The Atrium Building at St Mary's University

Project Description

The Atrium building at St Mary’s University in Halifax is a three storey building connecting three existing campus buildings. The project features a Global Learning Commons on the main floor, a wireless, student centered, communal learning space that encourages interaction between faculty, students, and the community. The second and third floors provide areas for teaching, study, research, and offices.

The project features a vegetated roof and a three storey living bio-wall, flooded with natural light from the continuous skylight above. The relative lightness of the steel structure reinforces the design concept of a sheltered “outdoor” space. The use of castellated steel beams in the roof structure allows light to pass through the structure, maximizing the amount of natural daylight filling the space from the large skylights. It also demonstrates how innovative structural solutions serve to express and enhance architectural ideas. The curvilinear steel stair – a unique fabrication challenge – contrasted with the rectilinear nature of the structure, soars into the atrium space and wraps the concrete core, its lightness playing against the solidity of the concrete.