The Watch BIG DRAW FOR A BIG MUSEUM: EDMONTON WELCOMES ADDITION TO DOWNTOWN Since the 2015 closing of its old building in Glenora, Edmontonians and others have eagerly anticipated the reopening of the Royal Alberta Museum, this time in fancy new downtown digs. Predictably, visitors poured through the doors of the new museum on opening day in October. When the museum issued 21,500 free tickets, they were snatched up within six hours. A second batch released the next day, this time of just 8,000 tickets, was gone in a mere two hours. At twice the size of its predecessor, the $375.5-million museum is the largest in Western Canada, with floorspace of 127,700 square metres. On the edge of Edmonton’s Ice District and a short walk from City Hall, the museum boasts a sleek exterior made from limestone—sourced, by the way, from the same quarry used for the Empire State Building. The building was designed by APEGA permit holder DIALOG and Toronto’s Lundholm Associates, which specializes in cultural facilities. Permit holder Ledcor
LATITUDE
WHAT THE LIGHT REVEALS A children’s gallery at the new Royal Alberta Museum features a light table and much more for hands-on learning. -photo courtesy Royal Alberta Museum
built the museum over four years. Because of the museum’s design and sheer size, construction required more than 18,000 cubic metres of concrete (that’s enough to fill seven Olympic-sized swimming pools) and more than 2,500 tonnes of steel reinforcement (that’s the weight of more than 500 elephants). Inside the building lie 9,099 plumbing pipes, 6,505 hydronic pipes, and 9,819 ducts. Put them end to end, and you’ve got about 16 kilo-
metres of such tubular circuitry—or four times the distance between the old and new museums. Inside the museum, you’ll find expansive exhibit halls chronicling the province’s natural and human histories, including the history of Alberta’s Indigenous peoples. There’s also a children’s gallery for hands-on learning, an expanded bug gallery (hands-on, too, if you’re so inclined) and plenty of space for visiting exhibitions. A pilot project being developed by ENMAX will stop energy from being wasted there, too. Through its Green Infrastructure Program, Natural Resources Canada has invested $1.4 million in the smart- grid system, which will decrease carbon emissions while improving grid reliability.
IS YOUR BUILDING PRODUCING MORE ENERGY THAN YOU CAN USE? ENMAX HAS A PILOT FOR THAT
A growing number of Albertans are using technologies like solar panels to produce their own renewable energy at home. And some households produce more energy than they can use. ENMAX, an APEGA permit holder, already
allows two-way flow for Calgary residential customers, meaning they can feed the grid when they generate more than the use. But what about the specialized system that serves the downtown Calgary core?
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