The competition challenges teams from around the world to design, build and operate solar-powered houses that are cost-effective, energy-efficient and attractive. Team Ontario spent 18-months refining and building its home, then disassembled the structure and shipped it to the competition site in Irvine, California. The house will be judged on architecture, market appeal, engineering, affordability, comfort, hot water, appliances, home entertainment and energy balance. Last year’s competition homes were visited more than 350,000 times in 10 days.

Dispatches from the field

September 25

• ECHO arrived safely on Sunday (September 22) and has all been put back together now! We had two 20-hour days and will now be onto regular 12-hour shifts to get the deck, solar panels, and finishing touches done for next Monday. We feel like we are on track, despite running into a few problems with the crane the first day.
• About 16 other teams have their house up already and it’s starting to look like there will be some tough competition, but everyone is very friendly and seems to just enjoy viewing other people’s houses as much as we do.
•  Yesterday it hit 34 degrees on the asphalt, so if you are coming anytime in the next few weeks, keep that in mind! There are beautiful views of the mountains from the site, but not a hint of shade in sight.

September 26

• We have the house modules installed and connected together securely attached to the foundation.
• We have reconnected all of the services across the two modules except the fire suppression line which will be completed today. Electrical has been hooked up and we will be ready to connect to the grid when it becomes available tomorrow afternoon. The exostructure has been completely reassembled and the roof sheets have been reinstalled. We are just about to install the PV racking and the goal is to have at least all the racking and inverters up by the end of today with the PV installed tomorrow and hooked up while Andy is still here.
• South and north deck have been framed out and the deck topping will be installed by the end of today. Mech system has been unpacked, reconnected and pressure tested with all components installed–so far experiencing no leaks. We are hoping to install the solar thermal collectors and heat dump in the next day so we can pressure test those before we get water on Sunday so we can proceed with testing immediately after receiving water.

More photos will be added as they are available.

Girls@VV Club (girls Grades 4-8):  The girls@VV club gives girls hands on experience with engineering and technology. The club will be doing both computer related activities – such as designing websites, and animation or graphic design– and engaging engineering projects. The Club meets from 1 – 4 pm on select Saturdays starting Sept 21.

Lego Robotics Club Junior (Grades 3-6): The Lego Club at VV gives all Lego enthusiasts a chance to learn about Lego robotics. At VV we have LEGO NXT, Mindstorms for club participants to use to learn about gears, engineering design and robotics while building their own Lego robots. The Lego Robotics Junior Club meets 9:30am – 12:00pm on select Saturdays starting Sept 21.

Game Design Junior (for Beginners in Grades 4-8) and Senior (Intermediate level for Grades 5-10): The Game Design club covers topics on how to design a computer game – from game planning, to character design and programming. It gives participants the opportunity to design their own computer games from scratch. The junior club is for participants who are new to game design. The senior club (Intermediate) is for participants with some knowledge of game development.

• The Game Design Junior (Beginners level) Club meets from: 9:30am – 12:00pm on select Saturdays starting Sept 14
• The Game Design Senior (Intermediate level) Club meets from: 1:00pm – 4:00pm on select Saturdays starting Sept 14

In this position, Gilchrist conducts research that will hopefully improve the outcomes of patients in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) where the sickest newborns are treated.

He works with an interdisciplinary team that is responsible for the development of a Clinical Data Repository (CDR) that can efficiently collect and store clinical data from multiple systems, located in different departments of the hospital, in real-time, while maintaining patient privacy. As well, the team is using more accurate models, developed from the CDR data, to estimate the risk of certain kinds of medical conditions of newborn babies.

Says Gilchrist:  “I love the fact that I get to work on research that gains valuable insight from patients who are actually there in the hospital that I can see and get feedback from in real-time. This research should lead to a practical system that can be put in place where patients can benefit from the results in real-time while there are being treated and monitored in the NICU.”

Gilchrist points out that the research he conducted at Carleton for his PhD thesis was the foundation for his future research career at CHEO. “The years I spent at CHEO working on my PhD allowed me to build working relationships with many people at the hospital which made it much easier to continue after I graduated.”

The alumnus says he chose to do his PhD at Carleton because of the opportunities to work directly with medical professionals on real problems through the research group of his PhD supervisor Dr. Monique Frize.

Gilchrist emphasizes the importance of networking for graduate students when they are looking for a job. “Many opportunities are not posted, so keep in touch with your friends and colleagues, and try to network as much as possible. Your next opportunity may be only a conversation away.  Don’t be afraid to approach organizations and let them know what you are able to offer.”

Today, Gilchrist is also an Adjunct Research Professor at Carleton, where he co-supervises two graduate students with Dr. Frize. The students are also involved in doing research at CHEO. He has also created a professional photography business.

In 2008, Gilchrist made international news as part of a team that discovered the then largest known prime number.  In January 2013, the same team discovered an even larger prime number that is currently the new record. It has 17.4 million digits.

Where others would see a bunch of university students, last week, five lucky youngsters got to meet a real-life rocket scientist — and a polar explorer, just for added measure.

As part of a program from Carleton University called “Let’s Talk Science,” which brings the thrill of scientific discovery to young people, four students descended on the Perth and District Union Library on Aug. 15, to take the young people to a galaxy far, far away – alright, more like Mars. But that’s still pretty cool.

“We’re going to go on an adventure to Mars today,” said Adam Vigneron, who, along with Libby Sprigge and Sasha Zemskova are second-year graduate students in Carleton’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Their classmate Chris Nicol is a PhD candidate in the program.

“We are students who like to talk to other students about science,” he explained to his young charges.

“I work on rockets and satellites,” added Vigneron.

His friend Sasha had an equally cool job – literally.

“I am a polar explorer, everything to do with cold,” said Zemskova.

“She’s from Russia, so she loves everything cold!” joked Vigneron.

With homeland pride, Zemskova told the children about how her fellow countryman, Yuri Gagarin, became the first person in space in 1961.

“He couldn’t stay there a long time,” she said. “He went for one turn around the earth and he came back and it is lucky he was able to come back alive.” Upon returning to earth, Gagarin said that, “our earth is so beautiful. We have to do our best to share it.”

“The next place that we are looking to go is Mars,” said Vigneron. “It is a lot further away (than the moon.) We are sending robots there. Last summer, a robot landed on Mars. If robots land on Mars, they can send us back pictures.”

The students then proceeded to tell the children other ways in which they are trying to get pictures of the red planet, and other coloured planets too.

Pointing to a picture of the Hubble telescope, Vigneron explained that “that telescope is the size of a school bus. When these things are that massive, we get really good photos.”

The library’s summer reading club has been expanded this summer beyond books, arts, and crafts, towards incorporating science – explained at an age appropriate level, and with a bit of humour thrown in. Detailing how the Mars Rover had to be parachuted on to Mars, with air bag casing surrounding it, hitting the surface of the planet at the speed of a car on the highway, Vigneron joked that, if you were inside the craft at the time, “you would need a barf bag.”

The event ended with a demonstration of how long it takes messages to get from NASA control on earth to the Mars Rover, and back again. Using maps drawn by the children, a child would be sent out into the library to tell a student to move several paces in any one direction – driving home the frustration of sending out directions that can take hours to be received and acted upon.

Ian Johnston has decided to use his architecture degree from Carleton in a different way.

Instead of designing buildings, the alumnus has pursued his love of art and teaching over the last 20 years – and as a result, has won numerous awards and recognition for his work.

“I think I can certainly attribute (my success) to the broad foundation Carleton gave me,” says Johnston, who graduated from Carleton’s Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism in 1990. “But I’d also say it’s been my obsession and being driven – which I think was also encouraged at Carleton.”

Johnston – who is currently based in Nelson, British Columbia – is currently showing his art work in an exhibit called Reinventing Consumption in western Canada. The exhibit will travel across the country to different art galleries throughout the next couple years.

His three-part installation Reinventing Consumption looks at the massive scale of consumer goods manufacturing today, and includes an inflating and deflating piece that covers and reveals a mass of household items diverted from a waste stream in Medicine Hat, Alberta.

Drawing on his architecture background at Carleton to create his work, he often develops ceramic large-scale installations.

He says he always wanted a career where he could work with his hands, but also developed a passion for teaching when he attended Carleton.

He decided to enrol in the School of Architecture and Urbanism – completing the program in five years.

“For young people, there’s definitely an interest in architecture,” Johnston says. “It’s a very, very intense program . . . and I felt compelled to finish it.”

He adds that the program also inspired him to go into teaching, and help students balance life with their studies.

After Johnston graduated, he spent five years working at the Bauhaus Academy in post-Berlin Wall East Germany – developing and facilitating a series of workshops about urban renewal with two other architects.

From 1995 to 2006, Johnston also spent time teaching in the three-year craft diploma program at the Kootenay School of the Arts in Nelson.

In 1996, he opened his own studio in Nelson and says he started creating smaller objects at the beginning of his artistic career. He went on to work on much larger pieces as time went on.

“At first, I resisted getting involved in large, complex and convoluted projects,” Johnston says. “But the further I went, the more I drew on my architecture background and experience.”

In addition to his current cross-country exhibit, he has shown his art work all over Canada – including at Museum London, Surrey Art Gallery, Kelowna Art Gallery, Richmond Art Gallery and Langham Cultural Centre.

Over the years, he has also received numerous grants and awards for his work including from the B.C. Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts.

Johnston says his architecture degree has become invaluable throughout his career – whether he’s teaching art, or creating it.

“The architecture program at Carleton gave me both of these skills,” he says. “And Carleton helped hone these desires. I wouldn’t be able to do it without my architecture background.”

It all started at Startup Weekend Ottawa, an event that brings together entrepreneurs and their ideas. In the weeks leading up to the event, Tannahill fused the two things he likes most into a workable idea, he says.

“I like tattoos and I like doing tech, so the combination sort of came together,” he says. “It wasn’t my life’s goal to start a website about tattooing, but it worked out that there’s a real need for it.”

This need was demonstrated by his first place finish at Startup Weekend. After the event, Tannahill joined forces with two other entrepreneurs, including Carleton alumnus and designer Minh Dao.

After months of work, Tattoo Hero recently launched at the International Startup Festival in Montreal. The team hoped the reveal would generate some buzz around the website, Tannahill says.

Instead, Tattoo Hero was covered by TechCrunch, a popular website within the IT community. This exposure has brought thousands of unique visitors to the site every day, Tannahill says.

“(Tech Crunch) is something that we wanted down the road,” says Minh Dao, the website’s designer.  “To have that on the first day that we launched – it couldn’t have gone any better.”

As of now, Tattoo Hero makes finding an artist easier for people who aren’t linked into the tattoo community, Tannahill says. Because some great artists can work solely on referrals, they simply don’t have a need to build a good website to attract new clients, he says.

Tattoo Hero is working towards bringing these artists to the forefront and “doing the work for them,” he says. In the future, this will develop into bringing in a scheduling system operated through the website to allow people to book appointments with artists online, Tannahill says.

Carleton has prepared both Tannahill and Dao for the challenges of running a business.

“Being a software engineer, it’s given me good insight into the theories around software structure,” Tannahill says.

“My other two partners aren’t very tech savvy, and I’ll try to explain some things to them, and they just don’t get it. So I definitely learned something in school,” he laughed.

As the person in charge of branding and design, Dao also feels as though Carleton has prepared him for some of the challenges associated with running a website. He says one of the strengths of Carleton’s Industrial Design program is that it’s well known for producing well-rounded students.

“What Carleton Industrial Design does is give you a good broad spectrum of skills and knowledge – not just on design, but on marketing, on engineering, on psychology,” he says.

Even though Tattoo Hero only launched recently, the team is already proud of what they’ve done.

“We’ve created something that we all believe in,” Dao says.

Visit the Tattoo Hero website at tattoohero.com

Mackenzie and McGillvray knew the market for server space at data centres was set to skyrocket as remote or “cloud” computing became big business. Data centres allow companies to have access to a safe and fully serviced location for all of their computer equipment. They brought in Van Gaal, a talented designer of data centres who has worked with Telus and others. The three went to work designing the Ottawa facility and raising the $15 million in capital it would take to build it.

McGillvray credits Van Gaal’s foresight in planning the centre. The location in Kanata gives it access to more than 144 strands of fibre optic cable, allowing for nearly unlimited bandwidth. Two separate electrical grids feed into the building, ensuring continuity of services during a power failure. As well, the building will have a number of security features to safeguard its clients’ data.

In July 2013, Granite Networks received an investment from local IT services firm Grade A.

“Grade A saw an opportunity with our organization to better serve their client base and become involved with a rapidly growing organization, (in) a parallel industry to what they’re presently in,” said van Gaal.

With files from Ottawa Citizen and Ottawa Business Journal.

D’Elia and Graham founded superkül in 2002 in Toronot and count among their project +HOUSE, Newmarket Community Centre, SPLIT House and SHIFT Cottage.

D’Elia is a registered architect with the Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) and a member of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. He is a member of the Toronto Community Housing Design Review Panel, and an OAA mentor. His areas of expertise include sustainable design, construction detailing and sequencing and the redevelopment of heritage and existing properties at all scales.

From Kelvin Browne | National Post (Canada) | July 6, 2013

“I think people are attracted to our houses because they sense they can be comfortable there, not just because they like the look of them,” says Meg. Indeed, surfing through their portfolio, the houses are sleek, somewhat minimal and yet definitely not unfriendly. Andre points out this is not accidental. “We like a certain modesty; we focus on light, the materials and proportions. Great proportions are essential.” Elegant proportions are indeed super cool. No amount of marble and fancy fixtures can redeem a space that begins with the handicap of thoughtless proportions.

Superkül has been in business for 11 years. They now have a firm of 15, including them. In addition to award-winning houses, the firm has designed the Fielding Estate Winery, the head office for St. Joseph and other commercial projects.

Andre says: “Our clients are typically very busy people, but when it comes to the design of their house they’ll make time to understand all the details.”

Andre adds, importantly, “You’re realizing someone’s dream for them, it’s a big financial commitment, but it has to be enjoyable, fun too, or it’s not going to work out.”