The Greenstone Building, officially the Greenstone Government of Canada Building, and sometimes known as the Greenstone Government Building, is located on Franklin (50th) Avenue in downtown Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada. It is a four-storey building faced in stone, completed and opened in 2005. Within are the local offices of 16 federal government agencies. Prior to the building's construction they were scattered in different buildings around the city. The name comes from greenstone, a rock found in great quantity in the area, from which the gold that led to Yellowknife's development was extracted. The building reflects that past in two other ways. Its interior stair tower is sided in slanted boards that recall the mineshaft towers still standing, and the location of a prominent local fault beneath the building is marked on the lobby floor. It was designed by the Edmonton firm of Manasc Isaac to be environmentally sustainable. Its central atrium has a curtain wall with photovoltaic cells, the largest such structure in Canada, and the second largest worldwide, at the time of the building's completion. Five percent of the building's electricity comes from that wall; it is used to heat water, some of which comes from the building's green roof and local groundwater, resulting in the building using half as much water as a comparably sized building. Heating efficiency is such that the building remains adequately warm during subzero winter days when many adjacent offices have to close. The building's green design reportedly saves CDN$80,000 in energy costs and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 370 tonnes (410 short tons) each year. Two years after its completion, on time and under budget, the Greenstone Building was recognized with LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certification by the Canada Green Building Council. It was the first building in Northern Canada to achieve that designation, and the first LEED Gold for the architects. In 2007 the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada further honored it with an Innovation in Architecture Award of Excellence.
Building The Greenstone Building is located in the area of downtown Yellowknife referred to locally as New Town. It is on the east side of 50th Avenue, often called Franklin Avenue, a southwest–northeast thoroughfare, four lanes wide at that point, which is Yellowknife's main street. It occupies the western end of a rectangular block between 51st and 52nd streets on the north and south; 52nd Avenue is the next street to the east. The terrain is generally level, around 190 metres (620 ft) in elevation, sloping very gently down 30 metres (98 ft) to Yellowknife Bay of Great Slave Lake 800 m (a half-mile) to the east and remaining level to Frame Lake approximately 400 m (a quarter-mile) to the west. The surrounding neighbourhood is urban. Modernist high-rise office buildings dominate this stretch of Franklin. Three of them—the Northwest Tower to the immediate south of the Greenstone Building and the Scotia Center and Precambrian Building across the street—are among the city's tallest. The Bellanca Building, once the tallest, and the 60-metre (200 ft) Centre Square Mall tower, the current champion, are within blocks. In between them the lots have single- or two-storey buildings with space for commercial use at the street level. Behind them are parking lots. A block to the southwest is the Yellowknife campus of Aurora College and, across Franklin, the main offices of the city school district, one of its elementary schools and the log cabin schoolhouse that was the first school building in the city. A block to the west the urban development gives way to open space in the form of a park along the lake shore next to City Hall. On the north development continues for many blocks before an area of taiga and exposed Canadian Shield bedrock buffers the descent to Old Town, the original city, on a peninsula extending into the bay. East of the building, the city likewise occupies most of the space until it gives way to residential property and open space at the bay shore.
Exterior
The building itself is composed of two sections, both four storeys in height with a flat roof, topped by a small flat-roofed structure that houses the upper end of the elevator shafts, with gardens taking up most of the space on the roofs. They are joined at the northwest corner of the lot, the southeast corner of the 51st Street intersection. It uses reinforced concrete flat slabs as its structural system. Paralleling 51st is a basically rectangular section five bays wide by 17 long. It is rounded at the corner with Franklin, allowing 10 bays on that end. The main entrance portico curves between the two sections at ground level. Joined to that block on the west is an irregularly shaped 14-bay section whose west side begins to curve south halfway towards that end of the property. Sidewalks surround the building on three sides. In front of the longer of the two sections, along Franklin, is a planted bed with concrete walls and wooden benches. It has shrubs and some small deciduous trees that have grown to the height of the second story. A gravel path runs between them and the front of the building. Along 51st, planters set in the sidewalk hold more shrubs and trees along the entire length of the wing. A similar area planted with shrubs and flowers runs along the east facade. To the east, in the rear, is a small park with benches, grass, and more deciduous trees buffered by a concrete walkway. Beyond the park is the building's parking lot.
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