The Irving K. Barber Learning Centre’s mission is to enhance access to information, knowledge, and innovative teaching through the support of learning and research on an interactive basis with people in British Columbia and throughout the world. To fulfill that goal, the centre needed an all-encompassing contemporary learning center and library that could be integrated into the existing main library’s 1925 Heritage Core. Additional priorities included more space for students, collections, technology, and expanded services for both present and future. Our design called for the complete renovation of the Heritage Core along with a major new addition that would replace older portions that were constructed in the 1940s and ’60s. A governing theme of the design approach is high transparency, revealing activities inside the building. On the west side, the new work incorporates a pre-cast concrete base with a regular rhythm of piers linking the new construction to the solid masonry of the Heritage Core.

This project was designed by Pfeiffer prior to joining Perkins Eastman.