This sleep new Oval is one of the coolest new buildings we've seen in a while. Its the venue of the speed skating events of the 2010 Winter Olympics, and will be location for the official Olympic anti-doping lab. The total cost of the project was $178 million.

It has been built on a site beside the Fraser River, a few blocks away from Lansdowne Station on the Canada Line. From the air, it is the first Olympic venue many visitors will see flying into the Vancouver, and the roof takes the stylized native shape of a heron's wing, a tribute to the Salish First Nation and the large wading bird that cohabited the riverbank at first European contact 230 years ago.

It is a 33,750 m² facility, including a 20,000 m² main floor that includes a 400 m refrigerated track. It can accommodate 8,000 spectators. The Oval was built to qualify the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Scale (LEED) Silver certification; for example, the Oval's refrigeration plant is designed to heat other areas of the building through the utilization of what is otherwise waste heat from cooling the ice surface.