Building

Visitors to the Marine Field Staion main building will be welcomed into a large foyer looking out onto Baynes Sound. This room will include interpretative displays, web-linked flat panel displays of the underwater biodiversity inhabiting the shellfish farm and seawater aquaria, and act as a staging point for further tours of the building, research activities and the site. This room will be multipurpose and can be converted into a teaching area, as a culinary demonstration facility through the roll-up shutter that exposes the teaching kitchen, as a dining hall, reception, or social area. The kitchen has been designed to support teaching and demonstration activities of the VIU Culinary Institute of Vancouver Island as well as support off-site catering companies servicing events. This room will also house a Gift Shop which will operate as a satellite of the Vancouver Island University Bookstore.

Green Design

The Marine Field Station facility itself will be architecturally unique, embracing and integrating green energy design, reflective of the unique physical location and of the shellfish industry. Larry McFarland Architects Ltd., who designed the first platinum LEED© Certified building in Canada, the Parks Canada Gulf Islands Operation Centre, has been engaged on this project and has designed a building with special purpose venues that can accommodate the simultaneous delivery of multiple shellfish-related programs.

Lessons from the Parks Canada Gulf Islands Operation Centre, are being applied to the Deep Bay Marine Field Station with the objective of making if a public facility that will demonstrate how a building can be designed to respond to its site and environment to minimize dependence on outside sources of energy and its impact on the environment.

Building Goals

• Utilize ocean geo-exchange from process water, micro power generation, energy conservation techniques and wood structural component featured design. Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 15.5 tonnes/year (22%) and electricity use by more than 44 MWh/year (>75%).
• Educate the public on the importance and use of energy conservation and renewable energy technologies through demonstration, extension courses, workshops, conferences, and interpretive programming. Increase adoption of clean energy, green building techniques and water conservation/preservation in rural coastal communities.
• Explore the scalability, both up and down, of the installed systems so that they can be applied from the household to the large development and industry or remote community.
• Create continued innovation through “systems that learn” – ongoing trials of new applications and new technologies supported by the Field Station and local BC energy companies. This becomes a living system in a constant state of innovation and dialogue drawing on the strengths of Vancouver Island University, the BC business community and resilient coastal communities.
• Provide platform for on going training and educational programs for green building vocational programs offered by Vancouver Island University.
• Provide heat recovery demonstration for commercial aquaculture industry applications.