Dateline May 04, 2008

Calgary, Alberta – Canada

Green people, Earth Sheppard’s, environmentally conscious humans, scientists, religious organizations, humans around the world have been heading down a green road lately. Were all concerned, hopefully, about the changing conditions for life on planet Earth, and not just concerned about humans survival, because I’ve got bad news we can’t survive without the other life forms on the Earth.

Canada has its share of humans concerned about the changes occurring to our little space ship, convinced of the need to design alternative solutions to Canada’s and the world’s growing need for sustainable alternatives to our need to alter our habits, way of life, and to learn new ways of thinking about old problems.
Kasian Architecture Interior Design and Planning Limited of Calgary, Alberta is one of a new breed of corporate stewards that has ridden forward across the environmental battlefield to lead the charge in green building design.

Kasian’s newly designed and built green building, the new child development centre located at the University of Alberta in Calgary, opened last October to little fan fare but since has been acclaimed for the new generations green-designs incorporated into the construction of this green building, achieving the highest possible rating – LEED Platinum – and is currently considered the greenest building on the planet, congratulations to the firm.
LEED, referred to as the universal standard rating system or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is the current environmental standard for green building design.

Incorporating a new environmental concept in building design the child centre includes a photovoltaic array capable of producing 65,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity, enough to power six single family homes for a year that is one of the biggest of its type ever designed into a Canadian building. A series of ergonomic and Earth-friendly high-performance boilers, water heaters no larger than your television that provide ample hot water, in-floor ventilation systems, re-captured rainwater for irrigation, sun-sensing light systems that collect natural sunlight to reduce use of artificial lighting, and low flow toilets to reduce water use, to name but a few of the green innovations.

Sustainable life in the future will be about innovative ideas, businesses and people designing new ways to handle old problems in a new, green-way. The benefits for all if we work together on the problem of our changing environment are obvious to most of us; companies like Kasian are leading the charge in their industries to find new ways to solve old problems.