One Wall Centre, Vancouver, British Columbia - Skyscrapers on Waymarking.com

The first 27 floors of the building are a Sheraton Hotel. Floors 28, 29, and 30 are the Club Intrawest Resort Vancouver floors; which are operated independent of the Sheraton. The remaining 17 floors are private residential condominiums.

To counteract possible harmonic swaying during high winds, it 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 building 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 public and the City of Vancouver Planning Department, who were concerned that this building would dominate the skyline, when this building was in the planning stages 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 public and 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 how significant this change was 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.

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 attmpt 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 acheive the intended dark blue appearance.

The Sheraton Wall Centre required a 75 feet[2] (23 m) deep excavation — the deepest excavation to date for a building in Vancouver.

According to the June 2004 edition of Elevator World, Richmond Elevator won a contract to supply the building's elevators, one of the local elevator firm's high end examples of traction elevators (Richmond Elevator manufactures, modernizes, maintains, and installs the majority of Vancouver's hydraulic elevators as well as more traction elevators than anyone else in the province). 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.

Building Name: One Wall Centre Structure Height: 491 Number of Stories: 48 Year Built: 2001 Architect/Design Firm: Busby and Associates Architects Style: Post-Modern Use: Both Office and Residential Publicly accessible areas: None Hours: None Cost: None Address: 938 Nelson St. Vancouver, BC, Canada Building Website: [Web Link] The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) link: Not listed

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