The University of Calgary’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape has found its new home – nine floors of the 37-storey building located at 801 Seventh Ave. SW.Supplied/Nyle Segovia
The University of Calgary is moving its School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape into a downtown building from a suburban campus, thanks to an innovative city program targeted at finding new uses for excess vacant office space.
“We’re bursting at the seams because we’ve just created a new bachelor of design in city innovation degree program, so we desperately need more space for 1,200 students,” says John Brown, the faculty’s dean at the University of Calgary.
“It should be downtown because, in the same way that a medical school is located near a hospital, a design school needs to be integrated into the workings of the city.”
While the university looked at several alternative locations, it chose downtown’s 801 7th Ave. SW., which stood out for its unobstructed floor layouts with ample natural light that can accommodate large studios, Mr. Brown says. “It was also important for us to have a ground-floor presence, and at 801, we can use a former lobby restaurant as our city futures lab, working with vulnerable populations and community groups.”
Nine floors of the 37-storey building will be converted into classrooms and studios. A former conference centre in an annex to the building will also be converted into workshop space for the school.
Transitioning Calgary’s office space
The glass-and-steel office tower at 801 7th Ave. SW., was built in 1982. But it’s been empty since 2019, when its most recent tenant, Nexen Energy, became part of global energy company China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) International and moved to a newer building.
Up to $9-million of the tower’s conversion is being funded through Calgary’s Downtown Post-Secondary Institution Incentive Program, an offshoot of a city program that’s financing the conversion of a number of vacant former office buildings into housing. Eligible projects receive up to $75 per square foot of office space to be converted, to a maximum of $15-million per project.
The repurposing helps alleviate a glut of vacant office space downtown, says Thom Mahler, director of downtown strategy for the City of Calgary. A decade ago, a boom in new office-building development saw oil and service companies move to more prestigious towers. Since their retreat, as much as 30 per cent of space in older downtown office buildings has ended up unoccupied, according to real estate firm CBRE.
The goal of the conversion incentive initiative, formally dubbed the Downtown Calgary Development Incentive Program, is to find new uses for as much as six-million square feet of surplus office space. About 2.69-million square feet of that total is under renovation for new uses, Mr. Mahler says. Part of that includes the transformation of an office building into a hotel, with other former office towers being converted into residences.
The new lobby at 801 Seventh Ave. SW., will feature a spiral staircase connecting to Calgary’s elevated street walkway network, known as Plus 15, as well as high-res screens that display artwork.Supplied/Zeidler Architecture
Revitalizing a forgotten building
The City of Calgary is inviting applications from other post-secondary institutions for similar urban school developments. The conversions will raise the value of the buildings, which means the city will recover some of its investment through higher property taxes in the future, Mr. Mahler adds.
In the case of 801 7th Ave. SW., the university will not be the only tenant, with the upper floors remaining available for office lease through Colliers, says Andrew Cockwell, managing partner at Toronto-based Ursataur Capital Management, which acquired the building in 2022.
Ursataur has invested $10-million in building upgrades, including a lobby redesign by Zeidler Architecture, which added a dramatic spiral staircase connecting the lobby to Calgary’s elevated street walkway network, known as Plus 15. The lobby, which will be used as a main entrance for both the university and upper-level offices, also features one of Canada’s largest high-resolution digital screens that displays a series of artworks and can be used for conference video presentations.
Customized design for post-secondary success
Vancouver-based HCMA Architecture + Design is redesigning the nine floors that will be used by the University of Calgary and it is adding specialized features for the school.
“While offices typically have dividers and walls that let you bring electrical connections into each workspace, these studios are large open spaces and cabling will be distributed through raised floors,” says Darryl Condon, managing partner at HCMA. “We also have to add more ventilation and air temperature controls, as well as additional washrooms on each floor, to meet the needs of a higher number of occupants than offices would have.”
The school will include model-making workshops and robotic research labs that require heavy equipment, which must comply with separate industrial building codes for noise and exhaust. These will be located in a three-storey building annex that was formerly used as a conference centre and that has higher ceilings and heavier floors, Mr. Condon says.
The tower’s atrium is a two-storey section of the lobby and will be an area that can be used for lectures and events organized by the University of Calgary.Supplied/Zeidler Architecture
Bringing new zest to the city
The school’s transformation will take place on an aggressive timeline, Mr. Brown says. While the lease was only finalized in the fall of 2024, renovations have to be complete by December for classes that begin in January, 2026.
He says he believes the 1,200 expected number of students will give Calgary’s downtown neighbourhood a needed boost.
Another nearby city residential conversion project by Peoplefirst Developments is restoring a former Petrofina Canada office building, built in 1959, into residential units that will offer a special lease rate for students.
“We are anticipating that at least 40 per cent of our students will choose to live downtown,” Mr. Brown says. “That’s a lot of new vitality and spending that will be a catalyst to the downtown economy.”