The Bow:
Work gets a Life.

For the longest time, Calgary’s office towers were like so many men in grey flannel suits – identical, faceless, hard working, unquestioning. ‘We’ve been built for busy companies,’ the skyline seemed to say; ‘there’s oil to extract and profits to be made, and expending energy for the design of a building is frivolous.’ Lightheartedness of form was left to the Calgary Tower, and the sandstone antiques of 8th Avenue were the only hint in the city that industriousness and something like beauty could be colleagues.

And then, in 2008, came Norman Foster’s Bow building for Encana. In one fell swoop, an office building reconfigured the skyline and restarted the conversation about architecture in Calgary.

The Bow is eloquent in many ways. Its conspicuous grandness and starchitect signature say, ‘We have money, and we’re not afraid to use it. We’re buying Calgary its very own corporate icon.’ In 2008, the internationally-conceived tower was the tallest office construction east of Toronto and Canada’s highest since the 68-story Scotia Plaza was built in TO in 1988. At 1.7 million square feet and 59 stories, it settled the debate, once and for all, about size mattering. The tower, well, towered, beautiful in a gargantuan way.

All that could be expected in an industry where quarterly profits run into the billions. But the tower, engulfing 5th and 7th Avenues between Centre and 1st Street S.E., then changed its tone. ‘Furthermore,’ the building stated, ‘we’re an oil company that wants to use its headquarters to make a statement about work, design and energy itself.’

‘We’ll put all our people together in a tower with spectacular views, indoor gardens, outdoor spaces, with retail and culture on their doorstep. And we’re designing not just to enhance staff recruitment and retention, but to enhance the entire city. And by the way, that ‘bow’ shape we’ve given it does much more than allow us to own the word ‘bow’. It reduces the wind load and the structural material needed. It’s facing south-southwest, so it grabs all the light the prairie has to give, reducing energy use by about 30 per cent.’

The building doesn’t say how much money the staff retention and the energy conservation would save, but one has to assume it’s a pretty penny, year in and year out.

Since 2008, the skyline of Calgary has changed as other oil companies respond to Encana’s hunger for conspicuous excellence and flexes its enlightened self-interest. In 2018, not all of the new downtown buildings are great. But neither are they all grey.