Chief Leonard George Building Delivers Hybrid Mass Timber Indigenous Housing in Vancouver

Located in Vancouver’s Woodland-Grandview neighborhood, the Chief Leonard George Building brings a nine-story hybrid mass timber housing project to the city’s urban Indigenous community, Naturally:Wood reported.

Completed in December 2025, the prefabricated mixed-use structure provides 81 non-market homes, including studio, one-, two-, three-, and four-bedroom units. The project, developed by the BC Indigenous Housing Society, also includes community gathering spaces, an on-site childcare center, and rooftop gardens for traditional food growing and play areas, supporting intergenerational living.

Structurally, the building uses a hybrid system combining a reinforced concrete core and parkade for seismic and lateral stability with a regular grid of steel columns supporting prefabricated CLT floor panels. Loads transfer through the steel frame to the concrete core and foundations, which provide primary lateral resistance.

The exterior envelope consists of more than 120 prefabricated mass-timber panels that integrate structure, insulation, air and vapor control layers, and triple-glazed windows. The high-performance system minimizes thermal bridging, meets Passive House airtightness standards, and features a basket-weave façade inspired by Coast Salish cedar weaving.

Precision-engineered steel-to-timber connections enabled rapid assembly, while encapsulated timber and fire-rated finishes meet code requirements for a nine-story building. The prefabricated hybrid approach cut construction time by nearly half compared with conventional concrete and reduced foundation demands and embodied carbon.