Telus Garden office tower boasts street overlapping 'protruding box' architectural features
As construction crews come close to topping out the 22-storey Telus Garden office tower, some of its most prominent architectural features are beginning to take form.
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The 500,000 square foot, 289-foot tall office tower will include a pair of protruding boxes that hover high above the sidewalks and road lanes of Richards Street on its east side and Seymour Street on its west side as an overextension of the low-rise portion of the building.
A third box will hang on the tower’s south side, over an alleyway that separates the tower from the Kingston Hotel, while a fourth box will be built onto the upper floors of the building’s northwest corner.
Richards Street
Image: Telus Garden/Henriquez Partners Architects
Image: Vancity Buzz
Seymour Street
Image: Telus Garden/Henriquez Partners Architects
Image: Vancity Buzz
Protruding architectural forms are nothing new to Vancouver and are used to enhance the appearance of designs that would otherwise be deemed highly conventional and geometric. Such protruding features can take form as merely window bays on a single-family home, but they are perhaps most striking on some of the city’s tallest buildings – the Shangri-La Vancouver Hotel and the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel.
However, Telus Garden’s 4-storey tall Seymour and Richards Street protruding boxes are far more pronounced – overlapping on not only the sidewalk but nearly two lanes of road traffic on both roads. Both street overlapping boxes are glass enclosed and will be designed to be lounge spaces with hovering meeting rooms in ‘boxes within the box.’
Image: Telus Garden/McFarlane Biggar Architects
Image: Telus Garden/McFarlane Biggar Architects
Image: Telus Garden/McFarlane Biggar Architects
Image: Telus Garden/McFarlane Biggar Architects
Image: Telus Garden/McFarlane Biggar Architects
Image: Telus Garden/McFarlane Biggar Architects
Image: Telus Garden/McFarlane Biggar Architects
The $750-million Telus Garden is a two-part project that also includes a 443-foot tall residential building that also has architectural merits on its own. Its 46-storeys are spliced into what seemingly appears to be three large protruding boxes that imperfectly overlap over the other for a contrasting effect.
Both the office and residential towers will be built to a LEED Platinum certification and are slated for a 2015 completion.
Image: Telus Garden/Henriquez Partners Architects
Image: Telus Garden/Henriquez Partners Architects
Image: Telus Garden/Henriquez Partners Architects
Featured Image: Telus Garden/Henriquez Partners Architects