University
Boulevard Transit Shelters / PUBLIC Architecture + Communication
From the architect. The UBC
campus is full of holes. Some are below ground where construction sites pepper
nearly every corner of campus. Some are at grade where the historic figure
ground is a mixed bag of building forms, dead-ends and disjointed academic
neighborhoods. Some are higher up still, off the ground — floating in the tree
canopy.
The University has been hard at work to address
these gaps in its fabric, spearheading a massive public realm overhaul and
myriad improvements to student life. One of the most prominent undertakings is
at the main entrance to campus along University Boulevard. Small, but integral
to the Boulevard’s redevelopment, are two strategic insertions into the transit
infrastructure that provide covered shelter for a trolley-bus loop. The transit
shelters act as a conceptual extension of the nearby line of Katsura trees.
Slender steel columns are arranged in a staggered line and hold up an oversized
cellular wood structure clad in glass.
From a distance, the glass reflects and fills
gaps in the surrounding trees, but as one approaches, the wood is revealed and
creates the effect of walking underneath branches. The shelters help create a
long covered space, continuing the canopies of adjacent buildings down the
Boulevard into the heart of campus while the sidewalk remains largely
uninterrupted by vertical structure, reducing impediments to heavy pedestrian
traffic.
The shelters aim to create the kind of visual
balance between random and regular pattern that one finds in nature. With the
tree canopy as a starting point, the structural exploration began as a series
of beams, then the beams connect to hold up glass. We sought to imbue that
structural grid with movement and above all, to create a design that performs
both visually and structurally.
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