Ok, I did this big fancy accurate looking map of the Engineering Building, but E2 didn't like it. Oh well. So I've got a really small crappy one instead. Deal.
_____________
<- |D C B |
To CCIT |_ _____ |
| | | A |-> To ICT
| | | |
|E | |___|
_| |_
|__F___|
The first portion of the Engineering Building to be completed was what is now called the E Block, finished in October 1964. At the time, it was one of five buildings on the University of Calgary campus actually used for education. The others were the Administration Building (then called the Arts and Education building), Science A, the Library Block, and parts of the Kinesiology building (the gold and red gyms).
Blocks C, D, and the lecture theatres in Block E came in December of 1966. Blocks A and B came soon after, in August of 1968.
All of these sections of the building have pretty much the same decor. Concrete, Brick, and this god-awful greenish stained wood. And then there's the basement in some sections. Going all industrial on us, with pipes running all over the place between us and the ceiling.
Block F was built in 1982. Thankfully, by that time they had invented this substance called "Drywall." Block F actually looks semi decent.
Block A: The A block is the home to the Electrical / Software / Computer Engineering Departments, although they are moving a fair amount of their stuff into the new Information & Technology Building, just to the east of the Engineering Building. There's a connection to the ICT Building just outside A103. It's got 5 floors total, with the basement and the sub-basement. Most of the labs and such are down there. A block also contains the two nicest lecture theaters in the building.
A201 is large, holding about 200 seats. The chairs are comfy, and have that springy thing on the seat that lets you lean back a bit. It has various AV hook-ups, so that professors can do slides and such from their laptops, or speak over the speakers if they don’t feel like speaking over the talking of students.
A101 is impossible to find your first time, since the actual room number is not actually posted anywhere near the room. It's the first room on your left as you head from the B block. It's got the same AV hookups as A201 has, but the chairs aren't nearly as comfortable, and the room has no clocks. It kinda sucks. But it's still better than the rest of the lecture theatres in the bloody building.
A Block is also home to one of the more interesting architectural tweaks I've ever seen. Apparently they were originally going to add another block of the building connected to A block at it's SW corner. They never did do that. They did, however, add the door that would have gone there. About half a story up the stairwell on the south end of the building is a door that opens out into nothing. They used to push people out of it onto crash mats during frosh week, until someone fell badly off the mat, and broke their wrist. Party Poopers.
Block B: Block B is home to the Chemical Engineering Department. Basically, it's got their offices, a few smaller labs, and some classrooms. The Frosh Foosball table is at the bottom of the stairwell in block B, the one that's immediately to your right as you head down the hallway from block A. Nothing else of interest is there.
Block C: Block C has some cool stuff. The basement has the Engineering Stores. They do stuff like machining components needed for student's projects, I think. They also engrave stuff. Also down there are the Thermodynamics labs. Really really old equipment. I don't think anything's changed since about 1985.
The sub-basement has some labs too, Fluid Mechanics and Mechanics of Materials. The Fluid Mechanics lab equipment seems fairly new, as in only about 10 years. The Mechanics of Materials equipment hasn't changed since 1980.
Second floor has the Dean's Office and the Undergrad office. Also, the Engineering Drop-In Center. EDIC is a place where you can go and get help from some grad students for most of the 1st and 2nd year common core classes.
The main floor of C block has the lobby, with a bunch of plaques, a few sculptures, and a table decorated to commemorate the victims of the Montreal Massacre, when gunman Marc Lepine burst into an Engineering building in Montreal and killed 14 women for daring to study Engineering.
Block D: There's just a bunch of offices and a few labs for the Chemical Engineers in here. I hardly ever have a reason to go into there. Although I did find (and stole) a cool yellow sticker saying "Warning: The KGB may be listening!" from this block. It's on my clipboard.
Block E: This is the block that most frosh will spend the most of their time in, as it contains the three most used lecture theaters on the 2nd floor. Right below them is the Engineering Lounge, with Allego's Cafe selling us some tasty food, and lots of people sitting around doing homework or chatting. On Friday afternoons, the Engineering Students Society puts on P.O.E.T.S. (Piss on Everything, Tomorrow's Saturday), with beer and usually foosball.
Also between the Engg. Lounge and the Lobby in C Block is the infamous shrinking hallway. Normally to go from the Lounge to the Lobby you have to go down 2 steps and up 3. But then someone realized, "Oh Shit! We need to put in a Wheelchair Ramp!" So, they put in a ramp, however the ceiling had already been put in place. So, as you rise up from the level of the Lounge to the level of the Lobby, the ceiling gets closer. The door you have to pass through at the end of it is barely large enough for me to walk through without ducking. I'm only 5'7".
The ESS office is also in E block, just south of the Lounge. This is where I lost my virginity.
Everything between that stuff and Block F is taken up by the Geomatics Engineering Department. It seems like they do interesting stuff, but I don't know much about them.
Block F: As mentioned earlier, this is the newest, and the nicest part of the building. This is the home of the Civil Engineering Department. The North half of it is offices. The South half, however, is a massive laboratory for the Civils. This is where they mix their concrete, break it, bend stuff, break stuff. I wish we got to play around with stuff like that.
Other Stuff: In the center there used to be a pond. Apparently my first year math professor once had a kid tossed into the pond, because he threw an apple. They took out the pond, and replaced it with this art thingie. It's a bunch of long sticks painted orange and red, arrayed so they're leaning against each other in kind of a tepee shape, except there's a lot more than you'd use in a tepee. It sits in the middle of a depression in a hill, kind of like a hill with the middle dug out. The fire sticks aren't nearly as cool as a pond would be.
We've also got a cairn with a bronze model of the planet earth. There's a plaque on the cairn showing the exact geotechnical data for that spot. Altitude, Longitude, Latitude, etc.
That's about it for the Engineering Building. It's ugly on the inside, not much better on the outside, and I try to spend as little time in it as possible