Capilano University’s new urban campus, known as CapU Lonsdale, has been awarded Interior Designers of Canada‘s 2021 Value of Design Award (VODA) of Merit in the category of Innovation in Institutional/Educational/Civic Design.

Showcasing the benefits of design thinking, the VODAs launched in 2018, and shine a spotlight on Canadian interior designers. CapU Lonsdale was selected as a winner for embodying the award criteria including an empathetic, inventive, and iterative process focused on the human experience within interior spaces.

“To win an award focused on the value of design and how that impacts the people who interact with the environment, means a lot,” says Sara Remocker, DIALOG Associate and Senior Interior Designer. “Knowing we have positively improved someone’s workplace and what they do is where the real satisfaction comes through our interior design work and what we always strive to achieve.”

Completed in 2020, North Vancouver’s CapU Lonsdale showcases a design that recognizes learning doesn’t just happen in the conventional classroom, but rather all around us and in the spaces in-between. 

The campus needed to create its own unique identity while connecting back to the main campus nestled in the forest. A discovery process gave rise to a novel concept that would bridge the two locations: if the Lonsdale campus wasn’t going to be in the forest, why not bring the forest into the campus? CapU Lonsdale tells the visual narrative of the metaphorical connection and experiences between a journey through education and an adventure through the nearby North Vancouver mountains. Integrating nature into the space also had the benefit of enhancing the concepts of connection, wellbeing, and informing the spatial qualities inside so they reflected those naturally created outside.

Congratulations to the entire project team including Coastal Integrated Solutions, Turner Construction, and WSP.