engineering

Marine Building

Marine Building is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Marine Building rather than just read about it. In short: The Marine Building is a skyscraper located at 355 Burrard Street in Downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada near the Financial District. Completed in 1930, at the time of its opening it was the city's tallest skyscraper and it is listed among the best Art Deco buildings in the world.

Key takeaways

Marine Building belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Marine Building to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Marine Building from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Marine Building is a skyscraper located at 355 Burrard Street in Downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada near the Financial District. Completed in 1930, at the time of its opening it was the city's tallest skyscraper and it is listed among the best Art Deco buildings in the world. It owes its name to the plethora of fine marine-themed ornaments that decorate it. Because of its architecture and interior decorations, the building has been chosen as the setting of a number of film and television productions.

History The building was conceived by Lt. Commander J.W. Hobbs, an entrepreneur from Toronto. Hobbs recognized that the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 would greatly increase Vancouver's importance as a commercial port, and decided that the city needed a grand building, in the vein of the newly constructed Chrysler Building in New York. The design was assigned to McCarter Nairne and Partners, who had never worked on the design of a skyscraper before. Construction started on March 13, 1929 as reported by a local newspaper:

Yesterday morning, His Worship Mayor W.H. Malkin blew a blast on a golden whistle and with it set in motion the steam shovel that will excavate the site for the new Burrard Street Marine skyscraper. The building was completed on 7 October 1930. At 97.8 metres (321 ft) (22 floors) it was the tallest skyscraper in the city until 1939. According to the architects, McCarter & Nairne, the building was intended to evoke "some great crag rising from the sea, clinging with sea flora and fauna, tinted in sea-green, touched with gold." The building cost $2.3 million to build – $1.1 million over budget—but due to the Great Depression it was sold to the Guinness family of Ireland for only $900,000. The 2023 property assessment is $153 million. There was an observation deck, but during the depression in the 1930s the 25-cent admission price proved unaffordable for most. Currently, there are no public galleries in the building. Inside the massive brass-doored elevators the walls are inlaid with 12 varieties of local hardwoods. All over the walls and polished brass doors are depictions of sea snails, skate, crabs, turtles, carp, scallops, seaweed and sea horses, as well as the transportation means of the era. The floor presents the zodiac signs. The exterior is studded with flora and fauna, tinted in sea-green and touched with gold. During a renovation from 1982-1989 to update the electrical, mechanical and air-conditioning systems, the "battleship linoleum" (imported from Scotland) in the lobby was replaced with marble. The former Merchant Exchange was also gutted, and is now a restaurant called Tractor Foods. This building was also the management centre for Oneworld, of one of the three largest airline alliances in the world, from its founding in May 2000 until it was relocated to New York City in June 2011.

In popular culture The building has often been used in filmmaking and television production. It was the setting for the final scene in the movie, Timecop and it was used as the headquarters of the Daily Planet in the popular television show Smallville and as the Freelancers headquarter in the TV show Continuum. The building was used in the movie Blade: Trinity. It stood in for the Baxter Building in New York City in 2005's Fantastic Four and its sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. The Netflix series Altered Carbon (2018) used the lobby as the home of a main character.

Gallery

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Marine Building

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Marine Building claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Marine Building before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Marine Building ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Marine Building

In research: Marine Building appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Marine Building in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Marine Building is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Art Deco architecture in Canada, Buildings and structures completed in 1930, Coal Harbour, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Marine Building outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Marine Building in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Marine Building means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Marine Building out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Marine Building in simple terms?

Why does Marine Building matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Marine Building?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Marine Building.