Tall Story

Vancouver is to become home to the tallest hybrid wood structure in North America, Philippe Starck has collaborated with Bentley to create a smart power dock for the luxury car brand’s new Bentayga Hybrid, and plans have been unveiled for the world’s largest and most powerful offshore wind turbine.

- Steve Hill

MASS APPEAL

Due to be completed in the summer of 2020 is Terrace House, Pritzker Prize-winning architect Shigeru Ban’s Vancouver waterfront condominium, which will become the tallest hybrid wood structure in North America.

The top seven stories of this 19-floor project by PortLiving will, for the first time in Canada and the United States, feature exposed mass timber, following official approval from the city of Vancouver. This was achieved after a process of performance-based fire and structural engineering tests which demonstrated that this hybrid mass timber structure is as safe, if not safer, than a conventional concrete or steel high-rise.

And the approval is seen as a major step forward in Vancouver’s goal of becoming the greenest city in the country.

Wood is a sustainable and versatile building material that stores, rather than emits, carbon dioxide for the life of the structure and beyond. The environmental and performance benefits of wood construction also include reduced greenhouse gas emissions, reduced embodied energy, renewable benefits, and direct occupant and builder health benefits.

Homes within the upper timber levels will feature vertical and horizontal wood structural beams and columns of Douglas Fir harvested from sustainably managed forests 700 kilometres away in the Kootenay region of British Colombia.

Terrace House is a development of just 20 unique homes, almost half of which occupy entire floorplates. Custom features, from door handles to cabinet pulls, can be found throughout and have been designed by Shigeru Ban, while each residence will boast a full suite of smart home technologies, museum-quality glazing plus fully-integrated air conditioning and heating systems.

BARGING AHEAD

Due to begin sailing later this year are emissions-free barges propelled by electric motors.