PNE Amphitheatre Gets A Mass Timber Makeover

Sep 22, 2023 - 2 years ago

The design for the brand-new PNE Amphitheatre at Hastings Park in Vancouver has been unveiled, featuring a dramatic mass timber curved roof.

PNE Amphitheatre Gets A Mass Timber Makeover — *Photo credit: Revery Architecture*

For almost 60 years the PNE’s Amphitheatre, with its spectacular views of the North Shore mountains and Burrard Inlet, has hosted musical and cultural events for visitors across Vancouver, BC and beyond. Said to have one of the most beautiful views of any venue on the West Coast of North America, the Amphitheatre has hosted artists representing virtually every genre of music imaginable since it opened in 1964.

The Amphitheatre has closed with the last show, Blue Rodeo: 30 Years in July ending the venue’s 59-year run.

The existing Amphitheatre will be demolished in the coming months, making way for a spectacular new world-class outdoor venue. The new Amphitheatre, which has been in the planning stages for several years, is anticipated to be one of the most impressive venues of its kind in North America when completed in 2026.

Designed to showcase British Columbia building products and engineering while adhering to the highest standards of environmental sustainability, the venue will be used to host a wide variety of music and culture events. The new design features mass timber construction.

PNE Amphitheatre Gets A Mass Timber Makeover

What is mass timber construction?

Mass timber construction, in contrast to light-frame wood construction, is built using a category of engineered wood products typically made of large, solid wood panels, columns or beams often manufactured off-site for load-bearing wall, floor, and roof construction. Mass timber is engineered for high strength ratings like concrete and steel but is significantly lighter in weight. Mass timber products are thick, compressed layers of wood, creating strong, structural load-bearing elements that can be constructed into panelized components. They are typically formed through lamination, fasteners, or adhesives. Mass timber can complement light-frame and hybrid options and is an environmentally friendly substitute for carbon-intensive materials and building systems.

What is the Difference Between Mass Timber and Light-Frame Wood Construction?

According to Forestry Innovation Investment and naturally:wood, mass timber is not to be confused with light-frame wood construction. A mass timber building uses solid timber or engineered wood as the primary load-bearing structural element, whereas wood-frame buildings are constructed from dimension lumber and sheathing. Mass timber construction, using prefabricated panels, beams and columns made from thick, compressed layers of wood, is comparable to steel and concrete in terms of strength and performance. Because of its engineered strength, mass timber construction can go higher than wood-frame construction.

PNE Amphitheatre Gets A Mass Timber Makeover

The Design

The new Amphitheatre is designed by renowned Vancouver-based architecture company Revery Architecture. Tracing the gentle slope of the nearby Windermere Hill, the new design settles into Hastings Park on three points, framing vistas of the North Shore Mountains and surrounding verdant landscape, while creating an intimate atmosphere under the warm cover of the wood. Reinterpreting a traditional concrete shell typology, the precedent-setting starburst timber arch roof will be amongst the world’s largest, harnessing the compression capacity of mass timber to span an impressive 105m. The use of curved Glulam and Cross-Laminated Timber deck for the roof significantly reduces the embodied carbon compared to steel and concrete alternatives, and provides greater acoustic absorption than fabric structures.

Revery is also providing visioning for the adjacent Festival Plaza and Hastings Creek daylighting. Contiguous to the Amphitheatre, the Festival Plaza will create a new urban heart of the park, featuring comfortable seating, public art, built-in festival and event infrastructure, and food trucks to support accessible public programming through all seasons. The future daylighted creek will extend its living edges through a protected riparian zone, gently bridging natural ecology with the social ecologies of the Festival Plaza and Amphitheatre, while achieving audience and viable area targets, preserving existing mature trees, fulfilling capture-and-clean rainwater management goals, and promoting curiosity around ecological restoration in an urban context.

Once complete, the renewed PNE Amphitheatre will be a vital contributor to Vancouver’s cultural ecosystem, amplifying under one roof the richness of the community’s creative, natural, and social setting.

The PNE Amphitheatre will augment the City’s Resilient Vancouver and Climate Emergency Action Plan strategies and will demonstrate sustainable leadership on a national scale. The project is targeting Passive House and LEED Gold Certifications for enclosed spaces and, driven by the use of mass timber in the roof structure and back-of-house spaces, a 40% reduction in embodied carbon emissions compared to the baseline. The design will also follow Zero Emissions guidelines.

Construction is anticipated to begin in early 2024 with completion in early 2026.