Thompson Rivers University (TRU) law school

THE BOXY, 1970s Old Main academic building at the center of Thompson Rivers University’s (TRU’s) campus in Kamloops, British Columbia, lacked the space and dignitas needed to house a law school.

photo by Diamond Schmitt

That changed when Toronto-based Diamond Schmitt Architects (DSA) capped the building with a two-story, 45,000-square-foot addition and undulating timber roof that rivals the mountainous setting.DSA principal Donald Schmitt, AIA, says that the 400-foot-long roof was inspired by the 1945 painting Mount Paul by A.Y. Jackson, a member of the Group of Seven landscape artists. “The visual connection between the building shape and Mount Paul and [the neighboring] Mount Peter was very important to creating that cultural connection with the aboriginal people,” he says.

copyright : Architect Magazine

The project had to be completed during the summer and meet its relatively tight $6.9 million budget. So the team designed the roof to be prefabricated from 92 panels, curved in profile and rectangular in plan. Approximately 60 percent of the 12-foot-wide-by-36-foot-long panels shares the same geometry. StructureCraft Builders, in Delta, British Columbia, bent the glulam beams using a template to frame each panel and then infilled the frames with wood purlins. Each panel weighs about 4,000 pounds.The panels were transported to the site in 42 tractor-trailer loads and installed in seven weeks. Classes in the building began this January. *JENNY JONES*