Campus
The campus is located on Cranbrook Hill, overlooking the city of Prince George from the west, and is widely renowned for its innovative architecture. The separate buildings are linked by an agora that is partially below ground level. It is the efficient heating system connected to all the core campus buildings that permits UNBC to pursue its goal of heating the university by the gasification of clean-burning, renewable wood pellets, collected from the waste of pine trees killed by the mountain pine beetle epidemic.
UNBC's buildings are designed to represent the northern landscape. The "Winter Garden" area has a flowing blue staircase below a ceiling of wooden lattices, representing the west-coast rain forests. The cafeteria has a lighthouse design representative of the North's rugged coastline. There are also other structures, such as triangular glass peaks, that represent mountains and act as sky-lights for the UNBC Bookstore.
On October 13, 2010, UNBC was co-awarded the Campus Sustainability Leadership Award by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) for its bio-energy project, which targets a reduction in fossil fuel use by supplying 85% of UNBC's heating needs.
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