NEW SCHOOL YEAR, NEW SCHOOL FOR ALL AT EMILY CARR
University opens new $122.6-million facility today
At about 11 a.m. today, after years of planning and construction, it will finally be official: a ribbon-cutting will open the new $122.6-million Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
The art school, located since 1980 on Granville Island, has moved to a purpose-built building by Great Northern Way on the former industrial site of Finning International between Main and Clark.
The move will mean a big shift in commuting patterns in Vancouver. About 2,300 faculty, staff and full-time students, as well as another 3,000 continuing-studies students, will have to figure out how to get to and from the new East Vancouver campus.
This week is orientation week, which means only about a quarter of students will be on campus every day. Classes for all students start Monday, Sept. 11. The move should be all but complete by the end of next week.
One student looking forward to be back at school is Alia Hijaab Ebayed. The chair of the Emily Carr Students Union is in her fourth and final year studying animation.
While she has considerable nostalgia for the campus on Granville Island because its small size meant students could, as she said, see “everyone, everywhere,” she’s not really all that sad about the change.
“I’m incredibly excited to move to the new campus,” she said. “The building being in east Van and Mount Pleasant is quite a natural progression because of the blooming art scene developing around this area. The new building allows for a lot of collaborative spaces.”
Hijaab Ebayed said there’s another reason why she wants to be in the building designed by Diamond Schmitt Architects. For years, a consultation process repeatedly asked students about what they needed in a new building.
“I have been really impressed with how it has been studentcentred and how the space does reflect that,” she said.
One significant sign of student input for Hijaab Ebayed are several gender-neutral washrooms.
“I think that’s an example of how much they cared about student input, which I think is pretty unique,” she said. “The building speaks for itself.”
From the outside, one of the distinctive elements of the building is the vertical dashes of colours on the exterior. They were chosen by faculty members Landon Mackenzie and Ben Reeves, and are based on the paintings of Emily Carr, the renowned B.C. artist the institution is named after.
Inside, three north-south atria span the building’s four storeys. They’re designed to bring light into the building even on a typical overcast day on the West Coast.
The building is a major achievement for Ron Burnett. After seeing students, staff and faculty settle into their new home, he’ll step down next July after leading the school as president since 1996. To recognize his achievement, the university’s board of governors has named ECU’s new library the Ron Burnett Library + Learning Commons.
Burnett said the new location means the university will be in the public eye much more, which will help it play a central role in building a new Vancouver that’s defined as much by the east side of the city as the west.
“Most importantly, the building will allow us to teach and learn as a community,” said Burnett, who is also the university’s vice-chancellor.
“The building is designed to be permeable, open. Anyone can wander in. Anyone who wants it can get a card for the library. The feeling that it’s owned by the city and the people of the city is fundamental to its entire purpose.”
Burnett said the two buildings the university was in on Granville Island were designed to handle up to 800 students — not the 2,000 full-time students expected to fill the halls of the new building.
“We are now finally matching what we do with the space that we have,” he said.
During a tour, Burnett pointed out two of the doors into the 400seat Reliance Theatre. They’re a single work by alumnus Edwin Neel, a Kwakwaka’wakw/Nuuchah-nulth artist. Both doors depict Kulus, a female thunderbird, but one side is a carving by the artist and the other a copy made with a CNC router — a computercontrolled cutting machine — with finishing touches by the artist.
Burnett said the doors illustrate one of the key educational approaches at Emily Carr University: the relationship between analog and digital.
“The key characteristic of Emily Carr is that the digital and analog coexist,” he said. “There is tension and innovation between them. It is all centred on a transformative model of learning and recognizing what’s important in terms of creativity.”
Also unique are the visual-arts studios that include the Gordon and Marion Smith Studio on the fourth floor.
Gordon Smith, now 98 and both an alumnus and former faculty member, has seen the light-filled studio that faces north and east over the railroad tracks. Burnett said Smith responded to the studio and building by saying, “Look what’s happened to the art school!”
Part of the campaign to raise enough money for the new building meant going to the private sector to raise $22 million. In recognition of the generosity of donors, ECU has named various parts of the building after them. They include Rennie Hall after realtor Bob Rennie, the Libby Leshgold Gallery after the family of the founder of Reliance Properties and the Wilson Arts Plaza after Chip and Shannon Wilson. Chip Wilson is the founder of Lululemon Athletica.
Burnett said without the support of the Wilsons, ECU couldn’t have afforded an arts plaza where people will be able to gather and watch films, video and animation in public and other programming.
Naming after prominent donors, Burnett pointed out, is a common practice all around the world.
“We have to acknowledge and respect what these people have done,” he said. “I’m not at all defensive about it.”
Rita Wong, president of the Emily Carr University Faculty Association, said it was a surprise to her and faculty members when they arrived on campus to find the east plaza already named after the Wilsons. The faculty association has about 180 regular and sessional faculty.
Wong pointed out that alumnus Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun has already called on B.C. to be renamed to honour Indigenous people who still retain legal title to most of the province. She also cited the City of Vancouver’s Canada 150+ place-naming policy to make naming more culturally diverse with a particular focus on re-establishing Indigenous names.
“With all due respect to Chip Wilson whose generosity we really are grateful for, I would hope that he has the generosity of spirit to have the plaza named after something in line with the city’s 150+ place-naming project as opposed to the same old, same old,” she said.
The Granville Island campus, she said, didn’t have corporate and family names on its various parts in the north and south buildings.
“We were surprised to see a name here, a name there,” said Wong, who teaches critical and cultural studies. “We weren’t part