Culture

A cool new school for Emily Carr University of Art + Design

New Great Northern Way campus opens for classes

By BCBusiness / September 5, 2017

Credit: Emily Carr University of Art + Design

Main entrance (south)

New Great Northern Way campus opens for classes

Emily Carr University of Art + Design’s new campus, under construction since 2015, is ready for classes and student orientation today.

The four-storey 290,000-square-foot building designed by Diamond Schmitt Architects, is built to LEED Gold standards and cost $122.6 million. It boasts dedicated studios for advanced digital media and virtual reality design, 3D production, health design, robotics, data visualization and media, communication design, industrial design and graduate studies in all areas, in addition to spaces for traditional arts: painting, sculpture, photography, illustration, drawing, print media and ceramics.

The project is a public-private partnership (P3). Applied Arts Partners, a consortium that includes Brookfield Financial, EllisDon, Fengate Capital, Diamond Schmitt Architects, Chernoff Thompson Architects and Johnson Controls, financed, designed and constructed the campus, which it will operate and maintain for 30 years.

The school has changed its name and location numerous times since it launched in 1925 as the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts on the top floor of the Vancouver School Board at 590 Hamilton Street. In 1937, it became the Vancouver School of Art and moved down the street into renovated facilities in the former Vancouver (Central) High School, then to 249 Dunsmuir Street in 1963. In 1978 it was designated a provincial institute called the Emily Carr College of Art, moving to Granville Island two years later. It began offering bachelor degrees in 1995, becoming Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2008.