This facility is a great example of community architecture in action. The three pillars of design that served the basis of this project are people, place and planet. The result is a project that reflects, quite literally, the community’s values of relationships, connectivity and place.

The building is organized around a large functional atrium that connects the various services and departments. The building responds to various modes of travel around the site (vehicle, cyclists and pedestrian) and capitalizes on a prominent view of Shuswap Lake and the highlands

to the north. The design incorporates some natural and man-made characteristics of Salmon Arm from the longest pier in North America which is expressed in the scissored columns out front to the articulated form of its roof landscape.

The building structure is a highly integrated system of innovative wood structural and non-structural members supported over a concrete ground floor and sub grade level. The building also features passive systems such as a highly efficient hydronic heating and cooling system that is fed through passive earth tubes that take advantage of the area’s hot summers for pre-cooling and cold winters for pre-heating the incoming fresh air.