Aug 22, 2014

The 31-storey Exchange tower: first LEED Platinum office high rise in Vancouver sports triple-pane curtain walls. | The Exchange office tower arising in downtown Vancouver marks not only the first LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum office high-rise in British Columbia but also the first Canadian skyscraper encased in a triple-glazed curtain wall. Developed by global financial giant Credit Suisse of Switzerland, all 400,000-square foot of the building will be sheathed in an aluminum-framed three-pane glazing custom fabricated by Gamma, an international curtain wall supplier with an office in Delta. The $200 million tower at the corner of Howe and Pender is targeted to achieve LEED Platinum with features such as on-site waste water treatment, energy consumption at a rate about half that of similar towers and a high-efficiency heating, cooling and ventilation system. But it is the innovative curtain wall that will set a new standard in Vancouver. The low-emissivity, triple-glazed windows have a graduated ceramic coating on the windows that decreases solar gain by 83 per cent, according to architect Peter Hildebrand, partner with Iredale Group Architecture in Vancouver, which worked with noted Swiss-based design architect Harry Grugger Studio on the Exchange project. Read Jones Christoffersen are the structural engineers on the project and RDH Building Engineering consulted on the unique curtain wall system. The cutting-edge technology means the tower will use half the energy of a typical skyscraper of this size, leading to a 35 per cent reduction in energy costs and an 85 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions, Hildebrand said. The Exchange building is not only the first for Credit Suisse in Canada, it is also the largest tower in the company’s 260-building international portfolio. And, in a stark departure, it began construction on spec without an anchor tenant signed up. The tower is to complete in 2017. "We believe in Vancouver's economy and its future," said Credit Suisse's Herbert Meier, director of real estate asset management. "We believe in supporting the City of Vancouver's vision to become the world's greenest city by 2020." In another first, the neighboring Old Stock Exchange building (circa 1929 that forms part of the new tower) will be renovated and restored as part of the development. It will be Canada's first LEED Platinum heritage conversion.

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