The Hive – 2150 Keith Drive
An innovative and iconic 10-storey mass timber office building
Office & Workplace
The Hive is a 10-storey office building located at 2150 Keith Drive in Vancouver’s False Creek Flats. Designed as a landmark for sustainable and innovative development, it is the tallest timber seismic-force-resisting building in North America. The project also targets LEED® Gold certification and aligns with the AIA 2030 Challenge for carbon-neutral buildings.
Supported by a mass timber frame on a concrete base, the building features a distinctive honeycomb-shaped exoskeleton that serves as a perimeter-braced structural system. This approach frees interior floor plates while creating a bold architectural identity that responds to the site’s constraints and enhances the building’s presence at both neighbourhood and city scales. The design also acknowledges its cultural context, maintaining a respectful relationship with the nearby East Van Cross public artwork.
To deal with earthquakes, The Hive uses advanced self-centering seismic connections and a hybrid system of glulam braces and CLT shear walls.
Sustainability is central to the project, with energy and emissions performance significantly below typical benchmarks. Locally sourced mass timber further reduces embodied carbon while supporting regional industry.
With generous outdoor spaces, biophilic interiors, and an all-electric design, The Hive offers a healthy, low-carbon workplace that reflects its owner’s commitment to sustainability and innovation.
- Location
- Vancouver, BC
- Size
- 165,000 sq ft
- Client
- BentallGreenOak
- Completion
- 2026
- Sustainability Targeting LEED® Gold certification; Salmon Safe Certified; Clean BC’s Net-Zero Energy-Ready Challenge
- DIALOG Services
- Collaborators
HKA
Bentall Green Oak
BKProjects
Fast + Epp
AME Consulting Group
AES Engineering
GHL Consultants
BVDA
EXP
Introba
Gunn
Creus
Geopacific
RWDI
Bunt
CES
Ventana Construction + Trades
Architecture
Interior Design
Landscape Architecture
The building features a nine-storey mass timber structure on top of a concrete base. Glulam beams, columns, and braces with cross-laminated timber (CLT) walls and floor panels, are all used in the design
The major elements of the building are all prefabricated. The mass timber structure, building enclosure, and hybrid steel and cross laminated timber (CLT) balconies are all constructed off-site and lifted into place and installed.
The building acts as a gateway to the False Creek Flats, a neighbourhood currently going through a revitalization.
In 2022, the building began construction with the first prefabricated mass timber structure beginning on site in Spring 2024.
A perimeter timber braced frame structural system is traced by a series of balconies as architecture and structure combine to create a striking façade. This has led to the building being known as “The Hive”.
Large windows, outdoor balconies with gardens on every level, and exposed mass timber throughout promote occupant well-being through biophilic design principles.
The building combines the best of contemporary office design with mass timber. That means large floor plates, generous column spacing, and tall floor to floor heights.
Building occupants will have amazing views to surrounding neighborhood and mountains.
One of the advanced self-centering seismic connections that allows The Hive to re-centre itself after an earthquake.
The building is designed for flexibility. Distribution of services such as mechanical, electrical and communications, and lighting have been designed with flexibility of future tenants in mind.
Keith Drive’s open, airy main lobby provides a glimpse of what employees and visitors will find in the office spaces. Natural materials are used throughout the building.
Setbacks, right-of-ways, and a 12-metre elevation gain determine the shape and location of the building on site. The landscaping ties into a major east-west ecological corridor.
Full tenant occupancy is expected in early 2027.
The Team
Martin Nielsen, DIALOG Principal-in-ChargeMass timber is comparable to conventional steel and concrete construction in terms of function, layout and constructability, but is more sustainable and creates a beautiful workplace.
The wood structure of Keith Drive rises between the trees of east Vancouver.
Through collaboration with Fast+Epp structural engineers, a seismically resilient mass timber structure was designed: perimeter timber braced frames are paired with nine-storey tall cross laminated timber (CLT) shear walls. A major project milestone, the first CLT shear walls installed on site were 3 stories tall, 5.5 metres wide and 12 metres tall.
Construction progress as of June 2024.
The building has been contributing valuable information to the design community for future tall wood projects through technical studies, conference presentations, and publications. The project was featured in the Centre for Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat exhibition “REFRAMED: The Future of Cities in Wood” at the Chicago Architecture Centre in 2023.
