School Of Architecture, Dayananda Sagar Academy of Technology and Management

Report on

CASE STUDIES OF GREEN BUILDINGS

A study of GRIHA & LEED Certified Buildings

Submitted by
VIIIth Semester
Batch 2018-2023

In part fulfillment of the course, Bachelor’s in Architecture (B.Arch.)

under the Guidance of Prof. Monica Sharma and Prof. Praseetha Gopalan
 PROJECT NAME:

“MANITOBA HYDRO PLACE”

Location: Winnipeg, Canada
Certification: LEED Platinum
Architect/Designer Name: KPMB Architects, Toronto, Canada
Date of Certification: May 2012

GROUP MEMBERS NAME:

1. Mr Mohan K S
2. Ms Nanditha A
3. Mr Nitin Naresh Reddy
Contents
1. Introduction ___________________________________________________________ 1
1.1. Description of the project _____________________________________________ 1
1.2. Background and design process ________________________________________ 2
2. Energy efficient design __________________________________________________ 3
3. Energy use ____________________________________________________________ 4
4. Climate_______________________________________________________________ 5
5. Cost _________________________________________________________________ 6
6. Design _______________________________________________________________ 7
6.1. Form, Orientation, Massing ___________________________________________ 7
6.2. Expression ________________________________________________________ 8
6.3. Solar chimney ______________________________________________________ 8
7. Performance ___________________________________________________________ 8
7.1. Thermal mass ______________________________________________________ 8
7.2. Fresh air __________________________________________________________ 9
7.3. Materials __________________________________________________________ 9
8. Conclusion ___________________________________________________________ 10
9. References ___________________________________________________________ 11

Figure 1: View from the street ________________________________________________ 1

Figure 2: Location __________________________________________________________ 2
Figure 3: Energy efficient design ______________________________________________ 4
Figure 4: Wind Rose diagram _________________________________________________ 5
Figure 5: Air circulation _____________________________________________________ 6
Figure 6: Form, orientation, massing ___________________________________________ 7
Figure 7: Expression ________________________________________________________ 8
Figure 8: Ventilation ________________________________________________________ 9
Figure 9: Materials _________________________________________________________ 9
1. Introduction
1.1. Description of the project
Manitoba Hydro Place (MHP) is an office
tower serving as the headquarters building of Manitoba
Hydro, the electric power and natural gas utility in the
province of Manitoba, Canada. Located at 360 Portage
Avenue in downtown Winnipeg and connected to
the Winnipeg Walkway system, Manitoba Hydro Place
received LEED Platinum certification in May 2012,
making it the most energy-efficient office tower in
North America and the only office tower in Canada to
receive the LEED Platinum rating.
Opened as Winnipeg's 4th tallest building in September
2009, the 21-story office tower brought together 1,650
employees from 15 suburban locations into one
695,000 sq ft (64,568 m2) high-rise on a full,
downtown block. With the design's plan
view resembling a capital letter "A", the project
comprises two 18-storey twin wings framing three 6-
Figure 1: View from the street storey, south-facing atria (winter gardens). The design's
stepped, three-storey, street-scaled podium contains
retail space as well as an interior pedestrian street and a single level of parking, partially below
grade — over which sit the atria, office wings and their 3-storey mechanical penthouse. Total
project cost was C$278m.
The building's bioclimatic, energy-efficient design features a 377 ft (115 m) tall solar chimney,
a geo-thermal HVAC system using 280 five-inch tubes bored 380 feet into an underground
aquifer, 100% fresh air (24 hours a day, year-round, regardless of outside temperature) and a
one-meter-wide double exterior wall with computer-controlled motorized vents that adjust the
building's exterior skin throughout the day and evening. Together, the various elements of the
design enable a 70% energy savings over a typical large office tower.
(Wikipedia, n.d.)

Name Manitoba Hydro Place

Location Winnipeg, Canada
Owner Manitoba Hydro
Corporate Head Office
Principal use
Includes office space, meeting rooms, conference centre
Employees/ occupants 2,000
Occupancy 100%
Gross square footage 8,23,535

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 Conditioned space
Distinctions/awards
Total cost
Cost per square foot
Substantial
completion/occupancy
LEED certification
(Jensen, 2019)
6,95,241
1. 2009 - Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat –
Best Tall Building (Americas)
2. 2010 - ArchDaily – Best Office Building
3. 2010 - Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Urban
Design Award
4. 2010 - American Institute of Architects COTE Award
5. 2010 - Engineers Canada Award
C$283 million
C$400
2009
Platinum

Figure 2: Location

1.2. Background and design process

Construction of a downtown headquarters building was integral to the 2002 purchase agreement
between Manitoba Hydro and the City of Winnipeg for purchase of the formerly city-
owned electric utility, Winnipeg Hydro.
Manitoba Hydro representatives toured to Europe to identify examples of energy efficient design
a year prior to beginning the architect selection process. The first task was to form the Integrated
Design Team (IDT). The client hired an advocate architect to champion the project goals and
oversee process management, inclusive of the submission under the LEED program. In contrast
to the conventional design process where it is the responsibility of the principal architect to
assemble a team of engineers and specialists, Manitoba Hydro conducted an intensive search for
a design architect. The design architect’s role included leadership of the IDT and invitation to
participate in the selection of the architect of record, energy engineer, building system engineers,
cost estimator, and contractors.

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Subsequently, the company assembled an integrated design team including members from the
corporation itself along with the design architects, the architects of record, energy engineers,
building system engineers, cost estimators, and project contractors — selecting the Design
Architect first: Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects of Toronto. Smith Carter
Architects of Winnipeg was the Architect of Record.
By selecting the design architect independent of the overall team, it ensured that the client chose
individuals who they could work with and it empowered the architect to be a decision maker
and professional advisor. Personalities where a key selection criterion as relationship building
was fundamental to the synthesis of ideas.
The brief was developed into a project charter defining the project's core principles and against
which design concepts would be measured: that it would be flexible and adaptable to new
technology and workplace changes, offer world-class energy efficiency, offer a signature design
to enhance the image of the company and the city, help strengthen the city downtown, and be a
solid financial investment.
The company committed one year to developing the building concept, using another year to
ensure the concept integrated the key elements, including architectural, structural, energy
performance, cost, constructability, and LEED factors. Sixteen alternatives were developed,
subsequently reduced to three options from which the final concept was selected.

2. Energy efficient design

To meet its initial design target, that of a sustainable, energy-efficient building, Manitoba Hydro
Place (MHP) was developed using an Integrated Design Process to optimize the building's
massing, orientation and exposed thermal mass and to use digital analysis and computerized
building management systems to increase its efficiency. MHP integrates passive elements (e.g.,
the south-facing winter gardens, natural daylighting, and the solar chimney) as well
as active systems (e.g., dimmable, programmable fluorescent lighting and a computer-
operated building management system).
Key specifics of the design include siting of the building to take advantage of prevailing winds
and solar gain, minimizing north-facing surface area, using the building's south-facing atria to
provide and precondition the building's constant fresh-air supply and using several 24-meter-tall
waterfalls to humidify and dehumidify the fresh air intake. Green roofs at the base of the
building use plants to reduce stormwater runoff and minimize the building's heat-island effect,
including such native prairie plants as sweet grass.
The design uses the building's concrete thermal mass to mitigate extreme temperature swings
and integrate radiant heating and cooling systems, with a solar chimney to provide 100% fresh
air by moving exhaust air to the bottom of the chimney to combine with the atria's
preconditioned air and preheat incoming cold air to within room temperature, and
employing geothermal technology via a closed loop system of 280 boreholes, six inches in
diameter (variously reported as five inches in diameter), 400 feet deep, located between elements
of the foundation. The geo-thermal boreholes are filled with tubing carrying glycol, which
extracts heat from the building in warmer months while warming the thermal mass of the floor

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slabs radiantly in colder months. Heat pumps and exchangers maximize the system's efficiency,
providing conditioned water that is then circulated in tubes in the exposed ceiling slabs,
providing 100% of the mechanical temperature conditioning.
MHB features a high-performance building envelope with a glass skin that is effectively triple-
glazed — where the interior layer is single-glazed and separated from the double-glazed exterior
layer by a one-meter-wide buffer zone. Windows at the east and west include operable sashes
of both motorized, centrally controlled panels in the outer glazing and manually operated panels
at the inner glazing as — well as shading located in the interstitial space. The floor plan shapes
themselves (also known as floorplates) of MHP are shallow, with a distance of 11 meters from
the face of the building to its interior core, facilitating natural daylighting.
Other systems integral to the design include high
ceilings to maximize natural lighting, exterior walls
of low-iron glass for maximum solar gain, automated
solar shading, raised floors with a displacement
ventilation system, high-output lighting with
occupancy and light sensors on each fixture, a
computer-based building management system to
coordinate operation of energy management and
building systems as well as a group of green roofs at
the building's podium.
To achieve personal comfort levels, users have
access to the operable elements of the façade and
receives natural lighting 80% of normal office hours.
In addition to the operable sashes, users can control
their immediate environment via task lighting,
shading devices and user-operable floor grilles.
Incidental to the building design itself, another idea
behind MHP was indirect energy savings the project
Figure 3: Energy efficient design
would facilitate by combining 15 disparate company
entities in a single downtown location. Before MHP
opened, 95 percent of the employees commuted to work via automobile. After working at the
new building for less than half a year, 50% of commuters were using forms of transportation
other than the automobile.

3. Energy use
MHP targets electric usage less than 100 kWh/m2/a compared to 400 kWh/m2/a for a typical
large scale North American office tower, located in a more temperate climate.
Specifically, the average cold-climate Class-A Canadian office uses 400–550 kWh/m2 per
year. A typical office space in Manitoba uses 495 kWh/m2 per year. Five years before the MHB
was designed the typical office space in Canada utilized used 550 kWh/m2 per year. Because of
recent work to reduce energy consumption in Winnipeg, a typical office high-rise in the city

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uses approximately 325 kWh/m2 annually. Current annual Canadian energy targets for Class A
office towers are 260kWh/m2.
MHP projected an annual use of 88 kWh/m2 per annum, exceeding the Model National Energy
Code for Buildings (MNECB) by 66%.
The building targets Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification at
the platinum level, the highest level of a four-tier rating system. On May 25, 2012, MHB was
finally awarded formal certification, achieving LEED Platinum, the first office building in North
America to do so. As part of their announcement, it was confirmed that their annual energy use
is 85 kWh/m2, slightly lower than anticipated.

4. Climate
At first, the extreme climate was perceived as a major obstacle to achieving the ambitious energy
goals. During analysis, the climate engineer confirmed that while Winnipeg is a northern city,
it has unusually dominant south winds and an abundance of sunlight in the winter months which
offer great potential for harnessing passive energy. The tools to model alternatives and to explore
the selected concepts included: CFD wind analysis with physical model testing, dynamic
thermal model simulations to predict passive efficiencies and full annual daylight autonomy
simulations.

Figure 4: Wind Rose diagram

The innovative design concept of Manitoba Hydro Place led some to question the heightened
level of risk undertaken by the client. Simulation tools, in particular dynamic thermal
simulations, were used to accurately model the building, reducing the risk associated with
innovative concepts such as the double façade in Winnipeg’s climate. Performance assumptions
developed during the design phase have since been verified by metered data.

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Figure 5: Air circulation

5. Cost
MHP was constructed at a cost of C$278 m, or $400 per square foot. This would place the cost
of the building much higher than local building developers would typically target for a city that

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is not expanding rapidly. The building was also financed internally, with a target construction
payback period of more than 60 years rather than the much shorter typical return projection.
During the initial phase of construction, in 2006, engineers discovered a higher water table than
anticipated. As the basement had originally been designed to accommodate numerous
mechanical systems, the building underwent substantial redesign, including its foundation. A
level of the basement was also eliminated during the redesign.
(Kuwabara, Auer, Akerstream, & Pauls, 2013)

6. Design
While the overall design is conceived as an integrated whole fusing all aspects of design, form,
expression, and technology to meet every goal in the Project Charter, the depth and extent of
innovation and creative integration is embodied in the design of a series of individual signature
elements. Through the fusion of aesthetics and energy performance, these elements represent
parts of the whole, collectively essential to the overall performance of the building.

6.1. Form, Orientation, Massing

Form, orientation and massing are fully integrated to
capitalize on passive energy from Winnipeg’s
extreme climate. By siting the building on a 20° angle
to face due south, additional outdoor space was
created for a new urban park on the Graham Street
transit corridor. The orientation also establishes
visual connections to the city’s legislative buildings
and its historic center. The massing integrates a 22-
storey triangular ‘flatiron’ glass tower form with a
masonry-clad podium base. The form extrudes a
typical floor plan that takes the form of a capital ‘A’
with east and west wings. The towers fuse at the north
and splay open to the south. At the north end a 115-
metre solar tower marks the main entrance on
Portage Avenue. The tower is set back from the edges
to mitigate shadow impact on the street and park
while the podium addresses and responds to the
varying scale of adjacent buildings. This also results
in minimizing down drafts on the east and west sides.

Figure 6: Form, orientation, massing

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 6.2. Expression
Ironically, a glass tower in this extreme climate
proved to be the most effective solution: when it is
cold it is also sunny – ideal to maximize solar gains.
The transparency of the glazing system also
mitigates the overall mass and scale of the building
on the streetscape. The entire tower is wrapped in
a double façade with the exception of the south
facing lofts, either through the double east-west
curtain wall or the south and north facing winter
gardens. The envelope has a single-glazed inner
and double-glazed outer wall with a minimally
conditioned 1-meter-wide buffer zone in between.
Motorized operable windows on the outer wall
modulate conditions within the interstitial space
and support natural ventilation. Manually operated
vents in the inner wall allow for individual comfort
management. The modulation of the exterior
double façade windows has become an iconic
Figure 7: Expression feature of the design; the first opening of the
windows marking the start of spring each year.

6.3. Solar chimney

In addition to its function as an iconic element of the Manitoba Hydro Place aesthetic, the solar
chimney is the main exhaust plenum for the building. From spring to fall, stack effect in the
building naturally draws exhaust air up and out of the occupied spaces. The stack effect is
supported by the glass enclosure at the top of the chimney. The greenhouse effect heats up the
upper airspace, which, like a straw, supports the chimney flow by generating a negative pressure
at the top. In the winter, exhaust air from the building is drawn to the bottom of the solar chimney
by a fan. A portion of the heat from this exhaust air is used to heat the parkade 1 while the
remaining heat is used to pre-heat the incoming cold air in the south winter gardens.

7. Performance
7.1. Thermal mass
The 35,600 m 3 concrete structure is designed with sufficient thermal mass to moderate the
impact of daily temperature swings and to provide a flexible, column free loft space for
maximum flexibility. Radiant cooling and heating systems located within the exposed concrete
ceiling maintain a comfortable temperature year-round.

1
Noun (Canadian, South African): A multi-storey car park

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 7.2. Fresh air
Compared to a typical North American building where as much as 80% of the air is recirculated,
Manitoba Hydro Place was designed to provide 100% fresh air all year. Incoming cold air is
pre-heated via a run-around heat recovery loop from the exhaust air. The combination of pre-
heating by exhaust air and the passive solar gain in the atria bring fresh air to a comfortable
temperature with minimal energy. During the shoulder seasons, the majority of mechanical
ventilation systems are turned off. Fresh air enters the building passively through occupant
controlled operable windows in the double façade and is exhausted through the solar chimney.

Figure 8: Ventilation

7.3. Materials
Exposed architectural concrete, locally quarried Tyndall stone and locally sourced granite were
selected to relate to Winnipeg’s urban fabric of masonry buildings. Reclaimed Douglas fir from
the former building that occupied the site is reused for soffits and benches. Large portions of the
structure are left exposed to increase the conductivity of the radiant concrete mass, and for an
open loft studio environment. The embodied energy of all materials was considered before
selection.

Figure 9: Materials

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8. Conclusion
Manitoba Hydro Place is a visible testament to the corporation’s commitment to the delivery of
innovative clean energy solutions. More importantly, the project offers a new way to think,
design and deliver climate responsive architecture in the 21st century – both for an extreme
climate as well as to anticipate extreme weather fluctuations.
As a reflection of the sustainable design and operation of Manitoba Hydro Place, the project was
awarded LEED Platinum certification in 2011 and became the first office tower in Canada to
achieve the highest level of sustainability under the LEED rating system.
The distinctive design has created an iconic addition to Winnipeg’s skyline and catalyzed the
economic and civic revitalization of the downtown, instilling a pride of place among citizens.
To date it has received 17 awards for architectural and urban design excellence, sustainability
and green design innovation. Three years after opening, it continues to be published
internationally and is recognized as one of the top 15 buildings in the world on the subject of
green architecture.
Ultimately, the design has realized the most important objective which was the creation of a
supportive, comfortable and healthy workplace for the well-being of the employees, Manitoba
Hydro’s greatest asset. Partly as a result of having 100% fresh air year-round, absenteeism due
to illness is down by 1.5 days per employee and productivity has risen. The combination of
vertically integrated, open work spaces, access to views and natural light, and the shift to public
transit has placed a premium on face-to-face interaction in real time and space, and created an
enhanced culture of team work and sense of community.
Designed and delivered through a formal Integrated Design Process (IDP), Manitoba Hydro
Place offers a new paradigm for the design and construction industry to lead us towards a carbon-
neutral future in which the health and well-being of the human experience is first and foremost
respected and prioritized.

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9. References
Jensen, N. T. (2019, Sep). Manitoba Hydro Place Case Study. Retrieved from Issuu:
https://issuu.com/nicholastjensen/docs/manitoba_hydroplace_jensen-cahoon
Kuwabara, B., Auer, T., Akerstream, T., & Pauls, M. (2013). Manitoba Hydro Place: Design,
Construction, Operatio - Lessons Learned.
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Manitoba Hydro Place. Retrieved from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manitoba_Hydro_Place

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