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The University of British Columbia campus has made a name for itself academically and architecturally. Its recently completed Tallwood House is the tallest mass timber building in the world, and the venerable institution is also home to Walter C. Koerner Library and the Museum of Anthropology, two iconic works by late architect Arthur Erickson. When Montreal-based Saucier+Perrotte Architectes arrived on the scene, they were charged with creating a world-class facility for the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Centre for Drug Research and Development. Together with Vancouver's HCMA, the firm responded in 2012 with a futuristic gateway to the southeast edge of the campus, becoming one of the most photographed buildings at UBC.
Formerly a surface parking lot at the corner of Wesbrook Mall and Agronomy Road, the prominent location demanded a better use for the site. The 20,240-square-metre parcel of land now provides a space flush with formal and informal learning spaces, allowing students to collaborate and learn in a variety of settings. The design itself, according to Saucier+Perrotte, is "intended to play a significant role in attracting and retaining the best in the scientific community from around the world."
An exhibition space, open to the public, fosters engagement between students, faculty and visitors, while an additional gallery above devotes space to the history of medicine and the profession. The building's west wall is its most striking — a sporadic assemblage of protruding boxes adds dimensional texture to the structure, with its outermost modules sheathed in a lighter shade of glass.
The interiors — replete with wood, concrete and glass finishings — are an abstract interpretation of the anatomy of a tree's branch system. The structure is then given a "tectonic manifestation" that yields a more geometric form. The reimagined tree trunks support atria that facilitates the entry of natural light into the laboratories and offices, where glazed walls give educators direct sight lines to students working in the classrooms.
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