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august 2015 | 85 Belmont secondary school renderings courtesy sooke school district #62 Belmont Secondary School by matt currie S ooke School District #62 (SD62) on Vancouver Island oversees educa- tion in both the rural communities around Sooke and Port Renfrew, as well as the suburban Westshore communi- ties. It's a rapidly growing region, and with that growth comes progress, but also a number of challenges – most press- ingly, an overabundance of students. Before this coming school year, the Westshore had several elementar y schools servicing kindergarten to grade 6, several middle schools for grades 7 to 9 and one high school, Belmont Secondary, for grades 10 to 12. "We were dealing with a real concern in our elementary schools," says Pete Godau, director of facilities for SD62. "We've got a couple of schools that are built for 300 and they're housing 400- plus students, and while we still need space at our elementary schools, we knew the pressure would soon be on our high school; our high school, of course, was Belmont, which is 60-plus years old." Their solution was two-fold: first, tweak the grade configurations to bump grade 6 into middle school and grade 9 into high school. Second, build two new high schools – Royal Bay Secondary in Colwood and an all-new Belmont Secondary in Langford. But these schools will provide more than some extra classroom space, rather, for SD62, they represent a new way of administering education. Desig ned in consult at ion w it h Thinkspace Architecture, the new-look Belmont Secondary is situated at 3041 Langford Lake Road. Just one glance at the school, built into an elevated bank just below the booming community of Westhills and overlooking picturesque Langford Lake to the north, is enough to hint that students are in for something different this year. A far cry from the bricks-and-mortar build of its predecessor, Belmont sports a striking three-storey construction made of structural steel atop a concrete podium and clad in metal panel and cur- tain wall glazing. Heading inside, you'll find that the old Belmont has not been left behind entirely, as the main foyer is sporting a "memorabilia wall," along with a sepa- rate section dedicated to the region's Coast Salish traditional territory. Further on through the foyer is a multi-purpose area for students to socialize between classes, as well as a student store. But according to contractor David Laubach of Yellowridge Construction Ltd., it's something a little less tangible that commands attention when you first walk through the doors. "The thing about this school is that it's got so much natural light. It's a three- storey school with high-volume spaces," he explains. "There's curtain wall glaz- ing on both the north and south sides, and all the levels have glazed railings with open areas to provide an intercon- nected space. When you're on the main floor on the ground, you can look up to people on the third floor and you've got light spilling in from the top and coming in from the end walls, and you've also got it coming through the glazed guard- rails around the opening." To the right of the foyer is an admin- istration area, followed by the begin- ning of the classroom blocks, containing 40 rooms that go up all three storeys. It's here in particular where Belmont's modern design has an impact on more than just the esthetics. Indeed, the school eschews traditional classrooms in favour of "learning communities" – pods containing five rooms that share a common project space and a teacher prep room, all of which can be combined or isolated as the educators see fit. "Those learning communities can be very flexible," Godau explains. "Some of the classrooms have folding walls and glazed overhead doors that open up, so three classrooms can become one classroom." However, the district and design team took care not to alienate anyone by making the new school radically dif- ferent from the old. "This space is school in transition," says architect Ron Hoffart of Thinkspace. "As well, these are existing teachers and an existing student body; it's dif- ficult to throw them into a completely unfamiliar environment. The design depends very much on what are the education objectives." To that end, each classroom will also be equipped with state-of-the-art tech- nology that allows teachers to project files from their computer right up onto the wall. The real heart of the school can be found on the second floor in the form of a two-storey library. But that too has a dif- ferent name in Belmont. "We don't call it a library anymore; it's a learning com- mons. There is an area for book stacks, but it's reduced from what old libraries were. Now it's more digital, floor plug-ins, you can move the tables, it's very flexible so kids can work together rather than being super-quiet zones," says Godau. "They'll be able to go into seminar rooms or work as a team on projects." Heading back downstairs and hanging a left at the main foyer brings you to the gymnasium – an 18,000-square-foot facil- ity featuring volleyball and basketball courts, two sets of retractable bleachers seating 1,000 people and a state-of-the- art projector scoreboard. It will be the largest school gym on Vancouver Island. The school is no less impressive on the efficiency front, using energy-saving equipment built to earn a LEED standard. On the exterior, a white roof deflects much of the sun's heat, and inside the building is conditioned by a primary air-source heat pump, sized at 120-ton capacity, sup- ported by two heat recovery ventilators that extract heat from exhaust air. "When you add up the capacity of these three energy efficient systems you have 400 kilowatts of heat per hour available being generated by equipment which has a coefficient of performance of about 2.3," explains Michael Boyle of MAB Engineering Inc. There are eight air-handling systems located in three separate fan rooms throughout the facility that provide air throughout the school for ventilation, with six of the units fitted with air volume control systems with variable frequency drives on the fans to reduce energy con- sumption. "The exception to the variable air volume systems is the classroom block, which is served by two constant volume fans with displacement air distribution to ensure a high level of indoor air qual- ity to student classrooms," Boyle adds. The school is scheduled to open this September, a difficult deadline to say the least. But the tight site has proven equally problematic. Laubach elabo- rates: "It's a very large space but the west side of the site is actually a very hilly terrain that goes up to a condo- minium development at the top, and that's a protected tree area. So although it looks like a large space on the plan, it is not usable." Laubach adds, "We actually have sort of a pie-slice-shaped site, with the large end of the pie facing Goudy Stadium and then it narrows down to a residential area at the south end. And our building, it's sort of a T-shape, with the [wide part] being off to the west side. We situated that right in the middle of the pie on an east-west ori- entation, but the challenge being there's a large bench of land on the west side that was a rock outcropping; all of that had to be drilled, blasted and removed prior to us even starting the foundation." All those involved are excited about their work at Belmont, and not just because it'll make a nice addition to their portfolios. "When [students] see the school, it's quite exciting just to see how they react," says Laubach. "We see the excitement in the kids; they think it's a cool place to attend and they're proud of their school. That's pretty neat." A Location 3041 Langford Lake Road, Langford, B.C owner/deveLoper Sooke School District #62 architect Thinkspace Architecture GeneraL contractor Yellowridge Construction Ltd. StructuraL conSuLtant Fast + Epp MechanicaL conSuLtant MAB Engineering Inc. eLectricaL conSuLtant Jarvis Engineering Consultants Ltd. LandScape architecture Forsite Landscape Architecture totaL Size 139,000 square feet totaL coSt $54 million

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