Cracks in SFU Surrey Wood Structure

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Cracks in SFU Surrey Wood Structure | Photo 09

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TECH114 D101

SFU spent 33 million dollars on the construction for this new surrey campus. Indeed, everyone loves the look of this campus as it was designed by award winning architect Bing Thom. The use of space is interesting and its appearance actually make me feel a little relaxed on some hard days of classes; I don’t know if this is the result of the “centreless” the design is supposed to deliver.

Despite everything, if you notice!!, there are so many big and small cracks in the wood beams/poles above our heads. In the Galleria itself, more than three quarters of the wood beams appear to have these cracks.

As my close observation goes, there are mainly two sizes of wood beams used in our campus interior: smaller ones and larger ones.

Now, the smaller ones are basically everywhere, it seems to be made out of one whole piece; that means there is no cut to be seen. For the larger ones, they also seem to be made out of a single piece with a split in its back which,I believe, is carved out so that the cable can be inserted through. So long straight crack in the back isn’t it, the little cracks all over the large wood beams are what I talk about.

As the my little research goes, it brings me to Bing Thom’s Portfolio in which some photos of the wood structure exists. Now, it doesn’t seem like that the photo was taken when the interior structure was newly finished but at least it was when the building was newer.
 The result is, the cracks were there already. 

This brings up a question that, if there already were cracks since it was newly built, how long would the structure last?


Nevertheless when comparing old photos to the current appearance of the wood structures, it appears that the amount of cracks in the wood has increased.

The main concern is whether the cracks are going to become larger that the roof would collapse.

And if it happens so, what SFU or Central City would plan to do?

Source:
Raven Design Consultants: http://www.ravendesign.ca/
Bing Thom’s Portfolio:
http://www.bingthomarchitects.com/

Story by;

Obi Vattanawong