At 742 feet and 61 stories tall, One Dalton is the tallest residential tower in New England and third tallest building in Boston. It consists of 712,500 square feet of residential, hotel and retail space. One Dalton's upper floors contain 180 private luxury condominium residences. The lower floors are home to a Four Seasons luxury hotel with 215 rooms above the hotel’s various amenities.

The WSP USA team’s scope of work for this project included MEP engineering for concept design through to schematic design, as well as telecommunications, security, LEED documentation and administration, energy modelling, commissioning services and structural engineering. To execute this broad scope of work, our Boston team joined efforts with our team in New York to harness their expertise and experience with larger high-rise buildings in a way that has strategically allowed WSP to become a local leader in high-rise design in the Boston area.

Our team designed the building structure and MEP systems in close collaboration with Odeh Engineers, now a member of WSP, which worked as the construction engineering consultant on numerous challenges that arose during the project.

Due to the mixed-use nature of the building, One Dalton was designed to allow separation of operation costs related to HVAC, electrical and plumbing between the hotel and the condominium programs. This requirement necessitated comprehensive distribution planning and metering for the systems and programming the relationships between mechanical and electrical levels into the building.

The WSP team designed a flexible HVAC system – a critical component for this mixed-use project. Our design uses a single HVAC plant with appropriate distribution and metering to allow cost and maintenance to be divided based on specific energy use. The system was integrated with hotel room controls and features a modular design to overcome future logistical challenges related to maintenance and replacement.

To increase efficiency, a ventilation air strategy was optimized by the utilization of energy recovery wheels to pre-heat/cool the outside air to lower mechanical loads to save on energy costs. Ozone generators in the building’s commercial kitchen also reduce need for cleaning and odors.

Additionally, the design and installation included high-efficiency chillers, boilers, domestic hot water heaters, LED lighting, lighting controls and low flow plumbing fixtures to use less energy and less water. In 2021, this project received a LEED Silver certification by the US Green Building Council (USGBC).

Our building technology systems teams implemented a converged network approach for One Dalton, encouraging integration, automation and optimization of the smart building systems and equipment, including telecom, security (including card access and video surveillance, and distributed antennae systems). This system increases effectiveness of performance and functionality, and it includes remote monitoring and control of all building systems included within the network.

WSP was a close partner with the client from concept through the build. Our team was proud to help them design and construct this innovative and more sustainable center piece that has changed the Boston skyline.