Vancouver, BC

Client   City of Vancouver 
Size   ~ 110,500 sf
Status   Design
Structural Engineering   Fast + Epp
Renderings   Mir.

PNE Amphitheatre

Replacing an existing open-air venue built in the 1960’s, the new Pacific National Exhibition (PNE) Amphitheatre will be a world-class destination for celebration, culture, and social connectivity for the local community and beyond. Designed to host up to 10,000 spectators with adaptable, state-of-the-art infrastructure, an exposed lawn, and an iconic mass timber roof, the venue will host a wide range of events and programming to enjoy year-round.

Tracing the gentle slope of the nearby Windermere Hill, the PNE Amphitheatre settles into Hastings Park on three points, framing vistas of the North Shore Mountains and surrounding verdant landscape, while creating an intimate atmosphere under the warm cover of the wood. Reinterpreting a traditional concrete shell typology, the precedent-setting starburst timber arch roof will be amongst the world’s largest, harnessing the compression capacity of mass timber to span an impressive 105m. The use of curved Glulam and Cross-Laminated Timber deck for the roof significantly reduces the embodied carbon compared to steel and concrete alternatives, and provides greater acoustic absorption than fabric structures

Revery is also providing visioning for the adjacent Festival Plaza and Hastings Creek daylighting. Contiguous to the Amphitheatre, the Festival Plaza will create a new urban heart of the park, featuring comfortable seating, public art, built-in festival and event infrastructure, and food trucks to support accessible public programming through all seasons. The future daylighted creek will extend its living edges through a protected riparian zone, gently bridging natural ecology with the social ecologies of the Festival Plaza and Amphitheatre, while achieving audience and viable area targets, preserving existing mature trees, fulfilling capture-and-clean rainwater management goals, and promoting curiosity around ecological restoration in an urban context.

Once complete, the renewed PNE Amphitheatre will be a vital contributor to Vancouver’s cultural ecosystem, amplifying under one roof the richness of the community’s creative, natural, and social setting.

The PNE Amphitheatre will augment the City’s Resilient Vancouver  and Climate Emergency Action Plan strategies and will demonstrate sustainable leadership on a national scale. The project is targeting Passive House and LEED Gold Certifications for enclosed spaces and, driven by the use of mass timber in the roof structure and back-of-house spaces, a 40% reduction in embodied carbon emissions compared to the baseline. The design will also follow Zero Emissions guidelines.