In this BC Housing Edutalk, Magdalena Szpala, BC Housing’s Director of Sustainability and Resilience, takes us behind the scenes on the early decisions that helped ensure Vienna House residents will better withstand heat waves, wildfire smoke, and other adverse events. Listen to audio file here:
About This Interview
The word “resilience” characterizes the capacity of a given community to be able to care for its members, help neighbours that need support, and press on in the face of adversity.
But how does this work at the scale of a building? Resilient buildings such as BC Housing’s Vienna House provide the basics of shelter, comfort, security, and privacy—but also seek to help residents more readily prepare for, endure, and recover if and when things unexpectedly go sideways. Specifically, they:
- Enable people to better care for themselves, their neighbours, and communities in the face of adversity, such as a severe earthquake or heat dome.
- Are safer, more durable, and livable, support a quicker recovery, and protect public and private investments.
In this BC Housing Edutalk, Magdalena Szpala explains how the Vienna House project team embraced these principles, and designed resilience into the very fabric of the building.
At the Mic
Magdalena Szpala, BC Housing’s Director of Sustainability and Resilience, develops and implements policies, programs, and projects that support environmental, social, and economic sustainability. With more than 15 years of sustainability experience , she has delivered numerous strategic plans and reports, built capacity and partnerships, and led change initiatives.
Mentioned in This Recording
- Mobilizing Building Adaptation and Resilience (MBAR) is a multi-year BC Housing research initiative that provides resources, expertise, and case studies on how buildings can remain comfortable, safe, and resilient through heavier rainfall, hotter summers, wildfires, flooding, and windstorms.
- The Vienna House design team retained Human Studio Architecture + Urban Design to simulate resident interactions on various proposed building configurations using its FLUID Sociability software. The sample rendering shown here illustrates the extent to which residents in the courtyard-based design—which the team ultimately chose—will encounter one another over the course of an average month.
Related Resources
Realizing Resilient Buildings in B.C.
This BC Housing discussion paper identifies key barriers and enablers to realizing more climate- and earthquake-resilient buildings in British Columbia (February 2025).
Realizing Resilient Buildings in B.C. – A Toolkit for Local Governments
This toolkit helps regional and municipal governments in B.C. create buildings that are resilient to both climate change and seismic activity (September 2024).
Builder Insight: Vienna House Sustainability and Resilience
This bulletin explores the innovations and technologies used to enhance Vienna House’s overall sustainability and resilience objectives—from consideration of embodied carbon to mixed mode ventilation and cooling (April 2024).
Here’s How Vienna House Residents Will Ride Out Hot and Smokey Summers
This blog post offers an overview of the “mixed mode“ approach to cooling and ventilation that aims to bolster climate resilience at Vienna House (August 2022).
Climate-ready Housing Design Guide V.01
This interactive spreadsheet is intended to serve as a reference tool for housing providers, developers, and other building industry professionals across B.C. on climate-ready housing design (June 2022).
Irreversible Extreme Heat: Protecting Canadians and Communities from a
Lethal Future
The Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation (Intact Centre), an applied research centre at the University of Waterloo, produced this guide to practical actions that Canadians can undertake to reduce extreme-heat risks (April 2022).
