re-orient the city and to reset the bar for
environmentally progressive construc-
tion, it's also the most ambitious.
Given the principals involved, that
ambition is no surprise. The project
was a collaboration between one of the
city's corporate titans, Telus
CEO Darren
Entwistle, and Westbank Projects Corp.
president Ian Gillespie, the developer
behind such Vancouver landmarks as
the Shaw Tower on Cordova, the neigh-
bouring Fairmont Paci‡c Rim and the
Shangri-La. Gillespie enlisted his long-
time collaborator Gregory Henriquez,
the architect responsible for Gillespie's
Woodwards redevelopment and 60 West
Cordova, to help design a building that
would raise the bar for environmental
accomplishment and reset the emotional
centre and principal orientation of Van-
couver's increasingly pedestrian-friendly
downtown.
The eye-stopping result is both lavish
and literal, especially if you're looking
north or south on the adjacent streets.
With a 300-foot east-west, street-level
canopy and a four-storey cantilevered
free form that runs through the build-
ing and extends, controversially, from
the middle of Seymour to the middle
of Richards, Telus Garden has broken
the north-south dominion of those two
trafic streets and, inally, connected
West Georgia from the pedestrian
thoroughfare on Granville toward the
library, the Queen Elizabeth Theatre
and, soon, the big park where the via-
ducts once stood.
Inside, the spaces feel capacious
and the construction is all
LEED (Lead-
ership in Ener¤y and Environmental
Design) Platinum. Thanks to a triple-
glazed building envelope, supplemented
by sunshades and solar panels, Telus
Garden will consume 80 per cent less
"ours is a business of
information–of the exchange of
ideas and strategies," says cbre's
norm taylor. "we need to know
what's happening. we want
people talking all the time,
and not just in structured
meetings. so we want
those collisions"
Congratulations to the
FortisBC Efficiency in
Action Award winners!
