Project Snapshot
Project Size: 270,550 gross square feet / 25,135 gross square metres
Budget: $189.91 million
Status: In construction
Occupancy: Fall 2024
Project Manager: UBC Properties Trust
Project Summary
The Gateway Building will co-locate the School of Nursing (Faculty of Applied Science), School of Kinesiology (Faculty of Education), Integrated Student Health Services (Office of the Vice-President, Students) and components of UBC Health together in a building that will facilitate inter-program interaction and synergies and contribute to students’ health and wellbeing and to the continued advancement and growth of the two Schools nationally and globally.
The project will support teaching, learning, health promotion, inter-professional health education, community engagement, and research mandates in community health, active living, healthcare delivery, and health sciences. It will create opportunities for community engagement with students, staff, faculty, and the broader UBC community through programming for health promotion and wellbeing (outreach).
The project will also provide general teaching space that includes four large lecture theatres to help address UBC’s challenges with scheduling large classes. New high-fidelity simulation labs will be included in the School of Nursing teaching space. In addition, a Team-Based Primary Care Inter-professional Teaching Clinic Prototype is programmed. This clinic, coordinated by UBC Health, will serve an important function in collaborative health education, with the classrooms and research labs, in augmenting the project’s collaborative space by facilitating inter-professional clinical teaching. Students across the health disciplines will have the opportunity to function in inter-professional teams and will be better equipped to carry the requisite knowledge, skills, and values into their future practice of collaborative, inter-professional, team-based patient care. Finally, the new facility will accommodate faculty growth that will contribute to the Academic Renewal Program. The functional program includes space for 22 new faculty positions (17 Nursing and 5 Kinesiology) as well as associated graduate students and support staff.
The project is located at the NW corner of University Boulevard and Wesbrook Mall. As the principal point of entry and historical arrival route to UBC, the building will play a critical role in creating an academic gateway experience and is an opportunity to express the university’s identity and values. The Gateway Health Building project’s aspirations are unique and ambitious:
- Academic gateway: Express UBC’s vision and values through a dignified and memorable welcome to the Vancouver campus
- Host Nation: Co-create a process that meaningfully includes Musqueam culture and values in the project
- Health and Well-Being: Harness the transformative power of health as a core design driver
- Zero carbon: Seek to achieve net-zero carbon certification
Learn more
UBC Campus & Community Planning: Development permit
School of Kinesiology: A Future Home for Kinesiology: The Gateway Building
School of Nursing: The Gateway Health Building
Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects: Project profile
Journal of Commerce [December 7, 2022]: UBC embraces mass timber with $180 million Gateway Building
Canadian Architect [November 29, 2021]: Winner of 2021 Canadian Architect Award of Excellence
Building Design + Construction [April 29, 2021]: Perkins&Will to design new gateway building for the University of British Columbia
Perkins&Will [March 2021]: Perkins&Will Transforms the Campus Arrival Experience at the University of British Columbia
Ubyssey [February 2020]: $189-million Gateway building will house health facilities, delay space for counselling services