Both the 149-meter-tall Vancouver House and the
220-meter-tall TELUS Sky tower contain offices and residences with a mix of
uses, and their platforms have access to bicycle and pedestrian walkways. The
highest level of Energy and Environmental Design is also held by both. The
first LEED Platinum structure in the city is called Vancouver House, and TELUS
in Calgary now has the biggest LEED Platinum footprint in North America at
70,725 square meters.
The developers of TELUS Sky are striving to achieve LEED
Platinum certification for the office, retail, and art spaces of the building,
with the residential levels being targeted for LEED Gold. This will make TELUS
Sky the most environmentally sustainable
building in Canada over 200 meters in height.
Calgary and Vancouver have started an urban experiment to
build a downtown that is extremely dense. While Alberta is centered on a cluster
surrounded by low-density housing, the largest city in western Canada built a
densely populated core. In either form, both buildings serve as examples of how
to approach urban planning from a combination of living and working spaces,
fulfilling the community's need for an urban development that is genuinely
sustainable and vibrant.
In the brief but fruitful history of urban policy in the
city, Vancouver House represents a new chapter. A new urbanist platform with a
slender tower that strives to retain view cones through the city while
energising the pedestrian street, the tower and base are a new interpretation
of the regional typology known as "Vancouverism."
The Granville bridge, a nearby park, and the tower's
location at the entry to Vancouver all impose setback requirements on the
tower's site. What was left was a tiny triangular site that was almost
insufficient for construction. The 30-meter separation from the bridge was
intended to be the absolute minimum gap before the structure could expand once
it reached a height of 30 meters in the air, which would have allowed BIG to
double the floor plate.
As a result, Vancouver House gradually rises from the
ground, opening up new views of Vancouver's expansive natural surroundings. What
appears to be an absurd gesture is actually a very dynamic building that is
influenced by its surroundings.
In Calgary's downtown core, the TELUS Sky tower combines a
vibrant mix of living and working areas. Since the car is a central element of
Calgary Downtown, its programmatic consistency results in a night-time
population decline as individuals head home. By stacking the houses on an
office tower, TELUS Sky creates a programmatically diverse complex that is
active throughout the day.
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