The Stack in downtown Vancouver is now Canada's greenest office tower

Construction progress on The Stack at 1133 Melville Street, Vancouver, as of June 1, 2022. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

The Stack is still a few weeks away from reaching full completion, but it is already gaining new superlatives for its design.

This 530-ft-tall, 37-storey office tower with 550,000 sq ft of premium AAA-calibre office space at 1133 Melville Street is Vancouver’s new tallest office building, and now Canada’s greenest commercial high-rise office tower.

As of last week, The Stack achieved the Canada Green Building Council’s (CaGBC) Zero Carbon Building Design standard certification — the first and largest designation for a building of its type.

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Green building design features that have earned The Stack its designation include low-carbon building systems, triple-pane glazing on all windows for superior insulation, rainwater management, enhanced air tightness, and a solar panel array on the tower rooftop.

the stack 1133 melville street vancouver construction june 1 2022

Construction progress on The Stack at 1133 Melville Street, Vancouver, as of June 1, 2022. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

“Oxford’s purpose is to create economic and social value through real estate and The Stack embodies Oxford’s ongoing commitment to sustainability and decarbonization,” said Andrew O’Neil, vice president of development at Oxford Properties, the developer and owner of the tower.

“The CaGBC certification is the culmination of over five years of planning to pioneer a new zero-carbon framework in a high-rise and architecturally-significant office tower, all while juggling the demands of realizing an economically-viable commercial project for our stakeholders. By being the first commercial high-rise office project in Canada to achieve this certification, we have garnered significant learnings that we can apply to future projects, and share with our peers, to lead the real estate industry to new levels of sustainability.”

Construction progress on The Stack at 1133 Melville Street, Vancouver, as of June 1, 2022. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

In addition to the CaGBC certification, the developer is also targeting a LEED v4 Platinum Core and Shell green building certification. The extent of the building’s green design is part of Oxford’s strategy to reduce the carbon footprint of its vast real estate portfolio by 30% by 2025.

The tower’s design by Vancouver architect James Cheng features a twisting stack of varying-sized boxes, with the different heights and forms also serving to create unique outdoor rooftop amenity spaces for tenants. The tower has a total of six outdoor decks and a large rooftop patio with views of the city, harbour, and mountains.

According to the developer, as of this month, The Stack is slated to reach official completion before the end of 2022. It is currently 70% pre-leased, with major tenants such as Ernst & Young, Business Development Bank of Canada, and law firms Blakes and DLA Piper.

Construction on The Stack first began in early 2019 on a mid-block site that was previously a parkade and small office building.

The Stack is one of two new office towers by Oxford that are amongst CaGBC’s Net Zero Building pilot, comprised of a total of 16 projects of a wide range of different typologies and uses.

In 2025, Oxford’s 59-storey The HUB office tower — the second office tower pilot — with 1.5 million sq ft of office floor area at 30 Bay Street in downtown Toronto will reach completion. It will overtake The Stack’s largest green building title.

The Stack 1133 Melville Street Vancouver

Artistic rendering of The Stack at 1133 Melville Street, Vancouver. (James Cheng Architects/Oxford Properties)

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