Shell Centre, Modern office skyscraper in downtown Calgary, Canada
Shell Centre is an office tower in downtown Calgary, Alberta, rising to 140 m (about 460 ft) across 33 floors. The building has a figure-eight footprint, which means every floor wraps around two rounded cores and produces a high number of corner offices.
The tower was built in 1975 by Olympia and York Developments on the site of the former Caravan Hotel. It belongs to a generation of office buildings from that decade that changed the look of downtown Calgary.
The tower stands out in downtown Calgary with its distinctive figure-eight footprint and polished granite facade that catches the light. It marked a shift in how the city built corporate offices, moving away from plain towers toward more refined designs using premium materials.
The main entrance sits below street level and is framed by pillars at ground level, so it is worth pausing to find the right access point before heading in. The building is a working office tower, so public access is generally limited to the lobby area.
The figure-eight footprint was a rare choice for office towers in North America when the building was completed, and it required engineers to solve load distribution problems that a standard rectangular plan would not have posed. The exterior is clad in Italian granite, which was an uncommon material for a Calgary office building at the time.
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