2019 HONOR AWARDS – NORTH AMERICAN
Trades Training Centre, Northern Lights College McFarland Marceau Architects Ltd. Vancouver, BC Located at the start of the Alaska Highway in northeastern British Columbia, Dawson Creek is a town of 13,000 people where the summers are brief and dry and the winters are severe, with temperatures that regularly dip to -40˚C. The town’s Northern Lights College is home to three state-of-the-art technical training facilities, including the $33million Trades Training Centre that opened in late 2018. This building – with workshops for carpentry, welding, plumbing, millwrighting and wind turbine technology – utilized mass timber construction to create a sustainable educational environment. The use of exposed mass timber in an industrial setting has proven to be both highly practical and uniquely pleasing for the occupants.
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Located across an open field from the main town thoroughfare, the structure improves campus visibility with a long east facade animated at night with dynamic LED lighting that evokes the Aurora Borealis. The building’s design also creates a courtyard that leads to the main campus entry. Trades training shops occupy the double-height space to the left, which transitions into a two-storey classroom block, then drops to one storey at the student commons. A linear light scoop borders the courtyard, reflecting southern light off the exposed mass timber structure into the lounge. Wood construction presented several opportunities for integrating structure, architecture and building systems. Prefabrication of roof panels and CLT wall panels