Real Estate Update in False Creek Flats

The Emily Carr University of Art + Design has a long history in Vancouver. First opening in 1925 as the Vancouver School of Art, the institution changed over decades structurally, by its name and by its designation. The school’s namesake is the famous artist and writer, Emily Carr, whose Modernist and Post-Impressionist artistic style captured scenes and landscapes of the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the 20th century. In 2008, the Province of British Columbia formally recognized the school’s status as a full university, thus creating the name it is known by today. The university is still changing – the most recent change being their new campus on Great Northern Way in Vancouver’s False Creek Flats neighbourhood.

Wait, what about Granville Island?

This transition to the False Creek Flats was quite recent in September 2017. Prior to this, Emily Carr occupied a large campus on Granville Island. Occupying the campus from 1980 onwards, the facilities were beginning to show their age and were forcing the university to come up with creative solutions as its enrolment numbers grew. Thus, the best option was to seek a new campus.

Inland, to the east.

A New Home, A New Chapter

The intention of moving Emily Carr University of Art + Design to the Great Northern Way area of False Creek Flats is to bolster the creation of a renewed creative district. A key aspect of this new creative district is The Centre for Digital Media (CDM), a collaboration between ECU, British Columbia Institute of Technology and the University of British Columbia. While some mid-rise buildings with artist lofts still remain, like the Artech, Artworks or Mainspace, the new impetus to grow False Creek Flats has sought to incorporate the area’s artistic past. Adding to this, developers of mixed-use residential buildings are already incorporating facilities for artists and artisans in their new projects.

The building Emily Carr now occupies is quite significant in of itself. Not just for its place in revitalizing a creative district within False Creek Flats, but for the way it has been designed. This four-storey building comprises 290,000 sq. ft. of institutional space and offers ample room for university functions. It’s actually 90,000 sq. ft. larger than their Granville Island campus. The new campus boasts more instructional and performance spaces befitting a modern, full-scale university tasked with renewing a creative district. These facilities include:

• The Reliance Theatre – a 400-seat lecture hall and theatre that can be used for large class sessions, artist’s talks, all-university gatherings, celebrations, and film and animation screenings.
• A large outdoor plaza on the southeast corner of the campus facing Great Northern Way has a large digital screen showing animation and films made by students.
• The two-level Ron Burnett Library and Learning Commons.
• A 3-D printing studio.
• Dedicated studios for advanced digital media, virtual reality design, health design, robotics, data visualization and media, communication design, industrial design, painting, sculpture, photography, illustration, drawing, print media, sewing, and ceramics.
• A $3.9-million motion-capture studio with 40 cameras.

The new university campus is designed by renowned Toronto-based architecture firm Diamond Schmitt Architects, known for amazing projects like Red River Polytechnic’s Manitou a bi Bii daziigae expansion or the Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts & Sciences. Donald R. M. Schmitt, the Principal of Diamond Schmitt Architects, even received the Order of Canada in 2019. The campus is certified as LEED Gold – keeping in line with new developments in the broader Vancouver area.

A generous central concourse links all significant spaces of the campus horizontally. It is punctuated by a series of atria that bring in abundant natural light, visually—and vertically—connecting various disciplines. The atria also create intensive interchanges where informal gatherings and exhibitions take place. Departments are located along these interconnected spaces to maximize efficiencies and affinities between disciplines. Painting studios enjoy north-facing light in lofty top-floor studios while sculpture studios are situated close to outdoor working and display environments.

The exterior of the building is covered in glossy white panels to evoke the idea of a blank canvas, while coloured panels are intended to stand in as the artist’s palette – pools of vibrant colour at the ready to make a work of art. This conceptualization helps anchor the presence and identity of the ECU within the False Creek Flats Arts Precinct. This campus is surely a sight to behold and will continue to serve as a crown jewel for the False Creek Flats.

What’s happening to the old campus on Granville Island?

What does one do when a tenant leaves an institutional space dedicated to education around the arts?

Move another one in.

Arts Umbrella, a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide arts education to young people, will be taking over the Granville Island campus. Emily Carr’s former campus is three times the size of Arts Umbrella’s current space at Granville Island. This represents a huge opportunity for the Arts Umbrella to expand its programs currently reaching 24,000 children across the Lower Mainland.

Artist rendering of the former Emily Carr University campus with Arts Umbrella livery.