May 10, 2007

Architecture

Unique Native centre rises from desert

PATRICIA WILLIAMS

staff writer

The largest “rammed” earth wall in North America is a key element in the award-winning Nk’Mip desert cultural centre in British Columbia’s south Okanagan Valley.

“It’s definitely the most adventuresome design aspect,” says Bruce Haden, partner in charge of the project at Vancouver-based Hotson Bakker Boniface Haden Architects + Urbanistes.

NIC LEHOUX PHOTOGRAPHY

Locally produced bluestain pine was specified for both interior and exterior applications at the centre.

“Rammed earth is not a commonly used product in Canada. But we felt this presented an opportunity to make a really dramatic architectural statement. We wanted something that felt simultaneously natural and innovative.”

The $4 million centre, located in the desert in Osoyoos, won a 2007 Royal Architectural Institute of Canada award of excellence for innovation in architecture in the art category.

It was designed to be “a specific and sustainable” response to the desert environment.

Commissioned by the Osoyoos Indian Band, the 1,115-square-metre centre opened last June. It includes indoor and outdoor exhibition spaces that celebrate the band’s culture and history, a theatre, gift shop, administration offices and rattlesnake research facilities.

The facility is part of a new resort destination that includes a winery with vineyards, an 18-hole golf course with club house and tourist accommodation master-planned by Hotson Bakker.

Constructed from local soils mixed with concrete and colour additives, the insulated rammed earth wall is 80 metres long, 5.5 metres high and 600 mm thick. It retains warmth in the winter. Its thermal mass cools the building in the summer.

“The rammed earth was on the chopping block several times,” says project architect Brady Dunlop. “But we found a way to make it happen, with the help of the client, the contractors and others involved in the project.”

Rammed earth construction is a traditional building technique found most often in dry regions where wood is scarce. A team of band members worked with the contractors on its fabrication.

The wall is one of the green design features of the project, located on the eastern shore of Lake Osoyoos on the northern tip of the great basin desert in a 1,600-acre conservation area.

Others are: the building’s orientation and siting, in-slab radiant heating and cooling, a habitable green roof, careful water use management and use of locally produced bluestain pine in both interior and exterior applications.

“We wanted to support the local economy,” Dunlop said.

“We felt it was important to try to showcase a local product wherever we could.”

The wood has a blue-tinted cast, rather than the yellow colour more typical of pine.

The extreme climate made sustainable design a particular challenge, the architects said.

Temperatures can range from — 18 C in the winter to 40 C during the summer.

The partially buried structure mitigates extremes in temperature while the building’s orientation optimizes passive solar performance. Glazing is minimized on the south and west sides.

The green roof reduces the building’s visual imprint on the desert landscape.

The Nk’Mip centre is the first of a number of new B.C. aboriginal centres and part of a growing trend to explore the potential of architecture to convey what the architects describe as “the rich past and transforming future” of aboriginal culture.

“We’ve done first nations building projects previously,” says Haden, who grew up in Kingston, Ont., studied architecture at the University of Waterloo and received a master’s degree from the University of British Columbia.

“But we’ve never done a rammed earth project — but then again almost nobody has in Canada.”

The general contractor was Greyback Construction Ltd. of Penticton, B.C.

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