Burnaby Multi-Sports Facilities
Two projects with a shared program: to create open-air, covered public multi-sports recreation facilities with a main use for Lacrosse in Burnaby, BC CANADA. The main design idea was to have a low-energy consumption, be open and accessible at all times to the public, and maximize the ability for daylight to passively illuminate the court while providing full protection from rain and snow throughout the year. Below, I showcase my design work on the facility at Confederation Park from the pre-design phase all the way through to executing the construction of the building.
Setting: Carscadden Stokes McDonald Architects Inc. (Professional)
Team: Glen Stokes (Partner Architect), Sarah Sako (Project Architect), Matías Kubacsek (Architectural Designer)
Year: 2021 - Ongoing
Location: Burnaby, British Columbia, CANADA
Status: Under Construction
Project Budget: $11 million (combined for both projects)
*As public projects presented, all the information contained on this page was made available to the public at multiple stages of the design.
SCHEMATIC DESIGN (CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT)
Schematic sketches I made by hand of proposed building profiles to define the main architectural shape
I joined this project right at the beginning of "Schematic Design", the point at which architects establish the spatial, programmatic, and initial aesthetic goals which the building will seek to address. My role during the design phase was benchmarked on making sketches, sourcing materials to be used in the facility, making 3D massing models, and participating and sharing opinions to propose a set of architectural ideas to drive the design.
I was inspired by the design brief to have an open structure, that would require little maintenance and was budget-conscious, so I produced models and proposed a material palette that sought to address this. I told myself that beauty and high-quality design do not have to conflict with a simple approach to designing.
I imagined the final building as a functional recreational space that evoked the idea of air, movement, and lightness, like a cloud. Steps I took to pursue this was sketching designs and sourcing materials that proposed a simple roof-line and translucent polycarbonate facade that would allow light to become a building material, enter the space passively, and create a low energy and pleasant space to be in. Ultimately, these ideas became the basis of the final design used for construction.
This is a hand sketch of a proposed landscape and facade design proposal I made to communicate the idea of creating a floating "cloud" over park fields.
DETAILED DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION
Building on previous design ideas I contributed and put forward, this is a design render I made to show to the Client and have them ratify the final architectural and landscape design. They approved it, and we were able to proceed into making construction documents, and ultimately, final construction.
Confederation Park is a highly active park, and as such had unique design constraints. As seen in the render I made above, a myriad of walking paths and fields populate the site which required additional design and engineering constraints: negotiating grades, unknown underground utilities not shown in record drawings, public safety, sun angles, and many more. To reconcile all this, I was tasked with producing the detailed design drawings, which became the construction drawings, that combined the entire scope of work as clear as possible for the general contractor to price the project, source materials, and begin construction.
As a contributor to the design team, this project taught me the impact and sobering challenge of designing and iterating within unshakeable physical, natural, and budget constraints. I was also heavily exposed to working and managing engineers (Electrical, Mechanical, Structural and Civil), and becoming well-versed in integrating these highly technical requirements as part of the overall design. This gave me a breadth of experience by not only working in the loose, early stages of design, to the end of actually executing a design that includes working under engineering and real-world budgetary and legal requirements.
I also appreciated the realization that a big part of design is revisiting previous designs in the face of new information, built-conditions, and having to work through these new constraints. This helped me grow as a designer with the knowledge that things one designs and expects to function break, or don't function as expected within their intended environment. This, I learnt, is ultimately a gift and opportunity to keep improving a design and even creating previously unexpected improvements.
This is a sheet from the set of architectural construction drawings that I made on AutoCAD, and have updated throughout changes in the design due to unknown site conditions (such as unmarked irrigation lines) and Client requests. Revisions are noted with small triangles that identify the order of issuance during construction, as seen with the log on the right hand column.
The most important lesson I learnt by working on this project is the gift of executing a design to its point of completion, by diligently pushing through design challenges throughout its construction, at often times revisiting or re-design small or large parts of the bigger design. A lot of this project was the design, all the sketching, putting together of different schematic options and configurations. However, once the final design is selected, the actual work to execute it begins, and so does a whole other part of the design process that is integral in creating and making.
In my position, this involved working diligently to prepare construction documents, and revising drawings to suit changes in the final design needed to accommodate changing budget, site, and client requirements during construction. I was thus given a lot of exposure and understanding of the work, and effort and constant iteration needed to create a design even after its "final" condition was established. I see this as invaluable lessons to bring into the MS Design program to refine and deploy in different design scenarios, both physical and digital.
Images of the construction site at Confederation Park I took in the summer of 2023. These were taken as the majority of the landscape and regrading work had been completed, and the pre-engineered portal frame structure had been erected.
The image represents the first moment in the real world that the intended design of a structure that evoked levity and clouds became a reality.