On a recent trip to Vancouver BC I was able to visit the inside of Jameson house and see the 7th floor offices and the garage used as Escala. After that first visit I then contacted a realtor I had found last fall and was lucky to be able to visit the inside of the building once again. He had two of the residences listed for sale and was showing them both that afternoon. He was kind enough to meet me before then to show me the condos first. The bigger one was selling for 2.2$ million and was about 1900 square feet. All the residences in the building are on the 13th floor and higher and are designed to look out one of the four circular windows which make up one side of the building. The views are spectacular of the downtown and harbor area.

While we were viewing this condo I showed him a photo of the Grey Enterprises reception area and asked if he knew of an office in the building that looked similar. He recognized the entry and the boardroom in the photo and took us to the business. On the way down in the residences elevator it stopped on the 20th floor for a person to get on. I snapped a photo quickly. The residences private elevator only stops on the floor that they live on.  Jameson House has separate elevators for residences and businesses so we went down to the lobby and rode up the business elevator to the right floor. When the elevator opened I was stunned. It was identical to the reception area in the movie. Because it was a private business he went over to chat with the reception girl who he knew while I took as many photos as possible. I could not walk further into the area to peek down the hallway but the view of the entry and boardroom was perfect. There was a huge screen on the wall to the right off the elevator. You don’t see that wall in the movie. Otherwise the area is an exact match to the movie. I was told that they were only in this building for one night of filming so I am not sure if they actually filmed in this space or duplicated it on a set.  I know that Christians office was built as a set and I noticed that his office door is wood with the same handles as used in Jameson House. The difference is that all the doors in the actual Jameson House building are clear glass. You can see this in the movie at the entrance to Grey Enterprises lobby and the glass boardroom doors.

I also came across an article written in Design Quarterly about the award winning design by Square One Interiors that they did for this office. It was renovated in 2012. Here is some of the details of their design work:

“With a mix of open workstations and offices, the interior boasts clean horizontal and vertical planes, layered with textured architectural materials and surfaces. Back painted glass, custom-quarried Italian limestone, stainless steel, polished white marble, LED lighting and a restrained finish palette were all selected to create a timeless space. To add visual impact and energy, high-tech digital signage and graphic artwork is used throughout the space.

One of the largest physical challenges for the design team was creating the new reception area on the centre level. “To implement this, a large portion of the building core was removed, with many constraints regarding services that were feeding the residential tower above. It required a complete redesign of the template, and an entire new code analysis,” Hamilton says.

The unique three-level interconnecting stairway was also carved out of the building core and engineered to cantilever from the custom designed monolithic stone wall. It adds transparency and a feeling of lightness to the space.

Thank you to Design Quarterly for this article.

You can read more about Jameson house here and see the underground garage they used as Escala garage here.

As seen in the movie:  Note the glass boardroom doors.

Here is what I saw when the elevator doors opened:

These are some BTS pics.

The girl holding the envelope is the stand in double for Dakota Johnson during filming.

The movie elevator and real one:

These are from the condo that is for sale in Jameson House. Same window design and gorgeous views.

That B5 building is Bentall Five where they used the front street side for filming of the exterior of Grey House.