British Columbia will host the “greenest games ever” in Vancouver February 2010. The city has constructed a series of stunning  structures in preparation for upcoming events, and has also kicked off its naturally-wood website, which provides a free digital tool kit for Building Green with Wood and insight into how BC’s sustainable forestry helps leed the way for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. 

The Richmond Olympic ring is an emerald of a speed-skating, with three levels and a massive wood wave roof inspired by local ecology, using lumber affected by the Mountain pine beetle. The sport event includes energy-saving refrigeration and rainwater collection, and $16-million oval roof claims one of the world’s largest  wooden structures, around the size of four and a half football fields.

Vancouver Convention Centre also features a living roof of 400,000 native plants, free of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, that also captures rainfall to use within the building and for irrigation, and a seawater heating and cooling, on-site water treatment, marine habitat built into the foundations, and shoreline restoration.

The 2010 structure is designated as a LEED Gold structure, connecting two distinct spaces for multimedia and community affairs and decked out with submerged logs and concrete countertops utilizing post-beetle mania pine chips. The buildings will remain alive and well even after the games have ended.