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Electronic Arts

Location: Burnaby, B.C.
Client: Electronic Arts (Canada) Inc.
Architect: Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership
General Contractor: PCL Construction Westcoast Inc.
Awards: 1999 CEBC Award for Excellence; 1999 CEBC Award of Merit
LEED: Silver Certification

The structural design of this high tech facility required a broad range of engineering solutions in order to create a building capable of satisfying the criteria of several stakeholders: Electronic Arts (Canada) Inc, the City of Burnaby, neighbors of the development, and the Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks.

Set on a slope in Burnaby's heavily wooded twenty two acre Discovery Park, the site design faced strict height, density, and aesthetic considerations; it had to be extensive without being intrusive. Innovative landscaping and a network of jogging trails add to the overall serenity and drama of the complex. The overall result was a beautiful building that enhances the entire area.

The essential requirement of the owner was that all functional space in the building would be interchangeable. Electronic Arts moves its personnel stations four to five hundred times a year to accommodate new projects and it was imperative to have a flexible work environment. Also, with so many diverse skills and corporate wealth under one roof, the design had to be welcoming to the public, yet utterly secure.

Glotman•Simpson was given the difficult challenge of designing an architecturally unique building that was wide open with few interior support walls and have a seventy foot high, forty inch thick, four hundred foot long feature wall running down the centre of the building. This created a difficult and complex seismic and wind resistance problem that had to be overcome with a unique seismic system, which required extensive "high end" analysis using recently advanced state of the art software to accurately design a building consisting of so many different materials and shapes. A sophisticated seismic solution requiring five four storey steel derricks set along a street and central hub core were used as both an architectural feature and for seismic resistance.

The complex contains three distinct, dedicated yet integrated components that are stepped down an eighty foot slope and are locked together horizontally and vertically with a four hundred foot glass enclosed street that extends through the entire complex. Columns in the street are round with round pipe braces and wide flange floor framing elements. A unique steel gusset system was designed with multiple reuses for efficiency to allow connection of wide flange members to pipe members for large seismic forces. The combination of concrete base, steel, and bracing derricks resulted in a highly ductile structure that, when forced to give, can do so without breaking.

In addition to the street and hub, the seventy foot high, forty inch thick, four hundred foot long quartzite clad feature wall flanks the main entry and public thoroughfare. Visually aligned with Gilmore Street to add to the drama and make it psychologically inviting, the wall flanks the glass encased main entry, which also doubles as a gallery for EA World. This wall cantilevers vertically sixteen feet and horizontally twenty feet from the end of the building structure and further supports a forty by thirty foot cantilevered canopy. The canopy was designed to have minimum vertical support from below and is suspended from the building structure at the extended end of the canopy. The internal portion of the main entry was originally designed with trigger frames, however, in cost savings it was determined that external columns could be implemented with a minimum of impact to the architecture. The floor framing layout was established in order that occupan