The Saga of the (Formerly) Two-Toned One Wall Centre

[Ed007Toronto]

The 48-storey One Wall Centre was the tallest building in Vancouver when it was completed in 2001. Despite two towers eclipsing its height in the years since, the residential and hotel building has maintained its visual prominence in the skyline. It was that anticipated visual impact that initially concerned the Vancouver Planning Department when the plans were first presented to them. As a booming hub for commerce, tourism, and film, with a growing population looking for places to live, skyscrapers were naturally going to be part of the evolving cityscape. When developer Peter Wall and architect Perkins+Will proposed their vision for a reflective elliptical tower, City planners expressed worry about the cladding's potential overbearing impact on the skyline. They only granted approval after negotiations with the developer, in which an agreement was struck to cover the building in a translucent facade...

http://vancouver.skyrisecities.com/n...ne-wall-centre

[retro_orange]

I think a better premise for thread title is something relating to follow through of original architectural design and impact from cost cutting measures that drastically change the building design from what was first proposed, bowing excessively to pressure from bored and retired nimbys, or narrow minded viewcones etc. This is quite old news.

[Prometheus]

It's still two-toned, unfortunately, and the transition between the different tones now occurs at an incoherent point, unlike before.

[LeftCoaster]

Eventually they'll have to replace the glazing on the Hotel portion, then it will all be the same!

[nickbeaulieu]

Originally Posted by Prometheus

It's still two-toned, unfortunately, and the transition between the different tones now occurs at an incoherent point, unlike before.

Yes, they really screwed that up. It's hilarious.

[Klazu]

Not sure why a new thread had to be created when we already have one for the building and the article doesn't bring anything new to light.

As I think I have explained before, the reason for different tones between the new and old glass is because the original glass is not being manufactured anymore, so they had to order it from a new vendor and they were not able to get it to match 1:1. The new glass looks almost identical from the same level and from above, but unfortunately for end result, it does reflect sky slightly differently and hence looks different from the ground. I am under impression that this difference was not completely known when the renovation commenced, but I am not 100% sure.

The reason why the new glass ends strangely one floor below the top 1/3 line is because 31st floor (the lowest residential floor) is just below it. Since also owners on that floor had to pay into the project together with all other owners, they naturally also wanted the benefits of the new glass.

The project cost something like 7-8 million dollar and there are ~70 residential units. The cost was ~100K/unit.

The original clear glass windows had two issues: 1) they acted like a greenhouse and 2) moisture kept condencing inside many windows, blurring them. The latter has been speculated by some to have resulted from the work stop order that the city put in effect when the original debacle about the darker tone happened during building's construction. Apparently hundreds of window elements sat outside in Vancouver winter weather for months, while the builder and the City tried reaching an agreement, seaping in water.

Ironically the darker glass on the hotel floors does not suffer significantly from either of the issues, so City effectively caused the renovation with their stubborness at the time.

The new windows are triple pane where as the original ones were/are double pane.

That's all I can still remember from discussions I had when the project was in progress. Please merge this thread with the One Wall Centre thread.