A Speculative Vision to Ignite Calgary's Downtown Transformation
To support the social and economic resilience of Calgary’s downtown, a bold vision is required.
Why this Speculative Proposal?
As Calgarians, we recognize that our downtown is falling short of meeting the needs of our city, presently and into the foreseeable future. Formerly the active hub of our business community, today the activity in our city centre is not what it once was. It is clear that we must act to reinvigorate our city and support its growth.
As an architectural firm invested in the future of our city, we offer this speculative proposal to help envision the potential of our downtown and to determine what could be possible. Our city centre deserves a second act, and we believe it could be one that maximizes the use of its existing buildings, cultivates vibrant communities, and becomes the beating heart of our city.
A well-known and important strategy is to adapt the use of our existing buildings and infrastructure. Adaptive transformation is a way we can realize this aspiration.
Why this Speculative Proposal?
Adapting the use of our existing buildings and infrastructure is a way we can realize this aspiration more quickly and economically, as well as sustainably through reduced embodied carbon emissions. Keeping our buildings also helps to preserve the recognition and connection we have with our past.
This study explores an approach to catalyze community development in Calgary’s downtown core through the introduction of a mixed-use higher education program into, what is commonly known as the Nexen Building, at 801 7th Ave SW.
Above and Below:
"Aerial view of Nova building and surrounding area, Calgary, Alberta." 1984-07-11, (CU1143740) by Hall, Jim. Courtesy of Glenbow Library and Archives Collection, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.
This speculative design study could serve as a vehicle to advance the City of Calgary’s roadmap to reinvention and build a thriving, future-focused downtown.
The gesture of transforming a long-standing icon in the Calgary skyline holds important symbolic significance, can inspire the broader city, and can define a neighbourhood. It illustrates the change that is possible and reinforces Calgary’s leadership position in adaptive reuse.
90%+ Vacant
75%+ Vacant
50%+ Vacant
1%-50% Vacant
Contextual map of Downtown Calgary showing the percentage of vacant buildings. Data from The Globe and Mail, the void in Calgary, Oct 14, 2021.
Commercial Buildings
Residential Buildings
Green Areas
Water
C-Train Blue Line
C-Train Red Line
Contextual map of Downtown Calgary, highlighting the types of buildings and green spaces in relation to public transportation. Data from City of Calgary.
Background
A number of factors have led to the decline in occupation and activity in Calgary’s downtown. For the past 50 years, the city’s core has been characterised by offices towers with little urban activity outside of the traditional work week.
Furthermore, the increase in office vacancy has caused land values and property tax revenue in our downtown to fall, affecting a significant portion of our city’s revenue. The core’s infrastructure has become an under utilized civic investment that yearns for an opportunity to realize its potential and leverage the existing assets. All citizens have much to gain from reigniting Calgary’s downtown and transforming it into the vibrant beating heart of the city that it was meant to be.
The City of Calgary recognizes that in order for our downtown to thrive, it needs to be a place that cultivates culture and offers a variety of activities throughout the day, week, and year. Although the City of Calgary has taken a leadership position by providing funding to offset the cost of conversion to other uses, only office to residential conversions have been funded to date. While this is a pioneering initiative, it is not providing the mix of uses required to build a complete community.
This speculative proposal presents a radical yet accessible vision for catalyzing the development of a vibrant community node in the downtown core. The conversion of 801 7th Ave SW into a vertical mixed-use higher education campus will act as an urban, social, and economic driver for the area. It will also create a community heart and define the identity for the west side of Calgary’s downtown. The building is currently unoccupied and is an architectural landmark in the city that deserves a next chapter.
This proposal starts with the idea of taking the mix of uses and public space found on a university campus and redeploys them into the existing framework of the office tower. The transformation of this landmark into a vibrant series of higher education and community uses will invigorate the community and drive social and economic transformation through the neighbourhood.
↓ Concept diagram mixing the uses of public spaces and combining them into the framework of a traditional office tower.
Key Principles
Calgary’s Downtown core needs to be reframed as a vibrant mixed-use place for people.
The City of Calgary’s roadmap to reinvention presents five strategic moves to support the vision of Calgary’s downtown as the vibrant, inclusive, cultural, and economic heart of the city. To support this vision, this study is presented through these five lenses of the roadmap to reinvention:
↑ City of Calgary’s "The Roadmap" from the Roadmap to - The future of Calgary's downtown.
→ Artist’s impression of a campus-style hub envisioned as a place where Calgarians can gather, learn, and thrive in an iconic downtown space.
Create Neighbourhoods for Vibrant Urban Life
By 2031, the vision for the Greater Downtown is a series of unique, mixed-use neighbourhoods complete with vibrant gathering places, housing choices, and the amenities residents need close by.
This proposal would help catalyze this vision by transforming this iconic building into the spark that ignites a new neighbourhood identity and community heart through a healthy mix of uses including academic, housing, social, cultural, galleries, and workspace.
In 2015, the office vacancy rate began to increase and was further exacerbated through the pandemic. This has resulted in a significant loss of activity in our downtown, causing it to suffer. While many have returned to the office, it is apparent that our urban core lacks the activity it once had that a new identity and purpose are required.
Key to this proposal are the social spaces that flow from the adjacent Century Gardens up to the rooftop, forming a vertically stacked series of interconnected atria through the building. Similar to a campus pedestrian mall, the interconnected social spaces create an insideoutside visual connection that supports well-being while occupying vertically separated floors.
The lower levels are dedicated to public and commercial programming that radiate onto the streets and adjacent park, including repurposing the previous winter garden into a student commons. The mid-rise levels house academic spaces with a public outdoor level above the academic program.
The high-rise levels are dedicated to student housing,
ensuring occupation and activity throughout the day. A rewilded roof scape is given back to the city as a unique gathering space with a new light-weight mass timber framed pavilion supporting a range of activities.
The public program in the new facility will extend into the adjacent Century Gardens leveraging the landscape as a destination for both building occupants and neighbourhood residents. The civic gesture of a canopy over a renewed Century Gardens supports year-round use.
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Speculative vision for the gathering space and entrance to the renewed building.
Key Principles
Establish a Green Network for a Healthy Environment
By 2031, the vision for the Greater Downtown is a vibrant urban environment whose residents and visitors benefit from an interconnected system of regional and local parks, natural spaces and river frontage connected by high-quality people-focused streets. Residents and visitors would benefit from the local beautification, mental and physical wellness, and carbon reduction that it offers.
This proposal extends our downtown’s green network through the repositioning and activation of Century Gardens, the introduction of new green spaces, such as the vegetated rooftop, and re-envisioning 8th St as a mixed mode street that supports active modes of transportation. A renewed 8th St SW better connects the river to 17th Ave SW, stitching together two important pedestrian realms bounding the Greater Downtown. Planting along 8th St also creates a place that welcomes people and a green corridor for urban wildlife.
The landscape approach to this study involves rewilding the site, increasing tree canopy, and creating habitat for urban wildlife. Plantings flow through public spaces on the interior and exterior of the building creating biophilic environments that foster a connection to nature. The roof terrace is another new space for both citizens and wildlife, containing a mass timber roof pavilion that acts a landmark destination for hosting a range of programmed activities throughout the year.
This proposal considers the building as part of the broader ecosystem, improving the connection between living things and developing the living corridors through the city.
Brentwood Development, Burnaby, BC
This project keeps vehicles off of the site and the entire 8 acre site is pedestrian realm creating an oasis in the city.
Create Streets for People
By 2031, the vision for Greater Downtown is a streets and Plus 15 network that provides lively, people-focused spaces that contribute to creating vibrancy and activity by improving the environment and experience for residents, workers, and visitors to the area.
Central to this proposal is the activation of and investment in the public realm. The synergistic relationship created between the reimagined Century Gardens and the new activated academic building drives activity throughout the day.
As noted previously, 8th St is reimagined into a multimodal street for people and active transportation, while still supporting vehicles. Stephen Ave pedestrian mall will also be extended west creating an east-west pedestrian and active transportation connector across the Greater Downtown. These corridors clarify circulation through the Greater Downtown and reinforce the importance of this site and community space at the intersection of these activated pedestrian corridors. The impact of this intervention will radiate across the core improving the connection to the city at large.
The 8th St SW C-Train station at the north edge of the site becomes a landing pad for the downtown. A seamless transition between the park and train platform creates a barrier free flow between the transit network and public realm. Public programs fronting onto the train platform create a more interesting and safer transit experience.
This study prioritizes the pedestrian, adding vibrant uses at the street and extending existing streets for people to clarify circulation through downtown.
Artistic interpretation imagining a covered plaza over a renewed Century Gardens that supports year-round use.
Expand Transit For All
By 2031, the vision for Greater Downtown is for transit to be the preferred mobility choice for the majority of residents, employees, and visitors, accounting for 60 percent of all peak-period trips.
This proposal is built upon a framework supporting transit and active modes of transportation. Bus, bikeshare, and scooter share are co-located with the train station which is at the nexus of the pedestrian focussed north-south and east-west arterial roads. This confluence of transportation options makes this new community heart both an identifiable arrival point in the downtown and a jumping off point with various last-mile transportation options to move people across the core of the city.
The building’s existing parkade is transformed into a neighbourhood cycle hub with secure bike storage, highquality end of trip and maintenance facilities, as well as social space for cycling communities to gather. This facility will provide the cycling infrastructure needed to support the surrounding community.
This proposal builds on existing infrastructure adding a range of active transportation options and safe, comfortable roads to support those options. The addition of the bike hub creates a complete transit nexus around this new community building.
Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) Redevelopment, Vancouver, BC: Located adjacent to two train lines this 1.4M sqft. development proposes no vehicular parking and includes a 1500 stall bike hub.
Future-proof and Innovate for the Next Generation
By 2031, the vision for the Greater Downtown is to accommodate and attract innovation, testing, and economic enterprise from the global technology sector. Technology infiltrates every sector of the economy and Greater Downtown must remain competitive and resilient.
This proposal is about driving the economic and environmental resilience of Calgary’s downtown. The proposed academic program is focused on emerging technological and creative arts programs as catalysts to spark innovation and ignite new economic potential in Calgary’s downtown. This vision includes incubator space to support innovative startups creating the potential for startups to spin out into the surrounding community as emerging enterprises. Proximity between the academic centre and industry creates a virtuous cycle of innovation and investment between the public and private sectors, seeding spin-off companies, and providing momentum to new industry.
In the face of a changing climate, this proposal invests in the architecture to ensure occupant comfort and health are at the forefront while looking to a low carbon future.
With increased peak temperatures over longer periods in the summer, indoor comfort is an important metric for providing a healthy environment so occupants can thrive. Ensuring all material selections have been considered from a human health perspective is paramount in a public building that provides housing.
Reusing the structure leverages the original carbon heavy investment of the building, greatly reducing carbon emissions. The building envelope will be upgraded creating an air-tight, high-performance envelope reducing the heating and cooling energy required to maintain a healthy comfortable interior environment. Lastly, the building systems will be updated with electric solutions moving away from combustion, future-proofing the building as a net-zero ready facility.
This proposal is a future-focused and resilient civic building, supporting a low carbon future while advancing Calgary’s economic diversity.
609 Granville Envelope Replacement, Vancouver, BC: Constructed in 1981, a 25-storey commercial office tower resulted in an envelope upgrade with improved performance, a coherent new look, and clear identity during day and night.
Building On Our Investments
This proposal provides the vision for a catalytic seed to drive transformation in our downtown. By leveraging the city’s existing infrastructure we can renew it for a purposeful second act.
The diagrams below illustrate the transformational capacity of this vision over time. Initial investment will drive a virtuous cycle of spin out startups and subsequent business investment supporting academic programs producing a new economic hub for the city.
Year 5
New business opportunities begin to spin out from academic facility.
Year 20
New tech ecosystem is established with thriving relationship between industry and academia.
Mass timber pavilion
Roof garden
Student living rooms
Student homes
Sky garden
Learning space
Public Program
• Galleries
• Commercial
• Interactive Labs
Student commons
Community bike hub
A Call to Action
A singularly focused commercial heart to the city is no longer adequate to address the many roles that a vibrant downtown core needs to fulfil in a resilient contemporary city.
Complete communities foster a healthy balance of work, life, and play. While many adaptive reuse proposals aim to convert office to residential, they are challenged to provide the full range of uses that foster a thriving community or provide a new identity for a neighbourhood.
This speculative proposal envisions the development of a central hub around which identity and community can form through unlocking the latent potential in existing infrastructure. This reuse also allows change to occur more quickly and leverages the embodied carbon in the existing forms.
While bold, this vision is realizable and can be a defining moment in the city for generations. To support the social and economic resilience of Calgary’s downtown, a vision like this is required.
The transformation of a long-standing icon in the Calgary skyline is symbolically significant and can inspire the broader city. This proposal illustrates the change that is possible and can cement Calgary’s status as a city that is unafraid to enable and drive purposeful reinvention.
Together, we can shape downtown Calgary that serves as a welcoming, vibrant community for all.
Conceptual renderings of the speculative proposal, illustrating the transformed building as a new landmark in the city.
822 – 11th Avenue SW, Unit 100 Calgary, Alberta T2R 0E5