As part of Gossamer Threads’ ongoing commitment to sustainability, we’ve partnered with our landlord DeeCorp and fellow tenant TBWA\ to create a green roof on the building of our new office.

At the time, there was not much happening up on that flat tar & gravel expanse, but that was all to change soon enough!

Five blocks from our office is the recently completed and truly amazing new Vancouver Convention Centre.

The new Vancouver Convention Centre and its Green Roof!

At six acres, the building features the largest green roof in Canada, and will house the international press corps during the 2010 Winter Olympics. Compared to our less ambitious greening project, we feel a little humbled!

However, we will be saving on heating and cooling costs, extending the life of the building envelope, contributing towards filtering pollutants from the air, and MOST importantly, creating an epic BBQ area for those hot summers ahead!

The project was inspired by and painstakingly researched by Laura Krohn. Laura has a Master’s degree in Environmental Education and Communication, and last year she completed her thesis on recycling in affluent communities.

I snatched Laura from her busy schedule to elaborate a little more intelligently about the project.

What inspired this idea?

“Well, the existing roof was pretty dismal…

Old deck: Pre-Green Roof

…and around the office there wasn’t a lot of accessible green space.

I wanted to take something that wasn’t very exciting and turn it into a place where the employees could work, relax, connect with nature and take advantage of the great views that we all associate with the Vancouver landscape.

The energy benefits to the building will be the icing on the cake!”

Can you describe the process?

“First we needed to conceptualize a plan, which involved quite a bit of background research. Then all the stakeholders needed to come together: the business owners, the building owners, the building managers and the green roof builders. Once everyone agreed a budget and a design, we got the okay from a structural engineer, and were able to start the implementation process.

We contacted Streamline Enterprises, a company specializing in green roof and living wall technologies. Started in 2007, this young company nevertheless featured an impressive portfolio of projects utilizing this new technology. Founder Kevin Simoes’ vision produced a wonderful result for us.

New Deck: Green Roof-erized!
Pictures courtesy of Streamline Enterprises

Since the vegetation for the roof had to first be cultivated in Streamline’s greenhouses (they had been for 4 months at this point), we went through the permitting process with the City and built the deck portion on the roof.

Our carpenter and general contractor, Johann Furrer, did a great job constructing on this. A beautiful cedar deck was now ours for BBQ’ing goodness!

Crane going up!

When the plants were finished cultivating, and the deck completed, we could now start putting everything together. It took about a week to get everything in place; they even needed to rent a crane to get the plants up on the roof, which was pretty exciting!”

What do you see as the key benefits of the project?

“There are several environmental benefits achieved with a green roof:

• Reduction in storm water runoff that affects quality of local water resources.
  Eg: drinking and swimming water, and fish & wildlife habitat
• Reduction in energy consumption
• Reduction in the urban heat island effect and associated cooling costs
• Beautification of the City
• Creation of more natural green spaces
• Opportunities for local food production

There are several non-environmental benefits achieved as well!

The staff will have a place to work, relax, and connect with each other and with nature in an urban setting.

Sky shot from the other side
Photo Credit: Johann Furrer

Gossamer Threads has some legendary BBQs and the green roof is the ideal setting to continue these events!”

Nothin but BBQs, blue skies and green grass

What’s the next step towards creating even greater and more effective urban sustainability?

“Gossamer already exhibits a lot of sustainable practices: most of the staff live close to work, people bike, take transit and telecommute, we do a lot more videoconferencing now instead of taking intensive business trips and we’re building a green roof and living wall, just to name a few. We also recently started worm composting in the office which has been really fun. The plan is to use the compost for plant maintenance on the green roof.

“The great thing about sustainable living is that these things really just make sense!”

It contributes to a better quality of life and people feel better. It’s good for residents and for business!”

What’s next?

Laura is arranging for Gossamer Threads to have an energy audit performed by Natural Resources Canada and BC Hydro, assessing the difference pre- and post-greenroof, and obtain a full picture of the energy benefits realized by the project.

Stay tuned for a future post with the results!

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Home Services Engine manages a massive, Gossamer Links-powered database of over 800,000 home service listings which allows its users to find the type of business they’re looking for in their neighborhood.

Delivering search results relevant to a user’s location quickly when you’re dealing with 7 gigabytes worth of listings from across the United States is no easy task, but Home Services Engine manages to return local businesses quickly and efficiently every time. Here’s how they do it, and how Gossamer Threads helped.

Acting Locally

Everything about Home Services Engine is designed to return local business results - there’s no point in hiring a roofing contractor if he has to cross two state lines to get to your house. GT developed a search bar on HSE’s home page which allows users to search its database by keyword and location, as well as refine that search by state or zip code on the fly.

AJAX-powered search completion.

Localization doesn’t stop at the home page. If users don’t find the results they’re looking for in the location or zip code they’re searching for, GT’s developers have modified GLinks to let users expand their search radially, adding a set amount of miles. A count of each search’s size is prerendered, giving users the choice to scan through as few or as many results as they want.

Easily expandable location results.

HSE’s customized search results page also displays the most relevant search results before going on to build and display a cross-indexed list of sub categories, organised by business and location subcategories. This gives users a near-instantaneous look at the top results without sacrificing search refinement or lateral searching possibilities.

Local flexibility isn’t just for HSE’s users. Business owners who are adding their listings to the database can use an integrated Google Maps AJAX application to pinpoint the exact location of their business.

Adding listings with Google Maps.

Solr Power

With search queries being passed using such refined location parameters, Home Service Engine’s new search engine ran extremely slowly under a standard MySQL search server. Gossamer Threads found the ideal solution in Solr, an open source enterprise search server based on the
Lucene search library.

• Solr is capable of handling especially large database queries with optimal speed, a great match for Home Service engine’s huge database and Gossamer Threads’ customized results pages.
• Solr offers options for flexible “like” search results rather than strict “is” results, a great asset when users are doing general searches like “home repair” or “electrical”.
• Solr can be specially configured to handle sort-by-proximity requests, making it ideal for all of the search-by-location options HSE offers its users.

Hosting 800,000 Businesses - and Growing

With its enterprise-level database and complex search operations, Home Service Engine needed a robust hosting configuration and Gossamer Threads was happy to deliver one of its tailor-made clustered hosting solutions.

Contact us to see how we can help you with your hosting needs.

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Now it’s even easier for Gossamer Threadians to stream jubilantly to work each morning, with the opening of the much anticipated extension to Vancouver’s beloved light-rail system, the Skytrain. Per our request, the new line terminates literally a stone’s throw from our front door.

The Canada Line, as it’s called, was astonishingly completed three months ahead of schedule. It runs from the Vancouver International Airport (YVR) north to the ‘Waterfront’ station (the Burrard Inlet), but we’ve more fittingly dubbed it ‘Gossamer Station’. A few other commuters use it from time to time - but that’s okay, we don’t mind sharing.

The Canada Line line-up on opening day, snaking through downtown and to the water.

Begun in late 2005, construction of the line has turned our street into a bit a warzone this past year (see below), but all that choking on dust is soon to pay off, as we now have the city essentially at our feet. The possibilities for nigh-instantaneous teleportation to exotic lunching destinations take our breath away! Tim Horton’s anyone? (Okay, it’s a Canadian thing.)

GT’s sysadmins look down at the gutting of Granville Street, back in January.

For those considering a visit to the great city of Vancouver for the 2010 winter Olympics, you can now look forward to an extremely convenient and inexpensive mode of transportation to your downtown hotel for which you paid no less than $1,000 or so dollars a night (Ouch!).

A Canada Line train heading out to Vancouver Airport.
Photo by flickr user Oran Viriyincy.

Be sure to pop by the Gossamer office to say hello when you’re in the neighbourhood, we’d love to show you around. In the meantime, why not take a round-trip of the Canada Line in 90 seconds?

Click here to view the embedded video.

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