Mountain Equipment Co-op Head Office

With a focus on sustainability and innovation throughout its business, it’s fitting that Mountain Equipment Co-op’s head office in Vancouver has achieved LEED Platinum certification. Spanning 112,000 square feet over two intersecting three- and four-storey buildings, the office features the post-and-beam construction that has become a hallmark of the outdoor lifestyle retailer’s architectural brand, with a wood, steel and glass superstructure on a concrete basement foundation. The building, which is on a former brownfield site in the False Creek Flats area, is designed to create a collaborative, active workplace for its staff of roughly 450 employees and to be an energy-efficient site with minimal impact on the environment.

The building received its LEED Platinum certification in November 2017. CaGBC spoke with Tim Southam, Public Affairs Manager at Mountain Equipment Co-op, about how the new head office embodies the retailer’s corporate values and culture.

A next-generation green office building

Green building is deeply ingrained in MEC’s DNA, with the Co-op citing “quality, creativity and sustainability” as the core values guiding its efforts to support people in leading healthy outdoor lifestyles. As such, the retailer has made it a priority to invest in green buildings and green operations for more than two decades, as a tangible demonstration to its members and employees of the potential for green buildings to reduce energy and water consumption, while inspiring and supporting its people to do their best work.

“We take pride in our facilities and believe that the built environment provides important and lasting opportunities to tread more lightly on the earth, while creating buildings that both do right by people and enable MEC’s retail operations. It embodies what we stand for as a retail co-operative,” Southam says.

Sustainability features include lower embodied carbon; extensive daylighting; energy efficiency and monitoring; passive heating, cooling and ventilation; and a high-performance building envelope. On-site water management is provided by a blue roof and a 35,000-litre underground cistern to collect non-potable water and several bioswales to detain and filter particulate and runoff. Wood figures prominently throughout the building, for esthetic, environmental and structural purposes, totalling 2,908 cubic metres.

The building promotes a healthy workplace by providing opportunities for people to be active, with secure bike parking, and shower and change room facilities to support cycle commuting, an indoor climbing cave, and a fully equipped multi-purpose room for on-site yoga, fitness classes and weight training. Other elements that contribute to employee health and productivity include extensive natural light, operable windows for fresh air, and a rooftop amenity space and garden for staff to meet or relax outside when the weather is favourable. As well, the interior is programmed for interaction and the exchange of ideas, with numerous media-equipped meeting rooms as well as informal areas for collaboration.

Taking the big picture into account through an integrated design process

Led by Proscenium Architecture with extensive input from MEC, the project team employed an integrated design process to full effect. Southam notes that the building is greater than the sum of its parts, and embodies the team’s systems thinking approach and technical expertise.

Sitting on former salt-marsh flats on loose permeable soils of industrial fill, the team had to be sensitive to the surroundings. They also wanted to exploit the site’s southern exposure to access natural light within the building, through extensive glazing and narrow floor plates. A central staircase was also envisioned as a defining element of the building’s form, to compel occupants to walk through the building and encourage contact between them.

Enclosed offices for executives and directors were located along the centre of the floor plates to ensure that most employees could enjoy views and access to natural light. A solid business case for building a largely wood structure was also established early on. In sum, the integrated design process was a means to optimize the unique attributes of the site and business objectives for the facility, wedding opportunity to practical considerations including cost, programming, amenities, and so on.