The building was constructed as the head office of the forestry company MacMillan Bloedel and was designed by Erickson/Massey Architects with Francis Donaldson.

[2] After the merger, some staff from the Powell River Company moved into the MacMillan and Bloedel Building, while others were forced to use overflow space rented elsewhere.

In 1965, company chairman John Clyne approached Erickson/Massey Architects, who had risen to prominence in 1963 when they won the design competition for the new Simon Fraser University campus.

Air conditioning ducts cross the building length-wise, and together with the width-wise structural beams form coffered ceilings.

On the floors occupied by MacMillan Bloedel, Erickson devised a built-in cupboard system, made of oak or walnut, that acted as the hallway partition for outside offices.

Strasman also designed the psychedelic main floor sales office for International Travel, which was of green, blue, yellow, and brown, with lights and mirrors.

It gives variety and character to a monotonous urban landscape, but on rainy days this concrete monolith with its rows of windows seems to many to draw into itself the greyness of the northwest climate.

"[13] Ricardo L. Castro and David Theodore said, "this redoubtable office building sits like a pair of giant interlaced trees in Vancouver's downtown, its tapering forms somehow managing to represent and evoke MacMillan Bloedel's involvement in the rude and wild forestry industry.

The sunken entrance courtyard adds to the sense of an urban forest setting, creating a topographical site for the towers.

Erickson wrote, "the fact that the building is rather rugged in appearance and that it tapers upward like the trunk of a great tree is quite incidental, but nevertheless conforms to the image that MacMillan Bloedel wanted to project.

Drawings for the MacMillan Bloedel Building are held at the Canadian Architectural Archives at the University of Calgary in the Arthur Erickson fonds.