PASSIVE HOUSE
Rezoning and Redeveloping 1 Lonsdale for the Future At the corner of Lonsdale Avenue and Carrie Cates Court in North Vancouver lies one of the country’s first Passive House commercial buildings, but 1 Lonsdale Avenue didn’t start that way. The property has been in the same family for three generations and, until recently, housed an Italian restaurant in a relatively derelict part of town near the waterfront. Since 2009, when the city government began a revitalization plan for the area, residents have seen the neighborhood change dramatically. With the creation of a master bike plan in 2012, the construction of new condo towers, and the completion of the Polygon photographic art gallery in 2017, the Babalos family decided to rezone and redevelop the property to reflect newer sensibilities and aesthetics to fit the times. “When we realized there was an opportunity to redevelop, we had an idea that we could develop this in a different way, in a better way,” said Krystie Babalos, part owner of the project. “We started doing our due diligence…visiting other Passive House buildings across the Lower Mainland, in Whistler, and in Pemberton. 20
We started building our team, and the crux of this development process has been our team.” Once assembled, the team needed to create something that not only paid homage to the past, but also paved the way to the future. “The client wanted to do something aggressive from an energy point of view and had done their research on Passive House, and we had done a Passive House factory in Pemberton in 2016,” says John Hemsworth, the architect on the project. Hemsworth adds that one of the first challenges was being cognizant of the energy performance while at the same time using wood materials that are familiar to traditional Vancouver construction. Architecturally, Hemsworth also notes the desire to push the envelope of design and create more natural light by exposing the glulam connections and beams through the windows to “mess with the pattern,” again, with the nod to energy performance. In fact, 1 Lonsdale Avenue was built using a glulam post-and-beam system with 5-ply CLT roof, floor, and shear wall panels, all manufactured in British Columbia.
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PHOTO: KK Law
Joel Kranc
