Sunlit timber walls and forest scents make this Vancouver school feel like an invitation to learn

Most school buildings today are utilitarian bunkers of scuffed vinyl and concrete block. But imagine a school where sunlight streams onto walls of honeyed timber, classrooms are nestled into home-like clusters, and the whole building feels like an invitation to learn.This is wək̓ʷan̓əs tə syaqʷəm Elementary School, designed by architects HCMA for the Vancouver School Board. The school, formerly known as Sir Matthew Begbie Elementary, got a new name – a Musqueam phrase that means “the sun rising over the horizon” – at the same time as the new building. (The Musqueam’s traditional language, on a journey of revitalization, has a set of orthographic symbols to write the sounds, rather than the Latin alphabet used in English.)