At the northwest corner of the intersection of Lake City Way and Lougheed Highway, just behind SkyTrain’s Lake City Way Station near the southwest base of Burnaby Mountain, a new kind of city has come online.
Built on a site with a long industrial memory of Metro Vancouver, it has no storefronts, no plazas, and no residential towers. It rarely sleeps. It consumes vast amounts of electricity, swallows trucks of gear and people alike, and in the very end leaves behind only moving images and shared memories.
This site was previously occupied by Dominion Steel, a forge and foundry that supplied structural steel for major infrastructure projects across the region, including the Ironworkers Memorial Memorial Bridge. The bridge was named in memory of 19 workers killed when it collapsed during construction in 1958, a tragedy that remains a defining moment in B.C.’s construction history.
Earlier this year at the location, Bridge Studios opened Lake City Studios — a 1.3 million sq. ft. complex on a 19-acre site at 3333 Lake City Way that now stands as the largest purpose-built film studio facility in North America, according to its architects.
This is also the largest purpose-built film studio campus constructed from scratch in Metro Vancouver in decades, setting it apart from a wave of newer studios that have opened through the conversion of existing warehouse buildings — including the nearby Mammoth Studios, which occupies a former Sears Canada warehouse and distribution centre.
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As previously reported by Daily Hive Urbanized, construction on Canada’s largest film and television production studio began in late 2022. By the time construction was entirely completed in Summer 2025, the project’s cost had reached approximately $350 million.
The Walt Disney Company became the first tenant of the campus upon its very low-key and quiet opening, bringing its major productions to the state-of-the-art facility. To better meet Disney’s timeline for taking occupancy, approximately 130 electricians worked around the clock during the final stages of construction to complete the project’s extensive and complex electrical systems.
Comprising 339,000 sq. ft. of soundstage space across 21 soundstages, seven production offices across over 100,000 sq. ft. of office space, and more than 300,000 sq. ft. of space for mill shops, wardrobe, props, set decoration, and construction bay areas, and a massive underground parkade, Lake City Studios marks a new ceiling for the physical infrastructure of screen production in this region and a revealing snapshot of an entertainment industry in flux.
Yet the sheer scale of what was being built was not always easy to grasp on paper.
“At one point, the client, along with their president of construction, they were in the parkade, and the client looked around the space, and he said to their president of construction, ‘Did you know it was this big?’” said Craig Mitchell, principal architect of Arc Studio’s Vancouver office and architect of record for the project, during a presentation earlier this year.
“It was a comical moment,” he added, but also very revealing.
FILM STUDIOS ARE MORE THAN JUST A SIMPLE BLACK BOX
For the design team and construction teams — with the construction contractor being Bird Construction — the project’s complexity rivalled that of a hospital. For the developer, their client, it initially appeared to be “just another simple black box.” Reconciling those two perceptions would prove to be one of the project’s greatest challenges.
This is Bridge Studios’ third film studio campus location in Metro Vancouver, following their longtime major campus on Boundary Road and the small 2023-built Griffiths campus in the Edmonds area — both also situated in Burnaby. All three locations are owned by Vancouver-based real estate developer Larco Investments.
To understand what Lake City Studios represents, one must first understand what a film studio actually is — and why its architecture is among the most misunderstood contemporary building types.
“Film studios, while being simple black boxes, are subtly far more sophisticated. They are black boxes for the purpose of manipulating light. They are black boxes for the building of sets derived from history, the imagination or even historical imagination,” said Mitchell.
“They are soundless. Sound neither penetrates the black box space nor escapes.”
Mitchell has spent much of his career designing soundstages across North America, contributing to nearly four million sq. ft. of the industry’s studio space. Even so, Lake City Studios pushed every known boundary. At its core, the building type is deceptively minimal — windowless volumes designed to exclude the world. Yet within those volumes lies an extraordinary density of technical, spatial, and operational complexity.
Film studios must manipulate light with absolute precision. They must absorb sound so completely that explosions can occur in one soundstage, while whispered dialogue is recorded next door. They must support enormous structural loads while remaining visually empty — vast, column-free interiors that can transform into a medieval castle one day and a futuristic city the next.
“Two essential things that come from cinema are movement and time,” said Mitchell, citing French cinema and literature philosopher Gilles Deleuze. “And architecture is the vehicle which permits a film director the opportunity to capture the movement of actors in any place, anywhere and at any time.”
At Lake City Studios, that philosophical idea became a concrete reality — literally.
Lake City Studios occupies an industrially-zoned site chosen as much for logistics as for imagination. Adjacent to a SkyTrain station on the Millennium Line, the complex can accommodate an estimated 5,000 full-time and part-time workers per day without relying solely on cars. By car, the site is also roughly 30 minutes from Vancouver International Airport and downtown Vancouver — close enough to attract A-list actors and Hollywood executives, but distant enough to accommodate the heavy industrial vehicles that film production requires.
CONCEALING A HUB FOR CREATIVE GOLD
The complex is generally divided into two massive building wings — an L-shaped structure and a larger rectangular building — which together form a horseshoe-shaped studio complex when viewed from above. The two wings are directly connected by a two-storey office bridge spanning the Lake City Way entrance driveway. From north to south, the continuous building fronting the street spans nearly 1,000 ft. (about 300 metres) in length.
The L-shaped building contains eight soundstages alongside administrative and production offices. The other building houses the remaining soundstages and their dedicated support spaces. Each soundstage operates as its own sealed ecosystem, with separate security, services, and amenities — reflecting the high value of secrecy in modern film production.
“What’s happening inside one [soundstage], the information that’s contained in there is gold,” said Mitchell. “You don’t share it with another one. So, all of these are very secured spaces.”
Together, the buildings function less like a single workplace and more like a 24-hour industrial city.
Once the sprawling campus is 100 per cent being used by productions, Bridge Studios anticipates revenues of as much roughly $1 million per day, driven by around-the-clock activity. Sets are built and dismantled at all hours. Caterers deliver meals overnight. Carpenters, painters, makeup artists, costume designers, and technicians work deep into the early morning.
“There’s kind of no access to natural daylight, so it’s easy to lose awareness of whether it’s day or night anyways. All that really matters is the production,” said Mitchell.
If scale defines Lake City Studios visually, silence defines it technically.
For Jubril Idowu, an architect with Arc Studio and the project architect who guided Lake City Studios through occupancy, the challenge was unprecedented.
“Soundstages are black box spaces, they are very quiet spaces. One can hear a pin drop when sound has occurred. But when sound occurs, they disappear — they don’t reverberate,” explained Idowu.
Achieving that level of acoustic control was particularly difficult given the site’s surroundings. SkyTrain passes frequently mere metres away. Aircraft on the airport’s flight path fly overhead. Trucks rumble constantly along the highway and the industrial area’s internal service roads. Mechanical equipment occupies rooftops. Adjacent soundstages may be filming explosions, gunfire, or chase scenes.
To solve this, the design team employed massive multi-layered wall assemblies separated by acoustic isolators — walls so thick they resemble rooms in themselves. Sound waves entering the first layer are absorbed, dampened, and nearly extinguished before reaching the next.
Across the facility, acoustic blankets covering the equivalent of 12 American football fields were installed to prevent sound transmission between soundstages.
Doors posed another challenge. Film sets arrive on trucks — often enormous, fully assembled structures. The openings needed to accommodate them had to be equally massive and perfectly sealed. The solution came in the form of specialized acoustical sliding doors, informally known as “elephant doors,” sourced from one of the few manufacturers in the continent capable of producing them at this scale.
Inside each soundstage, directors wield near-total control. With a single switch, they can shut down all mechanical systems and lighting. Red and blue signal lights outside each soundstage regulate behaviour with ritual clarity: blue means entry is permitted; red means filming is underway, and silence is absolute.
The acoustic requirements alone would have made Lake City Studios a technical feat. Structurally, it became something else entirely.
The building rests on deep foundations and a six-storey structural system designed to support extraordinary loads. In total, enough concrete was poured to fill 30 Olympic-sized swimming pools, while the 8,300 tonnes of structural steel used is equivalent to 36 Statues of Liberty.
Concrete slabs directly above the underground parkade are rated for 500 lb per sq. ft., insulated to prevent sound transmission into the soundstages from vehicle engines, movement, and car alarms below. The slabs also function as two-way systems, structurally separated from adjacent soundstages to eliminate vibration transfer.
Inside the soundstages, there are no columns. Spans of steel beams and open-web joists push the limits of what can be transported and erected on site. Ceiling heights range from 50 ft. to as much as 75 ft. clear, allowing for lighting rigs, suspended vehicles, flying stunts, and complex camera movements.
During construction, Bridge Studios requested the removal of walls between some soundstages to create a single, double-sized volume capable of accommodating massive set pieces and large-scale action sequences.
Major production tenants requested last-minute changes — removing walls, enlarging soundstages, altering layouts — to meet immediate production needs.
There are three larger soundstages — a 42,000 sq. ft. soundstage from combining soundstages 5 and 6, a 35,000 sq. ft. soundstage from combining soundstages 11 and 19, and another 35,000 sq. ft. soundstage from combining soundstages 13 and 17. The remaining 15 individual soundstages, not combinable, range from as small as 7,900 sq. ft. to as large as 20,300 sq. ft.
The exterior of the largest combined soundstage, distinguished by its exceptional height, is located at the southwest corner of the site, where it is prominently visible from the highway and to SkyTrain passengers.
Behind the secretive spectacles, Lake City Studios is engineered first and foremost for safety.
Each soundstage is a standalone fire compartment, capable of containing a blaze long enough for thousands of occupants across the entire complex to evacuate. Automatic sprinkler systems cover every sq. ft. of floor area, calibrated for ceiling heights rarely seen outside aircraft hangars. High-sensitivity smoke detectors feed into a two-stage alarm system, minimizing false alarms that could shut down neighbouring productions unnecessarily.
Emergency lighting, backup power, and fail-safe door systems ensure that even in a blackout, occupants can find their way out. In soundstages that can be combined into even larger volumes, perimeter lighting systems guide movement through otherwise disorienting spaces.
“Life safety in a facility of this scale demanded not just rigorous engineering, but also a degree of testing, making sure safety never goes in the way of scenes and storytelling,” said Idowu, adding that the campus is “designed to function like a fortress of safety behind the scenes.”
Late in the design process, Bridge Studios made a decisive move: Lake City Studios would be entirely fossil fuel free, instead completely relying on electricity for all of its building systems.
This decision required the construction of a new electrical substation to support the enormous power demands of the campus. Film production generates intense heat — from lighting, equipment, and dense occupancy — making cooling a far greater priority than heating. Electric systems proved more compatible with operational needs than traditional fossil fuel-powered equipment.
The facility includes extensive recycling areas, composting provisions, and electric-vehicle charging for 10 per cent of its 1,100 vehicle parking stalls in the underground parkade. As well, there is ample space to park film trailers across the site at ground level.
Speed, cost, and conventional construction methods ultimately shaped many decisions — underscoring the tension between sustainability ideals and industrial reality.
The film industry’s needs and standards have changed dramatically in recent decades, and Lake City Studios reflects that shift.
All major workspaces are accessible. Elevators connect production offices, costume shops, and support spaces. Washrooms are gender-neutral and distributed throughout. Corridors are unusually wide, allowing mobility devices to circulate easily even during peak activity.
Accessibility considerations extended beyond physical movement. The design team also considered sensory conditions — recognizing that intense sound and lighting environments can overwhelm neurodivergent individuals. The director’s “kill switch,” which instantly restores a calmer environment, became an unexpected accessibility tool.
Not every accessibility attempt succeeded.
One design problem involved doors where people might approach from both sides. Building rules required the window in the door to start at a certain height, which conflicted with safety handrail requirements.
When the design team adjusted the window height to meet one rule, it ended up violating another. They explored alternatives — such as adding peepholes or using mirrors so people could see if someone was coming — but building regulators for the City of Burnaby rejected those ideas. In the end, municipal authorities required the windows to be covered with opaque film.
The architects believe this made the situation worse, since people can no longer see someone approaching from the other side, creating greater safety and accessibility challenges, especially for people with mobility issues.
“Lesson learned,” said Mitchell.
CONCEIVED AMID THE INDUSTRY’S PEAKS AND TROUGHS
A number of features included in the original design were ultimately removed or scaled back during construction as part of cost-control, value-engineering efforts.
These changes included the elimination of planned ground-level commercial units intended for cafes or restaurants, as well as rooftop amenity spaces that were designed to accommodate sports courts, landscaped areas, and outdoor spaces for catered events and wrap parties. The rooftop design had also required additional acoustic and fire-protection measures due to its location above soundstages, adding to its cost and complexity.
Other elements cut from the project included an exterior catenary lighting system spanning the central drive aisle between buildings, exposed structural trusses at the main entrances that were intended as architectural and branding features, and a range of higher-end interior finishes, many of which were replaced with more economical alternatives.
The opening of Lake City Studios did not occur in a stable industry.
This project was planned years earlier when Metro Vancouver was facing an immense shortage of the major studio space needed to secure major productions, with this shortage of suitable space even sending some productions elsewhere in Canada and the United States. This period also coincided with an unprecedented, multi-year surge in global production spending by Disney, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Paramount, HBO, and Apple TV, as streaming giants competed aggressively to grow their subscriber bases.
But construction then unfolded alongside pandemic aftershocks, steep inflation for the market costs for construction, prolonged U.S. labour strikes by actors and writers that had a ripple effect on productions around the world, rapid advances in artificial intelligence-generated content, and geopolitical uncertainty over film production tariffs.
Disney signed an agreement to occupy completed portions of Lake City Studios starting in August 2025 — before construction on the entire campus reached 100 per cent completion. Provisional occupancy was granted while other areas remained active construction zones, fenced off and monitored. Consultants, contractors, and authorities worked through exhaustive testing regimes to ensure code compliance under immense pressure.
Lake City Studios’ buildings were intentionally designed to allow for a future change of use, should the conditions shaping Hollywood North in Metro Vancouver decline. For decades, Metro Vancouver’s film and television industry ranked as the third largest in North America, behind only California and New York City. Over the past decade, however, the rapid expansion of studio facilities in Georgia — combined with the state government’s very aggressive tax credits and production incentives — has recently propelled Atlanta into third place, pushing Metro Vancouver to fourth, still ahead of Greater Toronto.
The site’s industrial zoning, the heavy structural capacity of the buildings, and the adaptable layout mean it could one day transform into logistics space, warehouse storage, or another use entirely. The concrete slabs, designed for extreme loads, could support racking systems.
“This is the type of building that should the film industry kind of disappear, where they maybe don’t need to use these types of spaces anymore, the building could transform itself and become a different use, said Mitchell.
“Previously, the client was also heavily invested in self-storage facilities, and that was one of the things that they kind of discussed in the background if this doesn’t work… So, flexibility. When you’re working with big, vast spaces, there’s a lot of potential for being able to do lots of different things.”
In addition to Lake City Studios, as previously reported by Daily Hive Urbanized, Larco Investments had plans to pursue a fourth Bridge Studios campus — a comparably-sized brand new purpose-built campus in the Big Bend industrial area of South Burnaby. The City of Burnaby conducted a bidding process seeking a proponent to long-term lease or buy a large vacant municipal property for the purpose of developing a film and television production studio or other economically significant uses.
The municipal government selected Larco’s proposal in 2021, but the property sale and development project — which had reached the preliminary design stage with Arc Studio’s involvement — were completely scrapped in 2024 without a specific reason provided, with the City signalling it would instead explore the potential of protecting the site’s environmental and recreational uses.
Most people will never step inside Lake City Studios. They will experience it indirectly — through scenes that unfold seamlessly, through silence that feels natural, and through camera movements that seem effortless.
That invisibility is the ultimate measure of success.
As Mitchell explained, the role of architecture is not to design the movie itself, but to create the conditions that allow filmmaking to happen.
Earlier this year, those conditions quietly came online in Burnaby. And with them, a new chapter in Metro Vancouver’s architecture for imagination.
You might also like:
– Hollywood North can make anything: Why Percy Jackson proves Vancouver’s film crews are among the world’s best
– Proposal to build new major South Burnaby film and television production studio cancelled
– This Japanese Pine tree in Port Moody is a legacy of Disney’s “Shogun” filming
– Is Hollywood North thriving? Major Vancouver film producer weighs in
– Vancouver city councillor urges need to support Hollywood North’s global talent
– Disney opens Industrial Light and Magic’s largest studio at The Stack tower in Vancouver
– Opinion: Why creative immigration is the missing piece for Hollywood North’s evolution and growth in Vancouver
