Fourth year Civil Engineering students recently competed in the annual end-of-term design competition. Twenty-two teams of students with expertise in various sub-disciplines of civil engineering presented their design solutions, which were judged by distinguished members of the industrial community and faculty representatives.
This year’s term project focused on the retrofitting and re-purposing of the Granville Island Campus of the Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
The Civil 445 students conceptualized and designed a large collection of creative solutions that dealt with the engineering challenges of modernizing the campus buildings. Some of the challenges were considering the changing public space and incorporating sustainability objectives for the local community.
The design ideas ranged from constructing pedestrian bridges to improve connectivity between Granville Island and existing the sea wall access to re-purposing the two main buildings for multi-University collaboration for teaching and promoting the arts.
Examples of the design solutions included improvements in traffic and parking, creating business innovation hubs, extending arts studio space, promoting a vibrant community night life, building restaurants and cafes, incorporating public art projects and construction of a small-scale on site waste treatment facility.
The judging team were impressed by the creativity and hard work that went into completing the conceptual designs. The winning design team was awarded a gift certificate from Granville Island Brewing. Congratulations to all the students of Civil 445 for a job well done!
Story contributed by Dr. Patricia Keen. All photos: Jesse Read