Scope: 4B - Comprehensive Design - Final Project
Supervisor: Christie Pearson, Jaliya Fonseka
Year: 2021
Tools: Rhino | VRay | Illustrator | Photoshop | Consultant Coordination
Recognition: Featured in 2022 Year-End Review Exhibition, Cambridge, Canada

“Tools foster conviviality to the extent to which they can be used, by anybody…for the accomplishment of a purpose chosen by the user…they allow [them] to express [their] meaning in [their] action.”
Tools for Conviviality, Page 22, Ivan Illich

Red Cliff College is a tool. A tool to foster community within ecology, to re-order thinking on production and action. It focuses on hyper-localism, not for budget like in the past, for the establishment of a future. The building is centered around forms and structures which lend to reappropriation and creative inhabitation: Red Cliff recaptures the productive spirit of PEI history. Red Cliff is not a place of pedagogy but of consciousness.

Social Hallway

The building is centered not on classrooms, as is typical, but on the spine of a generous 10 meter wide communal hallway. This allows for interpretive use by students and community members, and further welcomes the expansion of the adjacent programs into the space in the winter. The central atrium space is unconditioned and serves as a buffer between the public programs and classroom spaces.

Classrooms

The classrooms are arranged in different ways to allow for different types of learning. from the building as it represents the inverse to production.

SITE PLAN

The building is sited centrally in the site to minimize negative impact on the site ecology. Ecological planting is used as an educational tool on site using the network of footpaths. Finally, the bathing space is isolated from the productive.

STRUCTURE AND DETAIL

The structural elements in Red Cliff are kept fairly simple and consistent. Each pavilion roof is made up of a standard nail-plate connected truss spaced at 1 meter. This rests on a glulam beam which transfers load to the rammed earth walls.

The foundations are a concrete pile-cap on a 100mm steel screw pile. The hallway utilizes a standard glulam joist system to span the 10 meters. The atrium space uses a built-up glulam and steel rod truss to connect the tilted space and create a larger central volume.

The gymnasium has the most ambitious structural system to span the 25 meter bay. There are four identical triangular trusses which frame the center box-frame under the large skylight. These bear on glulam columns.