Nicola Valley Institute of Technology

One of Canada’s first post-secondary facilities shared by a native and non native institute, designed to reflect the cultural characteristics of the native students with architecture inspired by the traditional pit house, and provide learning spaces required by University College of the Cariboo. The Nicola Valley Institute of Technology provides state-of-the-art learning spaces including classrooms, faculty offices, laboratories, gathering spaces, a cafeteria and library.

As Design Architect, Alfred Waugh led the design process involving intensive user group interaction, and numerous visits with the native elders. The three storey 120m long structure emerges from the sloped site with a semi-circular form, which is a meaningful and recurring Native theme. Culturally, its use in the ceremonial arbour provides the focus of the space. Both the arbour and the building are oriented on the cardinal points, with the building’s main entrance on the east axis, symbolizing the start of the day.

The building is designed as a cold climate green building, with thermal mass achieved using 250mm concrete floor slabs, and a tapered roof slab, that provides drainage without the need for costly tapered insulation.

The floor slabs are innovatively supported by 256 facetted glue-laminated timber columns. Elegant steel castings, shaped by the architect and designed by Equilibrium, were used to connect the timber columns to the concrete. The column installation presented a logistical challenge and required careful planning. The design specified that the columns be installed after the concrete slabs were cured and stripped which enabled an impressive average installation time of about 20 minutes per column.

The four-storey open atrium over the lobby is fully glazed above the roofline and framed with glue-laminated log columns that cantilever past the roof slab. The partially exposed atrium roof structure consists of carefully laid out wood frame construction on glue-laminated perimeter beams.