Grandview Heights Secondary School

Grandview Heights Secondary is a new three-storey, 1,500 student capacity high school in South Surrey, within the largest school district in British Columbia. The school responds to the demands of the rapidly growing community and incorporates innovative design and construction strategies to address the evolution of learning and educational principles. The school is laid out in two wings that converge at a circular atrium that connects the various levels and program elements.

Specific structural systems and solutions respond to the technical requirements of the respective program wings and the central atrium. The north wing includes two gymnasiums, maker spaces with fabrication labs, and a purpose-built, black box theatre that uses tilt-up concrete panels that support long-spanning, structural steel truss framing. The adjacent classroom wing contains learning studios clustered into community pods with associated labs, larger collaborative spaces, and smaller break-out rooms. This three-storey block is constructed with cast-in-place concrete and an undulating structural steel roof that accentuates the building’s profile. At the meeting point of the two wings, the four-storey atrium volume is encompassed by a ring of steel columns that taper as they rise, linked at their peak with a circular steel truss. The truss supports a dowel laminated timber (DLT) panel roof system. The structural design aligns with the project’s principal design criteria of affordability, adaptability, accessibility, sustainability, and durability.

Images 5-8 – StructureCraft