South Community Health Centre, 1960

• Constructed 1955/1960
• Location Vancouver, BC
• Architect Duncan McNab
• Use Healthcare

Since its completion in 1960, the South Community Health Centre has served as a hub for localized community health services in its South Vancouver neighbourhood. Designed by architect Duncan McNab, the building is a low-profile, 2-storey structure with a central courtyard, set into the gentle slope of the site. Under the radical new influences of International Modernism, which was still taking hold on Canada’s west coast at the time, McNab employed an exposed concrete and steel pseudo-exoskeleton infilled with non-load bearing brick walls and ribbon windows. Hanging from the eaves of the roof is a band of green-tinted rolled glass used to provide solar shading on the east and west exposures. Within the landscape, concrete breeze block was used to create screens and fencing mimicking the planes of interrupted brick on the building’s façade.