Hillcrest Centre

Vancouver, B.C.
Construction Cost: $87.5 million (Canadian)
Area / Square Feet: 144,775
Occupancy Date: May 2011

As the largest facility of its kind in the Vancouver Park Board system, the Hillcrest Centre was part of a broader strategy that transformed a series of adjacent public parks through the sensitive consolidation and reorganization of existing facilities. The project involved the conversion of the shell space of the Vancouver Olympic Curling Venue into a variety of legacy community uses, including a community center featuring an NHL-size ice rink, a curling club with eight ice sheets, a full-size gym, a large fitness center, multipurpose rooms, an aerobics and games room, arts and crafts rooms, childcare space and a branch library.

The expressive volume of the building springs from a desire to both control and mitigate the negative aspects of building mass in a primarily single-family-housing neighborhood. The robust shell volume envelops the community uses, simultaneously containing them and opening them to the adjacent pedestrian civic spaces. Applications of wood — interior cladding, window casings and millwork — lend acoustic dampening and a warm aesthetic, as well as a connection to the surrounding landscape and history of industry in British Columbia.

The project sits at the intersection of the broader city of Vancouver and the local community. The main building concourse is a two-ended system serving both constituents: One entry faces the citywide vehicular access to the west, while the second is oriented toward a network of pedestrian paths that branch out toward the nearby neighborhood nodes. The result is a dynamic concourse that acts as a place of socialization while functioning as a transparent space.

Judge's Comments

It's an adaptive reuse of an Olympic venue, it achieved LEED Gold, but it was the interior design that set this project apart — the people-spaces were very intriguing.
— Robert McDonald, Ohlson Lavoie Collaborative

I particularly liked the interior of this project, which showed a thoughtful use of color as well as wood to create a series of experiences within the interior street. Wood threaded through the lobby ceiling reinforced the movement pattern with custom wood benches oriented toward the activity spaces.
— Jim Kalvelage, Opsis Architecture

Large interior wood panels on the walls of the curling venue gave the space a warmth and character that doesn't exist in most ice facilities.
— Jack Patton, RDG Planning & Design