TELUS GARDEN
03 Aug 2016
Vancouver’s “Greenest Office Building” features open atriums to outdoor garden spaces, a terrace with solar cell-clad shades, passive ventilation, and is currently targeting LEED Platinum certification.
Imagine working in an office building with daylight and open atriums that connect to outdoor garden space. Vancouver-based architecture firm Henriquez Partners Architects was hired to design the greenest office building in the city for the Canadian telecommunications company TELUS, and with this opportunity they re-envisioned what an office building could look like, with beautiful results.
The one-million-square-foot TELUS Garden is a mixed use development that consumes an entire city block in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, and this building is green as it gets. The complex comprises a 53-floor residential tower and a 24-floor office tower, which includes the nine floors that hold the company’s national headquarters.
Construction was completed in 2015, and the headquarters are targeting LEED Platinum certification, with many sustainability goals tied to the base building systems. The TELUS Garden building employs passive ventilation, copious daylighting, radiant heating and cooling, integration of indoor and outdoor space, and the extensive use of local wood throughout.
Among the green building components featured in the TELUS Garden hub is a raised access floor with a displacement ventilation system which uses 100-percent outside air, as well as radiant exposed concrete ceilings. Systems such as these actually informed the design of the building, as the concrete radiant ceiling had to be largely left exposed in order for the heating system to function properly and efficiently.
While Henriquez Partners Architects were the project architect for this eco-friendly, soon-to-be LEED platinum office building, OMB Architects (Office of Mcfarlane Biggar designers + architects) was hired as the interior architects on the project. They approached the design with a goal to match the sustainability of the LEED platinum structure throughout the interior details.
The TELUS headquarters also incorporates exterior space into the work environment, in the form of a terrace with solar cell-clad shades, a quiet garden space, and sweeping views of the cityscape.
