Bill MacEwen / Blog

When I was in Paris one of the more striking buildings I saw was the Centre Pompidou. At the time I didn’t know the architect, but it was striking. The one thing that really stood out was the way the building was presented to people in the area, as though it were a piece of art itself. It really was worth just sitting there and watching.

Turns out the guy behind the design was Richard Rogers, and he won The Pritzker Prize (sweet website dudes) this year. He’s become famous for exposing the infrastructure of his buildings; plumbing, HVAC etc. are not hidden from view. Often a massive amount of resources are spent on hiding these “ugly” parts, but embracing them can obviously have some striking effects. I don’t know how many times I’ve walked into old buildings in Gastown and seen beautiful brick hidden by t-bar and drywall. Any sane person’s reaction would be to tear that shit out!

Rock on Richard.

(img. from wikipedia)

As I was googling vancouver building height restrictions, I came accross an 2004 article on an 800 foot tower that was to be designed by Arthur Erickson.

“What’s 800-feet tall, occupies a full city block, has a titanium clamshell theatre at the base and thousands of feet of high-tensile steel cable running at an angle from top to street-level to make it look like a harp?” [article]

Only a dream, only a dream…

I am dissapointed to see the look of the new False Creek development.  More Yaletown, all over again.  The market, unfortunately, appears plopped in the centre of the space rather than as the anchor that it could have been.  As Ward pointed out in the comments, the city has applied some aggressive LEED requirements on the site, which is really great to see.  But from an aesthetic standpoint, we could obviously use something a little different.

Thanks to pacificmetrolpolis.com for  giving me something to talk about.

I read Pacific Metropolis from time to time. The writer does a good job of covering development in Vancouver, and today they tried their hand at justifying Olympic spending. Check this out…maybe it’s just me, but it’s quite an awkward justification:

“So, during the 2004-2010 period (during which most of the $580 million in taxpayers’ money will be spent), the federal government will also spend $204.6 billion on interest payments on the national debt, and $72 billion on social assistance programs.” [see post]

Basically the author is spreading the “580 million” over the six year period in which it’s being allocated, and comparing that to six years worth of debt interest and social assistance spending. Regardless of whether the data is accurate, you can’t compare a one time expense (for a two week event) with six years of on going costs.

I’m not going to argue for or against the Olympics, but I do think that our opinions need to be based on some seriously sound ratios.

Toyota., originally uploaded by MacEwen.

Maybe it’s just me, but all the innovative projects seem to go up in the middle of nowhere. From time to time yeah there will be some cool stuff happening in dense residential areas, but my impression is that most architectural and environmental innovation is occurring on really cheap pieces of land. Not much is happening in Manhattan, not to mention Robson & Burrard. Again, this is because innovation is risky. Even though the project might prove to have low capital cost and great appeal…(see the Loblolly House) it’s still different. I guess no one wants to risk being different on a proven piece of real estate.

Yesterday I was frustrated that we are all always having to put up with poor and mediocre design, so I started a post about it.  It quickly got out of hand and I got hungry so it was put off.  I’ll have to get back to it with a full stomach and big ‘ol coffee to keep me going.

Maybe the people at Yale will come up with a more succinct answer.

Just heard about the Ted conference via a link that Duncan sent to me on the design process of the Seattle Public Library and other projects.  I haven’t had a chance to get into these other videos too much yet, but it seems like there’s some great ideas floating around Monterey.

“1000 thought-leaders, movers and shakers…”

TED Videos

This image (via archidose) strikes a cord with me.  I don’t necessarily love it, but it’s different.  With all the development happening in this city why do we keep putting up the same old shoeboxes when we could be doing something really interesting.  Isn’t there enough of a margin to put some dollars into real design?