Just in time for the Calgary Stampede, BIG presented its design for a new architectural landmark for one of Canada’s leading telecommunication companies TELUS in Calgary’s downtown core. The 750,000-square-foot tower creates a dynamic community by blending urban living and working seamlessly.
Located at 7th Avenue block, BIG’s design for the mixed-use tower will reshape the area into one of the most technologically innovative and environmentally-friendly sites in North America. In BIG’s design the program – incorporating office, residential and retail space – accommodates the transformation from working to living as the tower takes off from the ground to reach the sky.
As BIG’s main man Bjarke Ingels explains, “Downtown Calgary has developed as a typical North American city centre with a cluster of corporate towers surrounded by a periphery of low-density surburban homes. The Telus Sky is an attempt to create a lively mixture of living and working at the intersection of lightrail and arterial roads in the heart of the centre, to help create a more varied and walkable city centre for Calgary.“
The large floor plates for workplaces recede to achieve the slender dimensions of residential floor depths. The texture of the facade in a similar fashion evolves from a smooth glass facade enclosing the work space to a 3-D composition of apartments and balconies. The resultant silhouette expresses the unification of the two programs in a single gesture – in rational straight lines composed to form a feminine figure.
“The TELUS team is tremendously proud of our longstanding history in Alberta and thrilled to announce the development of TELUS Sky, which will stand as a lasting symbol of our passionate commitment to the Calgary community, our customers, our team members and to the province of Alberta,” says Darren Entwistle, TELUS president and CEO. “Our new development is a powerful contribution to Calgary’s economic strength, culture and social vitality. Notably, TELUS Sky will inject millions of dollars into the community and create hundreds of local jobs while showcasing TELUS’s advanced communications technologies and environmental innovation in a way never before seen in Calgary. Moreover, TELUS Sky will enrich the city’s vibrant arts culture by offering inspiring public spaces that will exhibit works of art by local artists, thus creating a truly amazing destination for our team members, the community and indeed all Albertans.”
Scheduled for completion in the fall of 2017, TELUS Sky will be a LEED Platinum signature development. For this project BIG will collaborate with the Canadian architecture firm Dialog, along with partners developer Westbank Corp., with whom BIG is already collaborating upon the Beach & Howe Tower in Vancouver and real-estate investment trust Allied Properties.
For a full slideshow and additional information on TELUS SKY, please visit BIG’s website (big.dk) or the TELUS Sky website (telussky.com) .
ABOUT BIG
BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group is a leading international partnership of architects, designers, builders and thinkers operating within the fields of architecture, urbanism, research and development. BIG is led by partners – Bjarke Ingels, Andreas Klok Pedersen, Finn Nørkjær, David Zahle, Jakob Lange, Thomas Christoffersen and Managing Partners, Sheela Maini Søgaard and Kai-Uwe Bergmann – with offices in New York and Copenhagen. In all our actions we try to move the focus from the little details to the BIG picture. For more information on BIG, visit big.dk.
ABOUT TELUS
TELUS (TSX: T, NYSE: TU) is a leading national telecommunications company in Canada, with $11 billion of annual revenue and 13.2 million customer connections, including 7.7 million wireless subscribers, 3.4 million wireline network access lines, 1.4 million Internet subscribers and 712,000 TELUS TV customers. Led since 2000 by President and CEO, Darren Entwistle, TELUS provides a wide range of communications products and services, including wireless, data, Internet protocol (IP), voice, television, entertainment and video.For more information on TELUS, visit telus.com.
ABOUT WESTBANK
Established in 1992 and with over $5 billion of projects completed or under development, Westbank is active across Canada in a diversity of product types from luxury condominiums, rental apartment office, commercial, retail, hotel, non-market housing and industrial. Westbank’s primary focus is on large mixed use projects involving highly complex entitlement processes. Westbank is best known for being the leading luxury residential developer in Canada, along with being the owner/developer of the finest hotels in Canada. Some of its best known projects include Shangri-la Vancouver, Shangri-la Toronto, Fairmont Pacific Rim and the Woodward’s Redevelopment project. For more information on Westbank, visit westbankcorp.com.