The Sustainable Energy Engineering Building on the Surrey, British Columbia, campus of Simon Fraser University has received LEED gold certification for its environmentally friendly design and construction.
The five-story, 20,458-square-meter building opened in 2019 and houses the university’s new School of Sustainable Energy Engineering, which is the first of its kind in Western Canada.
The facility is being touted as touted as a ‘living lab’ for its sustainable spaces and operations as the university seeks to create an integrated academic precinct within Surrey’s evolving City Centre downtown core.
“The new Surrey building is an example of how we can use campus infrastructure and operations to be living environments in which interdisciplinary learning, applied research and practical work can advance sustainability and resiliency on campus and beyond," says Larry Waddell, the university’s chief facilities officer.
The building provides teaching and research labs, study and lounge spaces, offices, an open atrium and a 400-seat lecture hall to serve the campus as well as the broader community.
Its façade is designed to represent ‘circuit board’ imagery symbolic of the technological subject matter that will be taught. The facade is composed primarily of framed, high-performance, undulating precast concrete panels.
The architect is Revery Architecture (formerly Bing Thom Architects) and the builder is Bird Construction.
