Just in time for the Fall 2025 semester, the Burnaby campus of British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) has opened its first new purpose-built student housing building.
The Tall Timber student housing tower was built on the site of a surface parking lot south of the SW3 building on the western edge of the campus, next to Willingdon Avenue.
Construction first began in late 2022, and the project now doubles the number of on-campus student housing beds to roughly 800.
This is a 12-storey, mass-timber building, containing 469 student beds in a mix of communal-style single and studio units, as well as common areas, study and office spaces, and a new plaza.
Designed by architectural firm Perkins&Will and structural engineering firm Fast+Epp, the new BCIT student housing tower was built in a way that makes rooms more open and construction faster.
Instead of having big steel columns sticking into units, the columns are hidden inside the walls, so the units do not have awkward obstacles. Large prefabricated cross-laminated wood timber (CLT) panels are made off-site and then brought in, which speeds things up. The elevator and stair cores used a steel frame system that can be built quickly, letting other parts of the building move ahead without delays.