connect. expand. socialize.

The Fort Vancouver Multicultural Center is the heart of activity on the Fort Vancouver Historic Site. As visitors come to the site to explore the historic fort and the nearby river and bridge, the Multicultural Center’s amenities provide opportunity for more experiences, more cultural immersion, and a social hub for their visit. The Center provides visitors with a stop for food in a full-service cafe, a handy bicycle shop for repairs and rentals, a multicultural exhibition for rotating artifacts and animal shows, and a small auditorium for cultural showings, and community events.

The strong diagonal axis through the building activates the site with a social path that leads from and to main attractions on the site. This axis connects the center with the site’s rich history, the historic fort itself, the surrounding hilly landscape, and views of the nearby river and orchard. As a social and physical path connecting various routes of circulation, the diagonal supports foot and bicycle traffic.

The Center has strong outdoor connections with its integrated window-paned garage doors that can open to the outside and expand interior spaces to the outdoors, providing additional social space, seating, and opportunity for larger community events.

The building was originally built and used as an automobile repair shop in the 1930s. With the auto-inspired and PNW-inspired material selection, the atmosphere will convey this history. Industrial steel made from the site’s very own blacksmith, warm locally sourced woods some stained to resemble gasoline, and the quirky use of reclaimed automobile and bicycle parts integrated into the furniture and flooring. This space has a quirky, yet comfortable personality.

What I love about this project: being able to take a simple shell of a building and turn it into something dynamic and compelling that pulls visitors through the site and inspires them to check out all the interesting attractions of the site!