Stantec Architecture

The Buffalo Crossing Visitor Centre will be a new marquee gateway to FortWhyte Alive, an urban nature preserve established in the mid-1950s. The 18,000-square-foot, two-story all-mass-timber Visitor Centre is targeting CaGBC’s Zero Carbon Building Design Standard and will be the first commercially certified Passive House in Manitoba. Designed to last over 100 years, the Centre takes into account the extreme climate and projected future weather in south-central Canada. An extremely high-performance building enclosure offers limited thermal bridges, extreme airtightness, high-quantity and -quality thermal insulation, extreme high-performance glazing, passive heat gain, and passive and dynamic shading. A low-exergy ground-source heat pump and ventilation energy recovery and high-exergy electricity system eliminate all fossil fuels, resulting in extremely low energy demand. The Centre is a living exhibit of climate resilience, stewardship, and reconciliation with Canada’s first peoples.