Future Now !

One important thing my years of experience made me convinced in however, that any system - if successful -  is built on the same underlying principles. These are the principles of Systems Architecture, and they are universally applicable from Space to Earth, and from Sustainable Building to Sustainable Community.

 

This is The Brook - 24-condo residential building in North Vancouver built in 2009. It s the "greenest" building of this kind in Canada, if not North America. The building is a system which consists of many elements all of which work in highly synchronized mode in order to ensure that the whole system functions properly.    

A good comparison of the high-performance building is with a live body. As a body, it has bones - structure, skin - walls, and internal organs - heart, lungs and brain. 

The heart of the building is its Heating and Cooling System. It consists of integrated Geothermal / Solar thermal and on-demand boilers. Together they provide most comfortable temperature throughout the building and hot water for domestic needs. 

As in the body, there are sensors, which send information to the brain - building management system. It process the information and controls all other parts of the system to ensure they operate in the most efficient way.    

The Solar thermal system provides most of the hot water and supplements the geothermal system. Solar tanks are fed from the roof-mounted vacuum tube UV collectors.