TELUS Garden

The development features a 22-storey signature office tower in Vancouver BC, the first building in Canada built to have achieved the 2009 Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum standard and a 47-storey residential tower targeting LEED Gold standard. This landmark development reinforces TELUS’s commitment to the City of Vancouver, making a significant contribution to the city’s goal of becoming the greenest city in the world. It is also home to new headquarters for the Canadian telecommunications giant. The development features 10,000 square feet of green roofs providing organic produce for local restaurants, two elevated roof forests, local artwork and light displays. TELUS Garden boasts half a million square feet of new office space for multiple tenants and 424 new residential units, all setting new standards for environmental sustainability.

“We are thrilled to be recognized amongst such a high caliber of internationally acclaimed projects,” says Gregory Henriquez, Managing Partner for Henriquez Partners Architects. “We knew from the beginning TELUS was a special project. It has made an impression on Vancouver and set the tone for future sustainable multi-use high rises in our City. This would not have been possible without the visionary leadership of TELUS CEO Darren Entwistle and Westbank CEO Ian Gillespie who paved the way for innovative design and for setting compelling goals in technology and sustainability.”

TELUS Garden has radically transformed an aging block of downtown Vancouver into a future friendly community fusing beauty, functionality and environmental stewardship. It is one of the most technologically and environmentally-advanced sites of commerce, employment, and residence in the world and now with international recognition.

“Our goal was to design an office building to inspire its occupants, animate the streetscape and set a new standard for sustainable workplace design in North America,” continues Gregory. “The team is so thrilled, as this recognition from the 300 judging experts supports this vision”

To emphasize its status as a leading organization in the world of telecommunications that is also civically, culturally and environmentally minded, TELUS collaborated with Westbank to transform an entire city block of prime downtown Vancouver real estate into an inspiring workplace and a welcoming destination for the downtown community. The ambitious one-million-squarefoot, $750 million development designed by Henriquez Architects comprises a 24-floor office tower and a 53-floor residential tower, with nine floors dedicated to TELUS’ national headquarters.

office of mcfarlane biggar architects + designers (omb) was hired to create a thoroughly modern interior fit-out for the company’s 1000 employee office that would reflect its brand through an environment that would be understated and functional, warm and inviting and celebrating of its locale—Canada’s West Coast landscape. They wanted the interiors to underscore TELUS’ company values (innovation, teamwork, growth, change and opportunity); and also demonstrate the brand’s stature through the most state-of the-art workplace technologies.

Creating a distinct sense of place, omb imbued the complex with local materials, particularly natural toned wood, interior gardens and art. Setting the overall tone for the complex, the welcoming, wood-clad lobby/reception area was framed with an ombdesigned screen of abstracted leaf petals derived from TELUS branding, compressing the space and creating a sense of release in the multi-storey sky lobby garden. Inserted into this double height four storey space, floating “skybox meeting rooms,” an architectural first in Vancouver, increase programming capacity, link and animate every floor, merge the public and private realms and give users a memorable connection to the city. These float over raised gardens planted with live trees and shrubs – recalling many offices of the post-modern period, but not in vogue for many years.

The design team initiated and curated a comprehensive, customized art program to ensure the integration of art, interior design and client vision from the earliest stages. Founded on a nature-based theme - ‘Materials of Meaning’, the artworks, all by Canadian artists, express at different levels of abstraction the role of copper, wood and textiles as means to transfer knowledge, celebrate history and connect people.

Embracing TELUS’ combination of resident and mobile workers, omb fitted the headquarters with varied meeting spaces to foster different work styles, all fully yet discreetly wired. Offering differing levels of interaction along with acoustic and visual privacy, a variety of collaborative areas were constructed. The varied workspaces include standing touchdown (mobile) workstations along with formal meeting rooms, telepresence conference facilities and various lounges, designed to promote impromptu collaborations and teamwork. Interior gardens and planted roof decks also function as meeting places and provide a unique connection of workspace to the exterior landscape with dramatic views of the city and its natural mountain and ocean context. Special amenities, such as Café Fresh for staff and an extensive kitchen/lounge foster an office environment that values team building. Various spaces illustrate TELUS’ dynamic and multifaceted apprach to telecommunications, including The Innovation Centre, where development teams test and showcase nascent technologies, ideas and concepts, as well as the TELUS Studios, where production teams develop branded documentary shorts in house.

With great attention to quality of space, light, views, art, furnishings and finishes, from the urban scale to the individual elements, omb crafted interiors that combine a sense of importance and modesty, timelessness and flexibility, capturing the essence of TELUS’ brand and leadership in Canadian and international telecommunications.

Occupying over a million-square-feet and costing over $750 million Telus Garden Offices, located in the heart of Vancouver’s downtown core, embodies Canada’s quirkiness and contemporary urbanism feeling while upholding the formal and visual variety of the internationally known term “Vancouverism.” Designed by local architects, Office of McFarlane and Bigger, Towne Millwork’s products, which incorporate wood species native to the Westcoast, were used extensively throughout this building lending to its Platinum LEED Certification.