West Vancouver Residential Building Archetype Project

The West Vancouver Residential Building Archetypes project investigated energy alternatives for single family homes.

The West Vancouver Residential Building Archetypes project was conducted in collaboration with the District of West Vancouver and Boston Consulting. The purpose of the project was to examine and visualize alternative approaches for reducing energy demand and increasing renewable energy supply for residential homes in the District of West Vancouver.

The project took an archetypes approach, selecting two different single family homes that were broadly representative of housing forms in West Vancouver. The first archetype was a small lot character home (2150 ft2), characteristic of older housing stock in the district. The second was a large lot home with a pool (3750 ft2), representing more recent designs and construction materials in the district. Images representing both archetypes can be seen in the image carousel at the top of this page.

For each of the archetypes we applied a baseline scenario and multiple energy scenarios (4 for the small lots home and 2 for the large lot home). Interventions included energy retrofits, the addition of renewable energy technologies, infill development with laneway homes and multi-unit conversion, and teardown/new construction.

The scenario modeling demonstrated significant potential for energy and greenhouse gas emissions savings for both archetypes. Continued work on this project is developing cost estimates for the renewable energy interventions.