One Wall Centre

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One Wall Centre

One Wall Centre, also known as the Sheraton Wall Centre - north tower, is currently the tallest building in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada as of 2007. The skyscraper is located at a high point on the downtown peninsula of Vancouver and is addressed as 1088 Burrard Street. One Wall Centre was designed by Busby and Associates Architects and construction was completed in 2001 and won the Emporis Skyscraper Award for the Best New Skyscraper the same year.

Sheraton Wall Centre is the 2nd largest hotel in the nation with 765 rooms, 5-fewer than The Fairmont Banff Springs.

1 Background
2 Construction
3 Trivia
4 Gallery
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Background

One Wall Centre is 48-storeys tall with a total height of 491 feet^[1] (150 m). The first 27 floors of the building are a 4.5-star Sheraton Hotel. Floors 28, 29, and 30 are the Club Intrawest Resort floors; which are operated independent of Sheraton. The remaining 17 floors are private residential condominiums. The One Wall Centre tower part of the Wall Centre complex owned by Wall Financial Corporation and was largely the vision of Peter Wall.

[edit] Construction

To counteract possible harmonic swaying during high winds, One Wall has a tuned water damping system at the top level of the building which consists of two specially designed 50,000 Imperial gallon^[2] (227,000 L) water tanks. These tanks are designed so that the harmonic frequency of the sloshing of the water in the tanks counteracts the harmonic frequency of the swaying of the building.

The tower exterior has a two-tone appearance. The glass on the lower levels is a dark glass, while the glass on the upper levels is light coloured glass. To satisfy the City of Vancouver Planning Department, who were concerned that the tower would dominate the downtown skyline, it was agreed that it would have a very "light" appearance that would blend in with a blue sky. After the design was approved, a minor amendment was requested to change it to a significantly darker glass. This was approved by a low level staff member in the planning department who apparently did not realize the significance of this change. When the glass started to be put on the building the city planners noted that this did not meet design that was reviewed by the public and the city planning department. After many accusations back and forth as to the significance of this change and whether it required public review, the City agreed to compromise and allowed the lower glazing that was already installed to be the dark glazing, but required that the glazing on the upper levels be the light glazing that was originally proposed.

The end result is the two toned structure that many consider would have been more architecturally stimulating if the single dark glazing had been allowed. Rumour has it that hotel owner Peter Wall threatened to call off the construction if the city forced him to replace all of the dark-paned glass, so a settlement was reached where only the remaining portion of the building (1/3 of its height) was faced with the typical "Yaletown green" lighter-coloured glass now common in the city's newer areas.^{[citation needed]} The attempt to maintain the dark blue appearance did not end there; the windows in the upper third were installed with dark blue blinds facing outwards. If all blinds were to be drawn at once, the building would achieve the intended dark blue appearance.

The Sheraton Wall Centre required a 75 feet^[2] (23 m) deep excavation — the deepest excavation prior to Living Shangri-La for a building in the city.

According to the June 2004 edition of Elevator World, Richmond Elevator won a contract for the lowest bid to supply the building's elevators, one of the local elevator firm's first examples of traction elevators (Richmond Elevator manufactures, modernizes, maintains, and installs the majority of Vancouver's hydraulic elevators becasuse of its lower prices compared to international manufacturers such as Otis as well as than anyone else in the province). Despite the One Wall Centre being the first traction elevator project by the company, most problems ran into during construction were mitigated. The installation features 10 elevators, 8 of which are high speed geared machines. The hotel is served by four 3,000 pound traction elevators at 800 fpm (244 m/min), with a group of 3 for public usage and a single private VIP access elevator. There are also two hotel service elevators with 4,000 pound (1,800 kg) capacity each at 700 fpm (213 m/min). The apartments are served by 2 elevators each with a capacity of 3,500 pounds (1,600 kg) at 1,000 fpm (305 m/min). There are also 2 roped hydraulic elevators: the 3,000 pounds (1,400 kg) to serve the parking garage, and the 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg) to serve the banquet floors. There are 6 escalators installed by Fujitec.