Ashok

This is not the first time Concordia University is renovating/building for temporary use. The Grey Nun was also designed to be a temporary as a residence until the Department of Art and Science takes over; in this case, I wonder why they don't try to add the structural components to meet zoning allowance for a building which gives them flexibility to design their space. The design itself is great though.

That is super interesting - so many questions about the A/C unit on the balcony. PTAC or A/C unit usually are a nightmare from an energy perspective; too many holes that cause breaks in insulation levels and air leakage. I wonder if dumping all that heat onto the glass will cause issues afterwards.

Interesting initiative. I am very curious as to how they plan to capture carbon during the operational phase. They mention embodied carbon but nothing about operation carbon emission. Operational carbon emission would account for about 80% of your total embodied carbon. Also, we already have excellent examples of low carbon buildings. And standards – such as Passive House – which is a proven cost-effective way to drastically reduce carbon emission of buildings. I wonder if the building might be Passive House Certified. I did calculate carbon emissions for similar size building built to current code as well as building to Passive House Standard – and Passive House Standards put carbon emission at levels which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommends. Anyway, Would look forward to hearing more about this project.

CBC had a great article on retrofitting existing large buildings in Canada to reduce carbon: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/green-buildings-retrofits-1.5150658 New York City also adopted this month a really ambitious law that introduces carbon caps for large buildings with steep fine for owners who do not meet. (Basically what CBC article is outlining.) 1st compliance date 2024. In short, about 50 000 large buildings (25 000 SF and above) will have to do major retrofit in the next 5 years to come into compliance. This law will put NYC on target to reduce 80% green house gas emission by 2050. I wrote an article on it and also calculated carbon emission of existing and new buildings built to code if anyone is interested: https://passivehouseaccelerator.com/articles/untangling-the-climate-mobilization-act What people are finally starting realize is that as climate change becomes more of an urgency, our existing buildings becomes central to reducing our carbon footprint. In NYC for instance, a transit centered city, existing building accounts for 70% of all GHG emissions - this will be true of Montreal.

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