up the cold and encourages individuals to use the waterfront space in the winter. Crissy Field in San Francisco is a large stretch of public park and beach on the northern side of the city. When the fog rolls in and prevailing winds pick up, the beach can be quite chilly. As a result, the city has created small destinations along the beach to break up the stretch. Wind-protected benches are located every few hundred feet and “warming huts” along the beach provide relief from the elements for visitors while offering a chance to learn more about the area, purchase a cup of coffee and warm themselves. We found this same technique to be successful when planning Treasure Island and implemented it again in our Outer Harbor project with the City of Buffalo. Outer Harbor project in Buffalo. Image Courtesy of Perkins+Will The Outer Harbor project area spans a total of 200 acres, which can take people 30 minutes or longer to cross. To break up the space and make it more bearable during the freezing months, we provided some sort of visual or physical destination every minute, like benches, public art and other landscape elements. Every five minutes we designed comfort stations with heaters and restrooms. We used these small destinations as a way to incorporate unique artwork and make the area more exciting. 4. Designing for active winter programming Many cities have outdoor spaces that are perfect for summer recreation, but when it comes to the winter months, those spaces go largely unused. Cities looking to make the most of their waterfronts year-round should plan for winter activities from the beginning. San Francisco has large stretches of beach and paved outdoor areas along its waterfront, which makes it an optimal location for walking, cycling and running. On Treasure Island, we planned for similar open spaces with large recreational fields, shoreline promenades and artificial wetlands. While snow is not a factor in the Bay Area, other cities that have harsh winters can still use their spaces all year if they plan accordingly. Through our work with the Outer Harbor project in Buffalo, we created a space along the city’s waterfront we wanted residents to enjoy year-round. The space has an abundant network of walking and running trails, which were designed with wind protection, comfort stations and winter sun in mind. We looked at the site with an eye for specific hills that could be transformed into sledding hills in the winter, or bike paths that could be used for snowshoeing or dog sledding. Now, the space can be used for skating, ice sculptures and winter festivals and is a popular place in both summer and winter months. "Human Comfort Diagram" for the Outer Harbor project in Buffalo. Image Courtesy of Perkins+Will The most valuable asset that a waterfront city has is the waterfront itself. Waterfronts provide locations of growth and commerce within urban areas. For cities where there was previously no activity around their waterfronts, waterfront redevelopment is a great way to breathe life into areas that were once bustling hubs of activity. Activating cold weather waterfronts for year-round use presents serious challenges; however, urban design and planning offers solutions to these challenges and an opportunity for those cities to establish unique destinations that draw people to their waterfronts all year long. Noah Friedman is Senior Urban Designer in Perkins+Will’s San Francisco office. Cite: Noah Friedman. "4 Ways Cold-Climate Cities Can Make The Most Of Their Waterfronts" 15 May 2015. ArchDaily. Accessed 15 May 2015. <http://www.archdaily.com/?p=631845> sent via Tapatalk

Il faut le souligner quand des compagnies d'ici font des acquisitions à l'étranger, comme quoi tout ne va pas d'un seul bord! Boralex boosts France operations with proposed takeover Montreal-based renewable energy producer Boralex Inc. has sharply boosted its presence in France with a $400-million proposed takeover of wind power company Enel Green Power France. The acquisition of the Enel wind portfolio will boost the generating capacity of Boralex’s existing operations by about 25 per cent, with the addition of 12 operating wind farms generating about 186 megawatts of power. Currently, Boralex has wind farms, solar projects, hydroelectric and thermal operations in France, Canada and the United States, that have a total capacity of about 754 MW. The company said this deal will make it the biggest independent wind power producer in France. Adding a large proportion to the French porfolio is a “truly company-transforming move,” said Boralex chief executive officer Patrick Lemaire. Currently, France makes up about 37 per cent of the Boralex portfolio, but that will expand to almost half after this transaction closes in January. Mr. Lemaire said in an interview that growth in the renewable sector is “clearer” in Europe than in North America, at the moment. Changes in Ontario’s renewable energy procurement program that make it less attractive, and limits to Quebec’s plans to acquire clean energy, have made those two core Canadian markets less attractive, he said. “France still has nice objectives,” he said. Boralex is also less interested in expanding in the United States, Mr. Lemaire said, because most jurisdictions there operate with a spot market for electricity, and thus there are fewer long-term contracts that secure a power price over the long term. The wind farms being purchased in this deal have long-term contracts in place averaging about 11 years. Privately owned Enel also has a pipeline of about 310 MW of new wind projects that are not yet built, and that will add further to the Boralex total in the next few years, Mr. Lemaire said. “Our main goals are to operate what we have acquired in the past, build new projects … and add growth for the next few years.” Boralex will finance the Enel purchase through bank loans, an existing revolving credit facility, and a bridge credit facility. It will also sell about $110-million in subscription receipts through a bought-deal transaction arranged by National Bank Financial. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/boralex-boosts-france-operations-with-proposed-takeover/article22095267/

Read More There are currently no phones on the market that use the 700 MHz band. It will be interesting to see if Videotron puts together an agreement with a US mobile provider to reduce roaming fees, just like WIND did for an extra $15/month* unlimited roaming in the US. If Videotron does come out with an interesting plan to compete against Rogers/Fido, Telus and Bell. I might as well switch. It would be nice if Videotron would have a plan that would match WIND or Mobilicity. Another thing that I suspected years ago, Videotron would buy WIND and Mobilicity to also increase their footprint (it might still happen but who knows). * $65/month - Unlimited calls within Canada/US, Unlimited Data within Canada/US, Unlimited SMS within Canada/US + Voicemail / Caller ID Videotron has a similar plan but you can't roam in the US/Canada but it is $72/month with 6GB of data. I did find something online talking about the 700 MHz upper and lower band.

Le projet de luminothératpie de cette année à la Place des festivals via The Gazette Luminothérapie's field of swaying stems Place des festivals will be filled with glinting lights and moving melodies for this year’s Luminothérapie installation BY SUSAN SEMENAK, THE GAZETTE NOVEMBER 22, 2013 The designers of Entre les rangs, led by the Montreal architecture firm KANVA, were inspired by the long narrow parcels of land set out in New France. The installation at Luminothérapie features music to give the impression of wind in a wheat field. MONTREAL - For all its summertime verve, Place des festivals can be downright desolate come winter. Without late sunsets, lingering festival crowds or lineups for food trucks, the concrete quadrangle adjacent to Place des Arts is cold and windswept. In a few weeks, though, it will become a twinkling, swaying wheat field. On Dec. 11, the interactive multimedia show called Entre les rangs, which means “between the rows,” opens as part of the fourth annual Luminothérapie design competition organized by the people who run the Quartier des spectacles as an antidote to Montreal’s long grey winters and a way to showcase the creativity of Montreal designers. It was an idea that came to Montreal architect Rami Bebawi and his team at Kanva Architecture one frigid end-of-winter day last March when they bundled up and headed over to take stock of the site. To find the “soul” of the place, he says, they listened to the wind. And then they enlisted designers in a host of other fields, among them the indie musician Patrick Watson and the local landscape design firm Côté Jardin, to help create magic using light and sound. “The space is just so big. It’s like an open lot surrounded by buildings in the middle of a dense urban environment,” Bebawi said, pouring espresso in the firm’s sunny St-Laurent Blvd. loft while taking a break from the preparations for the show’s opening. “Stand back, though, or look at it from above, and what you see is a long narrow parcel of land with Mount Royal to the north and the St. Lawrence River to the south, a site that rises and then dips, with many levels in between.” Its rectangular shape, the designers noticed, is reminiscent of the long, narrow tracts of farmland that have characterized rural Quebec ever since the seigneurial system of New France. “We started to play around with this shape, and with the idea of history and weather and the natural cycle of the seasons,” Bebawi said, doodling his vision on a notepad as he spoke. Before they knew it, the team had conjured a large-scale urban metaphor for a wheat field in rural Quebec, one made of more than 28,000 plastic rods topped with simple white bicycle reflectors. In the winter wind, bathed in reflected light, the stylized stems will sway as they would in a blustery wheat field. The stems vary in height from 3½- to 5-feet-tall, set tightly together and anchored in recycled plastic posts. Each of them is topped with a simple old-fashioned bicycle reflector that will catch the light emitted from overhead coloured lamps, the colours moving with the wind as music plays. With the sound emanating from speakers hidden at street level all around the site that is louder when the wind picks up, it gives the impression of a moving melody. The most successful public art installations, Bebawi says, create a collective experience. The Entre les rangs field is laid out in a series of slightly curved lines with breaks every now and then for people to cross through. Entre les rangs’ 6-foot-wide aisles are perfect for strolling side by side or for walking through alone. The Entre les rangs exhibition is one of two installations chosen from among 44 submissions for this year’s Luminothérapie competition, which promotes new ways of using public spaces as open-air galleries. The competition runs from Dec. 11 to Feb. 2, 2014. The other exhibit is a playful series of projections called Trouve Bob, a kind of high-tech version of Where’s Waldo that will be projected on the façades of the buildings surrounding Place des Festivals. It invites visitors to play a game in which the character Bob hides in a psychedelic world of unusual characters, all of them hiding out in the architecture of the projection surfaces. It was designed by a Montreal multimedia collective called Champlagne Club Sandwich. For more information: http://www.quartierdesspectacles.com ssemenak@montrealgazette.com © Copyright © The Montreal Gazette

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Hydro+Qu%c3%a9bec+accepts+bids+wind+farms/4004578/story.html#ixzz18l8doftP

SolarBotanic is a company which researches and specializes in an emerging tech dubbed biomimicry -- which seeks to mimic nature, and use nature-inspired methods to solve human problems. SolarBotanic is focusing on energy production, and, to that end, they've developed what they call Energy Harvesting Trees. The trees aren't "real," (they're just modeled on real ones); these are composed of Nanoleafs, which use nanotechnology designed to capture the "sun's energy in photovoltaic and thermovoltaic cells, then convert the radiation into electricity." They also have stems and twigs which house nano-piezovoltaic material which act as generators producing electricity from movement or kinetic energy caused by wind or rain. The company has several patents on the technology already, and are currently seeking partners for funding and development. We don't really have any details about what these fake trees look like -- but Thom Yorke's probably going to write a song about them. Press release: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/02/prweb2133164.htm

(Courtesy of Logotipo REVE)