Industrial facilities often require that functionality comes first. But with the College of New Caledonia’s West Fraser Technical Centre in British Columbia, principal architect Steve McFarlane of the Office of McFarlane Biggars Architects and Designers (OMB) debunks the notion that design must be sacrificed in its service.
“We thought it would be really interesting to actually take the incumbent material palette of those light industrial buildings and use them for the basis of architecture,” he says, “trying to approach them with irreverence in how we handled the detailing and where we positioned them, and not apologizing for them.”
The result is a model of design excellence, as recognized by a Governor General’s Medal in Architecture.
Completed in 2012, the 28,000-square-foot facility is the second phase of the seven-acre campus. The building accommodates 250 students training in technical, industrial and skilled trades, including carpentry, electrical and plumbing.
The $9.8-million project received funding through the federal government’s Knowledge Infrastructure Program, rolled out at the height of the recession. As university students graduated into a weak job market, the federal government was encouraging Canadians to consider a career in the skilled trades, a sector that was facing a labour shortage.
The government funding, however, was contingent upon meeting tight deadlines. That meant completing a project that would normally take upwards of two years in about 18 months. McFarlane attributes the team’s ability to deliver on time to efficient planning and strategic material choices.
“We chose early on in the process to go with a structural system that would also give us the benefit of providing the finished surfaces for the rooms,” he says.
It helped to have a well-organized contractor (PCL) that paid attention to the details, and a decisive client.
One of the college’s core requirements was flexibility. With programming driven by industry demand, ensuring the space could adapt to programming changes was paramount.
“Our advice to them was to provide spaces that had really a loose fit with their program,” McFarlane says.
The new building also needed to fit within the context of the campus. A connection to the existing building on campus was established through sighting, a pedestrian linkage and sympathetic material choices, he explains.
The tough materials — including concrete masonry units and black fibre-cement panels — are meant to reflect the inherent toughness of the programs. The industrial workshops contain heavy machinery and power tools that require students to change into protective gear. A naturally lit atrium and change in the building’s volume separates the traditional classrooms from industrial workshops.
“We wanted to make sure that that threshold was very legible and conscious so we could contribute to the management of safety within the facility,” McFarlane says.
Since the training centre is located in a northern climate, energy performance was a key consideration in targeting the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification. To that end, OMB adopted efficiency features, including: a wood curtain-wall system; displacement ventilation in classroom spaces; a hydronic in-floor radiant heating strategy throughout the facility; and multi-cell polycarbonate glazing system for daylighting the circulation spaces.
The selected materials played a supporting role in targeting the LEED Gold certification. Many of them were locally sourced and also have a high level of recycled content.
“We used plywood quite a bit throughout for interior finishes, which was sourced locally,” he says. “And then the concrete masonry was from the Lower Mainland.”
As job prospects in the skilled trades remain strong, the design of the college leaves open the possibility of future expansion. Meanwhile, McFarlane suspects that the straightforwardness of the project is what has made the modest building stand out.
“We see so many architectural projects that are obsessed with elaborate and complex form-making,” he says. “But in contrast to that, simple and direct planning is actually becoming more and more unique.”
Michelle Ervin is the editor of Canadian Facility Management & Design.
