The Pacific National Exhibition (PNE) Amphitheatre renewal seeks to revitalize a historic site within the City of Vancouver’s Hastings Park-PNE Master Plan as a destination for celebration, culture, and social connectivity for the local community and beyond.
Replacing an existing open-air venue built in the 1960’s, the new Amphitheatre will be a world-class outdoor venue for up to 10,000 spectators. Designed with flexible, state-of-the-art infrastructure, a generous permanent stage, VIP seating, and an iconic mass timber roof, the venue will host a wide range of events and programming for the community and visitors to enjoy year-round.
The Amphitheatre’s precedent-setting starburst timber arch roof will be one of the largest in the world. Reinterpreting a traditional concrete shell typology, the roof harnesses the compression and carbon-sequestering capacity of mass timber to span an impressive 105m. Tracing the gentle slope of the nearby Windermere Hill, the form settles into the landscape on three points, framing vistas of the North Shore Mountains and the park’s verdant scenery, while creating an intimate atmosphere under the warm cover of the wood.
Revery is also providing visioning for the adjacent Festival Plaza and Hastings Creek daylighting. Contiguous to the Amphitheatre, the Festival Plaza will create a new urban heart of the park, featuring comfortable seating, public art, built-in festival and event infrastructure, and food trucks to support accessible public programming through all seasons. The future daylighted creek that will flow along the plaza’s edge will offer further opportunities to augment the natural and cultural setting of the site. This welcoming, programmed landscape will “Capture and clean” the first 48mm of rainwater within any 24-hour period and will be certified Salmon Safe.
Once complete, the renewed PNE Amphitheatre will be a vital contributor to Vancouver’s cultural ecosystem, amplifying under one roof the richness of the community’s creative, natural, and social setting.