New tower will add drama to Surrey’s core

With the addition of a 50-storey tower complex, the centre of suburban Surrey in the Greater Vancouver District of B.C. is about to be transformed. The mixed-use 3 Civic Plaza tower is part of an emerging urban centre in the municipality of 470,000 people. The tower sits opposite a new library and close to a new city hall that were completed in the last few years.

Designed by Cotter Architects, 3 Civic Plaza tower will be the tallest structure south of the Fraser River, and will incorporate over 350 residential units, a 144-room hotel, a rooftop garden and a “great room” central lobby.

The structure is unusual in that the tower is supported by an external concrete shear wall, which is punctured with leaf shaped openings. The building will incorporate natural ventilation, hydronic heating, and will be connected to a district energy system.

Fast + Epp are the structural engineers, Aplin & Martin are civil engineers, Integral Group are the electrical and mechanical engineers, and GeoPacific Consultants are the geotechnical engineers. Gage Babcock & Associates are building code consultants.

The tower is expected to begin construction this summer, with completion by 2016.

Cotter Architects describe the project as follows: “3 Civic Plaza has been innovatively designed to complement its surroundings while adding an iconic quality to Surrey’s emerging City Centre. It accents the City Centre Library and City Hall buildings – which are low in massing – through a vertically-expressed mass that acts as an axial landmark anchoring the northern end of the view corridors and public open spaces in the downtown core. It also serves as a counterpoint to the existing Central City Tower at the southern end.

“Establishing a vision for the project was very much a forward-thinking exercise. It wasn’t simply a matter of responding to the existing context of the area, but to envision the Civic Plaza of the future. Part of the unique challenge in this was to determine a mix of uses that would appropriately respond not only to the existing city centre, but to what that city centre is going to be years from now.”

Rendering of the Civic 3 Plaza (at right in photo), in Surrey, B.C. Rendering by Cotter Architects with artwork by Vividus and Dead Famous.