Proposed Green Renovation Bylaw – Its Impact on Heritage Buildings

As part of its ‘Greenest City Initiative,’ the City is undertaking an extensive review of its regulatory framework to determine how to improve the energy performance of new and existing buildings. This includes a proposed update of Part 10 of the Vancouver Building By-Law – the city’s building code – that would introduce and measure energy performance in the same way that seismic and life safety concerns are addressed. Heritage Vancouver supports the intention of this Initiative, but not at the expense of the character of our heritage buildings. We have been working within this process to address concerns about how heritage buildings can be most effectively upgraded to conserve energy and attain goals of sustainability, while still retaining their heritage integrity. There are many methods of alternative compliance for heritage buildings, and – significantly – the provincial Energy Efficiency Act excludes buildings that are listed on a Heritage Register. Our position is stated in the following letter that was submitted to Mayor and Council.


Please click for the full letter

Posted by: Heritage Vancouver Society
Date: August 11, 2010

Vancouver architect and designer Omer Arbel wins prestigious award

VANCOUVER — It’s been a banner year for Vancouver architect and designer Omer Arbel, the co-designer of the athlete medals for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics and Paralympics.

A few months ago, his design for the medals won a prestigious award from I.D. Magazine, a magazine of industrial design.

On Tuesday, Arbel, 34, was notified that one of his house designs was shortlisted by the World Architecture Festival, scheduled for Barcelona, Spain in November.

And on Wednesday, Arbel was named the winner of the $10,000 Ronald J. Thom Award for Early Design Achievement, which recognizes “exceptional talent and achievement in the field of architectural design.”

Arbel said he was both stunned and pleased to win the Thom Award, which involved a peer review of selected works…

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Posted by: Jeff Lee, Vancouver Sun
Date: August 04, 2010

Global property grab

Strong mainland interest in global real estate is boosting housing prices and house-hunting activities near and far.

And Vancouver has been the biggest gainer in this race for prime overseas housing over the past few years, as the Canadian city is among the favorites of Chinese big spenders.

“Chinese buyers have at least doubled or even tripled in the last five or six years,” said Vancouver realty agent Geoff Chiu. “The origin has shifted from Hong Kong in the 1990s to the mainland now.”

More than 70 percent of Chinese buyers are from the mainland, compared to less than 20 percent from Hong Kong or Taiwan, Chiu noted.

“Buyers from the mainland don’t hesitate to pay for the properties they want,” he explained, “and prices go up accordingly.”

Britain has also been touched by the trend. “Buyers of our properties are very diversified,” said Alasdair Nicholls, chief officer at British developer Native Land…

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Posted by: Tony Liaw from The Standard
Date: August 09, 2010

HST confusion to blame for home sales drop?

Residents of Ontario and B.C. are unsure about how the harmonized sales tax (HST) affects real estate transactions, a new study finds, and the confusion is being blamed for a slide in home sales.

Home sales in Toronto fell 34 per cent in July, according to the Toronto Real Estate Board.

TREB reported that there were 6,564 sales last month, down from 9,967 in the same month in 2009. Home sales were at the lowest level since 2002.

“The level of July sales remained below the expected long-term trend. The market has become more balanced following record monthly sales through most of the winter and early spring,” said board president Bill Johnston, in a release…

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Date: August 5th, 2010
Published by: CBC News

Lower Mainland real estate dipped in July

Real estate sales in the Lower Mainland plummeted in July, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.

A total of 2,255 homes were sold in the region in July 2010, a 45.2 per cent drop from the 4,114 homes sales in July 2009 — the highest selling July ever recorded.

Sales in July 2010 were also 24 per cent lower than the previous month’s sales.

“I think a lot of people were anticipating that mortgage rates were going to be moving higher, as the Bank of Canada has signaled over the last few months,” said Robyn Adamache, a market analyst with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

“So what happened was perhaps some sales were pushed earlier in the year than they might have otherwise been, so we had a relatively active beginning to the year and things are sort of normalizing now.”

Adamache said there’s also been decline in home listings…

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Date: August 5, 2010
Published by: CBC News

Real estate sales slow more than expected

Real estate markets have slowed a bit more than the B.C. Real Estate Association’s earlier predictions, prompting a downward revision in the group’s latest market forecast that includes a softening of prices.

Association chief economist Cameron Muir released his third-quarter forecast Friday, calling for Multiple Listing Service recorded sales to dip to 79,500 by the end of the year, a seven-per-cent decline from 2009.

In the association’s second-quarter forecast, Muir had predicted British Columbia’s MLS sales would fall three per cent from the 85,028 recorded in 2009.

“We’ve seen consumer demand has tailed off in the summer months a little more than what was expected, and that accounts for the change in the overall unit-sales numbers,” Muir said in an interview…

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Posted by: Derrick Penner
Date: July 31st, 2010

Company Culture a Main Factor in Our Success

Our vision at VictorEric Design Group is to be recognized as the premier design firm that not only provides quality design, but also excellent company culture and most importantly, unparalleled service which makes for an unforgettable experience for our clients. Funny enough, we have been unconsciously doing this by working from the “inside out”, which is our exact design philosophy. (If you haven’t seen it yet, feel free to check out the great YouTube video which shares some of our design methodologies here).

In this case, we have been working on our internal company culture. We make a conscious effort to ensure our office environment is a place where people look forward to working in everyday. Our vision is to develop a tight knit group of people who can work cohesively as a team. We reserve Fridays as our weekly company lunch so that everyone can get a chance to interact after a busy work week. Please see our blog for one such outing. We do not strive to be the biggest in what we do, instead, we would rather give up the quantity of projects so we can focus on the quality and the people. This allows us to deliver the full service that clients have come to expect from us and be the best at what we do.

Our principal, Eric Lee, was fortunate enough to have found his passion early on in his life and loves his work because of that. He actively encourages each and every staff to find their passion within the design discipline. His belief is that when you perform your work with passion; you will find your true purpose. The quality and success in what you do will then naturally follow.

Everyone at VictorEric is encouraged to pursue their passion and play their unique part to make this company the well-respected company it is. We have realized that by first taking care of the “inside” of our company, everything else that we target for on the “outside” will manifest itself; integrated company culture, quality design, and unparalleled service.

VictorEric Further Defines Branding

Some of you may know us from our great residential projects and some of you from our commercial ones. But there are many of you that don’t know we actually do both. For this reason and to help better identify our core services, we are excited to announce the launch of our two distinct brands; VictorEric Premium Homes and VictorEric Commercial Interiors. Feel free to click on the link to our new and improved web page or you can also get there through our main site www.victoreric.com.

VictorEric Premium Homes is a refinement of our residential services which has been the cornerstone of our business. With the new brand, we want to further distinguish the high level of design and unsurpassed level of service we bring to every project. Most importantly, we want to emphasize that we are able to provide a complete and holistic approach to building a home by offering architectural design, interior design, and construction management services; all with the same team. Now, you can have the same team who designed your home, also build it for you. We call upon our past 13 years of construction experience to offer a streamlined approach so that the discerning client can experience a home that embodies our full and complete vision.

VictorEric Commercial Interiors offers interior design for our retail, restaurant, and office clients. The first impression of your space is key in order to set your customers in a buying mode. We can help you with everything from lighting design, to merchandise display, to colour and material choices. Some of the award-winning commercial spaces we’ve designed are Azia Restaurant and Bblonde Salon. Please let us know if you want our great design team to help you with your business space.

Congratulations!

VictorEric’s own principal, Eric Lee has been shortlisted for the 2010 Western Living Designers of the Year! Congratulations to Eric and the rest of the firm for a job well done.

Check out the entire shortlist here

Vancouver Soccer Field Made of 22,000 Recycled Tires

Still miss soccer after the World Cup is over? You can watch Vancouver’s own Lions and Wave teams in action at the recently completed Empire Field Stadium. What is interesting about this stadium is that it is made with more than 22,000 recycled tires!

Halfway across the globe from the World Cup in South Africa, a soccer story in Vancouver is making headlines for reasons other than officiating. Vancouver’s Empire Field Stadium has installed a sports field that used 346,000 pounds of crumb rubber made from tires, courtesy of Liberty Tire Recycling.

The field is now the largest installation of crumb rubber in all of British Columbia, and offers other benefits besides the reuse of 22,450 scrap tires.

Please click for the full article by Trey Granger on Earth911