Despite its location in a sleepy heritage neighbourhood of Vancouver, the independent K-12 York House School has a keen eye towards the future. In an effort to consolidate its campus facilities (built in piecemeal since 1932), a new Senior School was constructed.
The client’s aim was to improve energy efficiency, maximize natural light and student health, and provide flexible workspaces for modern teaching practices. Programming would include new classrooms, administrative and service spaces, lockers and social lounge areas.
Fast + Epp assisted in designing a predominantly exposed cast-in-place concrete structure, split over three floors. Its expressive central stair and finely-detailed glulam façade give the greater York House campus a more established entry point, with links to the south, north and east wings via a welcoming atrium space.
As part of our scope of work, we also performed a preliminary seismic review of the existing adjacent buildings, to allow the replacement school to be built as an interconnection to existing facilities on either side.