Award

D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 3 | 51 North Trail High School NORTH TRAIL HIGH SCHOOL by ROBIN BRUNET R equests from parents for a new secondary school may have begun many years ago, but the recent opening of the new North Trail High School in northeast Calgary dem- onstrates that the wait was well worth it. David Jaimes, project manager, facility projects with the Calgary Board of Education, says, "The school serves a range of communities in one of the fastest growing areas of Calgary. We initially kicked off the project with a call for working drawings, and then there was a long period in which funding was organized. And then everything was fast tracked, with the project going to tender in November of 2020 and breaking ground in early 2021 – only to run up against the sup- ply chain difficulties created by the COVID lockdowns." Monika Oystryk, principal at Oystryk & Team Architecture Ltd. (OTA), says her firm started the design in 2019. "Initially the site selected by the CBE seemed large, but it was between a major road on one side and fields that were off limits to develop- ment on the other. Plus, it contained a 13-metre cross slope, meaning only about 20 percent of the site could be developed. Also, a proposed under- ground parkade was deemed too costly to build, which meant that surface parking had to be worked out." North Trail was arranged so that all program areas such as the gym, theatre, shops, and other areas requiring extra height were located on the south end where the site slopes, and all class- rooms were located to the north. OTA designed the school with class- rooms in groupings – four forming a pod – arranged around a centrally located shared multipurpose lab area on the main floor and science labs on the second floor. The design allowed for maximum flexibility through oper- able and movable walls yet retained a high level of acoustic performance. OTA designed the central part of the learning communities on the sec- ond floor as a highly lit area, with harvested light filtering into the interior labs and natural light fil- tering into the gathering space via screens. The flexible learning com- mons flanked by computer labs forms the central piece on the second floor. "Below the learning commons on the exterior is the main entrance, which we defined with a canopy and an all- glass vestibule," Oystryk says. Aiming to make North Trail warm and inviting led OTA to use materials such as terrazzo veneer, feature wood walls, and glulam beams (the latter for the gathering space), which also improved acoustics throughout. With increasing enrolment in high schools, there was a push to have North Trail ready for the fall of 2023. OTA was asked to cut their schedule for construction documents by about five months. "The delays had already set the project back four months, but we managed to accomplish what was required," Oystryk says. "Actually, the fast tracking turned out to be ben- eficial because we largely escaped the huge cost escalations due to the COVID lockdowns." P H OTO G R A P H Y BY S E A N S T E WA RT/CO U RT E S Y OYS T RY K & T E A M A RC H I T EC T U R E LT D.

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