Client’s Challenge
The White Sturgeon Conservation Center is a breeding facility designed to help rebuild the declining Nechako River sturgeon population. The building needed to stay within a tight footprint and house a series of carefully graduated tanks to enable incubation, ensure bio safety and allow the fish to mature. Initially, the number of tanks needed exceeded the building’s footprint. Once the budget was approved, timing was tight– it all needed to be finished before the  first frost.

Our Solution
We devised a fully and partially enclosed centralized building that accommodated the mandated footprint and allowed for extra tanks outside. The design incorporated three structures into one including a lean-to and outbuilding. This allowed the total number of tanks to grow to 47-37 inside and 10 outside. The blueprint changed on the fly, requiring maximum flexibility to ensure we met the completion deadline. Also incorporated into our design footprint was an innovative fully housed RAS – Recirculation Aquaculture System – which recirculates 98% of the water.