Nature of Things episode to feature green building

Broadcast time:  Sunday, June 17, 2007 at 7:00 p.m.

David Suzuki is going even greener. In “BUILD GREEN”, a brand new show in THE NATURE OF THINGS series, Suzuki sets out across Canada to discover the latest techniques for building green. On B.C.’s Saltspring Island, Suzuki visits the super ecological house of rock legend Randy Bachman. The house is made of rammed earth, and Suzuki jumps right in to try out the rammed earth technique with Saltspring builder Meror Krayenhoff.

All the stories are full of positive solutions for making our homes green, from a thoroughly modern house made of strawbales to a compact and transportable Mini-Home with its own small power plant.

Canada’s best architects show off their green creations. In Vancouver, Order-of-Canada member Peter Busby walks viewers around three ultra-sustainable apartment complexes going up along the False Creek waterfront. On Ontario’s Bay of Quinte, green pioneer architect Martin Liefhebber explains how a totally off-grid house can meet all its needs by tapping into the wind, the sun, and even the rain being collected on the roof.

No one in the show is afraid of a good challenge. Architects Terrell Wong and Anne Stevens have taken on the ever-expanding suburbs by designing the ultimate green suburban home. Her ideal house would heat itself with geothermal energy and treat its own wastewater – even the soapy wastewater from David Suzuki’s shower, all seen in real-time, high-definition splendour.

And in Montreal, architects Danny Pearl and Mark Poddubiuk have worked for fifteen years to save a housing complex from the 1940’s called Benny Farm from total demolition. The solution was a green retrofit, old brick by old brick. The architects installed the latest green energy systems including a made-in-Montreal set-up for extracting heat from the earth beneath the buildings in the winter and then, in the summer, tapping into the sun to put the heat back.

In Victoria, B.C., Suzuki rows across the harbour to the waterfront location of an over-the-top ecological village called Dockside Green to meet with architect Terence Williams (who quickly puts him straight about green construction). Developer Joe Van Belleghem shows Suzuki around the fast-expanding construction site and touts his plans to have this futuristic eco-community treat its own sewage, clean up its own water and even make its own electricity from the leftover woodchips of its industrial neighbours.

As Suzuki says, “Building green works. Why would we do it any other way?”

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