Pine beetle logs form a small but showy part of the interior architecture for one of TRU's new signature buildings.

A passionate wood builder from Nicola Valley hopes projects like this one will help turn B.C.'s commercial and institutional construction industry toward the beauty, viability and economics of using wood.

John Boys, owner of Nicola Logworks, has built everything from cabins to institutional buildings and high-end log designer homes in Europe. And he takes pride in the fact his logs will grace the ceiling of the university's native-themed assembly hall.

“I'm hoping we'll see a lot of this,” Boys, a former president of an international log builders association, said as his crew set in place pre-cut pine logs carried by a 70-tonne crane.

“This building has a feature that's wood. But it's mostly concrete and steel and glass. When people talk about this building, they'll talk about this.”

Construction on the $32 million House of Learning and adjoining assembly hall is scheduled to be complete in spring next year.

The two buildings feature a few key architectural components, including a green “living wall” for air treatment inside the house of learning as well as the log ceiling of the 25-metre wide assembly hall, a circular concrete building designed to resemble an Interior Salish pithouse.

The roof structure on the circular assembly hall is known structurally as clear-span timber. It requires no posts running to the floor for support. Instead the load is transferred to the exterior concrete ring by massive Douglas fir glued and laminated beams.

Bolted between them are pine logs killed by mountain pine beetle last year and harvested recently by Nicola Valley's Aspen Planers. Before coming to the campus they were sent to a specialized kiln in Lumby to ensure the fungus that accompanies the beetle is killed so the structural integrity of the logs is not lost.

Working with other specialists as well as a Penticton firm that supplied the beams, Boys began planning more than a year ago for the ceiling, using a 3D computer modeling software to determine where each of the 492 logs must be cut in the company's Merritt manufacturing plant.

The logs that fit between beams began going up Friday and are scheduled to be in place today.

By showing off the construction and end result, Boys is hopeful more wood will be used in major construction in this province. While the B.C. Liberal government has a “wood-first” construction policy, Boys said it needs clear and consistent backing to overcome decades of reliance on wood and steel.

“In B.C. we don't have a wood culture in engineering.”

In fact one of Boys' newest employees is a German who studied wood engineering at home, a skill in short supply here.

Once Nicola Logworks is finished placing and bolting in the logs, a 2x8 frame roof will go on top to house electrical and sprinklers. Above that will go a membrane and a lightweight growing medium for what's intended to be a roof covered with native plants.

But the beauty of the blue-stained logs and their significance to the area's natural and economic history will be appreciated for decades from inside the hall.