Rix Centre for Ocean Discoveries By de Hoog & Kierulf Architects, A Unique Roof Design Of The Laboratory Which Designed Like A Shell

Rix Centre Wooden Pillar Design

An impressive laboratory architecture design called the Rix Centre for Ocean Discoveries is completed designed by the Canadian architectural firm de Hoog & Kierulf in Bamfield, it is a small community on the West Coast of Canada. This laboratory is covering an area for about 1200 square meters. This project is combined the conference centre and marine science laboratory facility. A variety of both wet and dry laboratories, seminar rooms, offices and both formal and informal meeting spaces, the building is designed to be an icon for the Barnfield Marine Sciences Center as a global center for the oceanographic research and be immediately evocative of the natural marine environment; it is in addition to providing the flexible conference rooms.

The form of the entry and main reception areas is inspired by the structure of the scallop shell. To capture the essence of the shell form in an authentic manner which is functional and buildable in the remote west coast rainforest of the Barnfield by using local materials and labour is the challenge of the project. A heavy timber is conceived as a series of the stressed-skin plywood and the glulam bays which is essentially a ‘shell’ structure, with a modular components which are precision shop-fabricated, individually trucked to Barnfield, and it is assembled on the site. Which is directing the rainfall from all the parts of the roof to a central gutter, the repaired beams between the bays is act as a continuously sloping the glutters. With average annual rainfall of over three meters, if there is an element of the building to be celebrated, it is the roof!

In the planning, spatial expression and the lighting of the receptionist area, the geometry of the scallop shell is also used. The entrance to the facility is through the ‘hinge’, it is a compressed a space which is ringed by the elliptical glulam columns which separate the foyer from the reception room. The roof springs from these columns is arching up to a second ring of the columns at the building face, it is where a curved glazed the facade and it is allows sweeping views of the Barkleys Sound and the mountains of the central Vancouver Island beyond. The pendant lights is hangs from the ceiling like a pearls or marine creatures which is suspended in the water, their glow is illuminating the underside of the scalloped roof at night. The Rix Center is immediately recognizable as a focal point of the campus whether it is viewed from the air or by boat, two essential which is means of the access to the community. The main meeting and the reception room of the Rix Center is both the focus of the building’s from and its function, it is as a venue for the confluence f the leading edge marine scientific theory and the research with the current business development and the industrial practice.
Visit the website of de Hoog & Kierulf Architects – here.

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Rix Centre Building Architecture Design