Carcross Learning Centre
Carcross, Yukon
The Carcross Learning Centre was built by the Carcross/Tagish First Nation to showcase the community’s art, culture and history. This facility serves as a multipurpose gathering place for the community and is intended to help users learn the culture and traditions of the Tlingit and Tagish peoples. The Centre includes a Great Hall, food preparation space, classrooms, administration spaces, and a climate controlled archive.
The mechanical design was based on a 4-pipe fan coil with a central heat recovery heat pump plant. An interesting facet of the building’s high-performance envelope design is that under full occupancy, the Great Hall will still require cooling when outdoor temperatures drop well below freezing. Rather than adopting the conventional approach of using outdoor air to cool the Great Hall during the winter and losing the heat generated by its occupants, the 4-pipe system was designed to recover that heat and use it to heat other parts of the building. A demand-control ventilation system measures CO2 concentrations within the building and only provides ventilation air when required by occupancy. The mechanical plant was designed for future connection to a proposed geoexchange system, which would further reduce the building’s already low ecological footprint.