Mountain Man
Senior Member
Would love to see some colour, maybe a giant mural on some of those grey buildings.
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- Thread starter The Familia
- Start date
CT (Chinese_T)
Active Member
The Familia
Active Member
Glad that never happened. Would like for the base and the surrounding Complex below the tower to be redone.
Silence&Motion
Senior Member
I happened to come across a reclad in Manhattan that made me feel not as bad about what's happening in Calgary:
Apparently the building was about to get a historical designation, so the owner stripped off all the ornamentation and replaced it with the cheapest possible siding. I don't know how some people can sleep at night.
Apparently the building was about to get a historical designation, so the owner stripped off all the ornamentation and replaced it with the cheapest possible siding. I don't know how some people can sleep at night.
zagox
Active Member
Agree that the building owner doesn't deserve any civic awards, but I put that down to bad policy incentives as well. If historical designation results in a loss of value to the property owner, the long-term results are usually bad for everyone involved. Historical preservation cannot be sustained at gunpoint.
KensingtonLurker
New Member
Not a full reclad, but this is the former Birchcliff Energy building on 4 Ave SW between 5th and 6th St. It took some digging because I couldn't really find much about the project, but it appears it will be known as The Westley Hotel and it will be part of The Tapestry Collection from Hilton. Looks like there will be patios on both the East and West sides.
Attachments
Roaring Flames
Senior Member
gsunnyg
Senior Member
My personal gloomy opinion, office spaces the size of this building should be torn down/re purposed to residential buildings. I don't know how the economics of the process will be justified as someone will lose money but they gotta start picking away at all this extra office space in the City somehow. Anything less than 10 storeys and vacant should either be torn down and sold off to a residential developer or repurposed to residential.
UrbanWarrior
Senior Member
That's simply not how capitalism and democracy work. Can't just appropriate and demolish structures because they're empty. Smaller offices are slowly and surely being converted already, with more to come.
gsunnyg
Senior Member
I meant within reasonable grounds. If there was a choice between renovating an office tower in "hopes" of getting new tenants or just taking your loss now and selling the land to a developer. Theres no way the office market will be able to convert or renovate their way out of this mess. It's going to take a lot of creativity or just hitting the reset button on downtown and bring in more residential towers with ground level retail. Or the only other option is to renovate or convert at a snails pace and let most of those vacant buildings sit vacant for decades more, as a result we get a massive tax hole and a dead downtown core. No one wins with the latter option
Silence&Motion
Senior Member
This reclad is relevant to the thread on improving the CBD. Little changes like this that soften the street level facades of random office buildings can add up over time. This block is still a mess, but this building now sets a precedent for more renovations or new developments. Who knows, maybe the Regency suites next door will one day be renovated with a podium that replaces the driveway and surface parking lot, creating more retail spaces and a continuous street wall.
MichaelS
Senior Member
Boardwalk is starting to reclad their office that is connected to O'Neill Towers, at 929 7th Ave SW:
and a close up....
and a close up....
TELUS DOWNTOWN CAMPUS — HINDLE ARCHITECTS
www.hindle-architects.com
Roaring Flames
Senior Member
That cladding reminds me of Fallout 4. Yikes!
darwink
Senior Member
It is super neat! With the right design a data centre in downtown Calgary thanks to our weather could be incredibly energy efficient. Not many places where you can be assured of 360 nights or so a year below 20'C. With an aggressive strategy of isolating spaces for people, you can cold soak the thermal mass to a great degree. The vertical structure helps reduce the need for forced circulation - you just blast hot air out of chimneys on the roof with convection. Which I would hazard a guess these are:A couple more renders of the Len Werry reclad.TELUS DOWNTOWN CAMPUS — HINDLE ARCHITECTS
View attachment 321058View attachment 321059
doesn't elimate the need for mechanical cooling, and you still have the occassional warm night, data centres are still data centres, but reducing by quite a bit helps!
The entire lower building is also screened with 'digital art' - not does that mean dynamic art? who knows.
Here are some old interior shots from mechwave https://www.mechwave.com/project/telus-len-werry/
The tower when built was billed as the "coolest in Calgary" - designed to be kept at a constant 50 degrees year round. It was designed to have 90,000 square feet of office, but to eventually be converted to almost entirely equipment. The building was held up at CPC because it has no off street parking.