The Wood Innovation Design Centre celebrates wood as one of the most beautiful and sustainable materials for building and serves as a gathering place for researchers, academics, design professionals and others interested in generating ideas for innovative uses of wood.
The University of Northern BC occupies the lower three floors of the building with facilities for the Master of Engineering in Integrated Wood Design Program. Upper floors provide office space for government and wood industry-related organizations, as well as the planned Emily Carr University of Art + Design Centre for Design Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
The eight-storey building (6 storey with mezzanine plus penthouse), stands 29.5m tall — at the time of completion it was the world’s tallest modern all-timber structure, serving as a benchmark to be broken by other mass timber buildings in the works.
With this project, MGA sought to demonstrate economical, repeatable technologies for building high-rise structures with timber, in hopes of inspiring institutions, private sector developers, and other architects and engineers to embrace this way of building.
Building in wood sourced from sustainably managed forests offers designers a rapidly renewable, low energy and carbon-sequestering alternative to traditional building materials used for larger buildings.
