“IDSWest” Gets Ready To Launch Three Day Celebration Of Art, Design And Architecture
September 23, 2011
The Interior Design Show West (IDSwest) is coming up quickly, running from September 29th to October 2nd. It’s Western Canada’s premiere residential design show, and it’s gearing up to showcase some 200 curated exhibitors, all putting forward quality products and services to an audience of industry professionals, architects, designers, and consumers. It attracts over 28,000 attendees over three and a half days; roughly 22,000 of whom are avid design wonks looking to source and purchase some of the latest trends and innovations in contemporary home design.
Here are six things you shouldn’t miss… Read more
SECRET CITY: On Buildings Being John Malkovich In Chinatown…
July 21, 2011
Welcome to Secret City, a new column by Ian Granville, who will be taking Scout readers across the city in search of its architecture and design secrets each week. Granville studied art history, human geography, and urban planning before completing diplomas in sustainable renovations and timber framing. This summer, he is working with the Architectural Institute of British Columbia to research and conduct the architectural walking tour program.
by Ian Granville | Hiding in plain sight, an architectural oddity exists between the first and third floor of many historic buildings in Vancouver’s Chinatown. It is the half-storey, like the one at 529 Carrall St. pictured above, and reminiscent of the strange office space in Being John Malkovich depicted in the clip below. These were deliberate design features, and no…you probably can’t rent one for cheap. Read more
Cool Thing We Want #282: Adorably Tiny L41 Home As Seen At The “IDS West” Preview
June 28, 2011
We’re very happy with the home we have, but we saw this 220 sqft sustainable, high-design, high-quality, energy-efficient L41 home designed by architect Michael Katz and artist Janet Corne at the IDS West preview show last week and now we can’t stop thinking about how great it would be to scoop up a little piece of dirt on one of the Gulf Islands and plunk this ultra-compact abode on it.
EVERY COOL THING WE WANT
The Emblematic Nature Of Your Neighbourhood’s Architecture
June 1, 2011
by Scott Daniel | The City is inviting Vancouverites to submit ideas for neighbourhood emblems. Or, to use the intensely urban verbiage the current council is known for, they want you to “Tag Your Hood“. This is all well and good, but when you travel east to west through this “city of neighbourhoods,” it seems there are already some pretty distinct architectural emblems that leave no doubt as to where you are…
Shaughnessy: Rounded Mansard Roof
I’d never noticed these peculiar roof adornments before…if you cycle the Cypress/Angus St. bike route through Shaughnessy, they’re everywhere. An understated, elegant type of opulence. Just like, I imagine, the residents of this neighbourhood perceive themselves. And they let in some light to refract through the chandeliers. Duh.
Kits: Put a Peak On It!
According to Exploring Vancouver, Kitsilano developed as a, “less expensive suburban alternative to the West End…with gabled roofs picturesque and not boring.”
In the 90′s, builders who wanted/needed their developments to conform to the neighbourhood character went overboard. They ran with the Put.A.Peak.On.It! approach. Some of them do fit, but more often than not the peaks add a lot of visual clutter and almost distract from the picturesque bungalow next door.
South Granville: A Cozy Pile of Bricks
South Granville has a bunch of warm brick apartment blocks. You can imagine the unique smell of the corridors even from outside. I always wanted to live in one, but at the same time, what’s with the No Balconies policy that they all seem to have? I know the weather can suck here, but gimme at least a juliet or something!
Fairview: Post-Tarp Pastel
The leaky condo craze that swept the city seemed to impact Fairview more than anywhere else. It’s said people would live and die by the phrase, “tarpé diem.” Now that the tarps are gone, we can re-join the 90′s nostalgia fetish that seems to be taking over at Urban Outfitters.
Yaletown: Shoebox City
People will pay almost any price to live in a shoebox if it’s close to the beautiful, the creative, the professional-hockey playing set. And it used to be the place to be!
The West End: Deco Apartments
Photo by Crankspanker
The West End is teeming with great examples of Art Deco apartment design. The colourful adornments, curved facades, chrome stoops, and focus on all that is horizontal make it a great place to walk and admire on your way to the pitch-n-putt.
Strathcona: Artist in Residence
The annual Culture Crawl invites Vancouverites to walk among the bohemian residents of Strathcona in their expressive habitats. Ancient grains soaking in the kitchen, surrealist sculptures in the workshop. All in a community-oriented, working class neighbourhood close to downtown.
East Van: Special
East Vancouver is experiencing a renaissance, and that’s a good thing. Stuff like This Is East Van and The revitalised Waldorf (and a million things besides) point to a fresh, vibrant art scene. But it can also get kind of annoying, what with all the sanctimonious East-Van-is-so-much-more-”real”-than-wherever-you-live chatter. Still, there are worse things than sanctimony.
What is more iconic than the East Van Special? Modern. Utilitarian. Real. Designers are starting to do some really interesting things with them. It’s such a great emblem…heck, there’s even an East Van Specials hockey team! And I can assure you, most of the players are quite sanctimonious.
City Briefs: Get Ready For Even More Dream City On False Creek
December 22, 2010
by Scott Daniel | Vancouver’s been generating its intense form of urbanism so fast it can feel as if there’s almost no space left on the downtown peninsula. But, there are a surprising number of “dead zones,” chief among them the waterfront adjacent to BC Place, a.k.a. North East False Creek (NEFC).
Plans for this area have been on the drawing board for years and the province is going ahead with its scheme for a casino and hotel development whether the City likes it or not.
For its part, the City is looking for the right mix of commercial, residential, and public space, and has received a major proposal from Canadian Metropolitan Properties, a huge landowner in the area. CMP proposes 1.4 million square feet of residential space, 700,000 for commercial use, and 67,000 square feet of public space. The goodies include a civic plaza and a Canucks practice rink/public arena (Canucks get the rink from 8 to 11am when the team is in town, the public gets it the rest of the time). More after the jump… Read more
City Briefs: A Walking Tour Of The Power That Made Vancouver
December 7, 2010
by Scott Daniel | In 1882, Vancouver went all-in for the new age of electrified living. As the late, great Chuck Davis points out, our city had the first electric lights on the Pacific coast north of San Fran. People living at the edge of a rainforest joined the Second Industrial Revolution and our neighbourhoods grew up around the electric streetcar network.
Perhaps we don’t preserve our history all that well in Vancouver, but there is a collection of surprisingly remarkable electrical substations and ‘rectifiers’ scattered around the city that tell interesting stories about our relationship with modernity. Read more
City Briefs: On The Charming Fakery Of Frontier “Facadism”
November 18, 2010
But Vancouver’s falsest fronts also tell interesting and varied stories. Increasingly, facadism is becoming the face of downtown as planners and developers come to grips with ways to increase density while preserving at least a superficial holla! to the past.
At its worst, facadism destroys everything about a building – except for its most superficial elements – to the extent that all of its original meaning or purpose is lost. The Scotiabank Dance Centre has been criticized for just such an overbearing approach, with its tokenistic nod to the original bank (the recent integration of the YMCA-Patina on Burrard is perhaps a more successful example).
To me, the most interesting facades are the ones that eschew any sort of grand gesture, and appeal to our most unglamorous design ambitions, as in ‘hey! it’s bigger than it looks!’ The metaphors flow easily from Vancouver’s working class facades as the buildings strive to be more than the space they occupy. Did the architect advertise, “Appears 33% bigger!” or what? While not flashy, there’s something gratifying about peeking behind a boxy, cookie cutter building with no visual appeal to find a perched roof and a modest tribute to frontierishness.
Last year, Vancouver artist Reece Terris installed an additional “False Front” on the Western Front’s false front as a commentary on Vancouver’s booming real estate market. The building, and Terris’ intervention, is a throwback to the urban pioneer west where designs sought to impart a “larger-than-life appearance to…primitive cabins.”
Since these facades are no longer part of a frontier architectural vernacular, they now seem out of place. But that just adds to their charm. These imposters make fakery an art.
City Briefs: On (Sort Of) Rubbing Shoulders With A “Starchitect”
November 5, 2010
by Scott Daniel | Norman Foster’s Jameson building at 838 Hastings is nearly complete. That’s right Vancouver, we have a shiny new piece of Starchitecture to call our own! (Safdie and Erickson may be star architects, but according to The Internet, they aren’t Starchitects). So, what do we think?
IS IT BEAUTIFUL AND INNOVATIVE? | I think there’s some beauty here. A nice contrast with the Ceperley Rounsfell (1929) and Chamber of Mines (1921) facades at its base. And a refreshing counterbalance to the green glass, podium-tower Vancouverizers all around. Something different. All that, and – hello! – a fully mechanized underground parkade!
IS IT MENACING? | A little. I can picture William Gibson living here, writing dystopian futures…in his pod…with a crisis garden…nourished by SunLight that is refracted through brown air and PodGlass. The building even has it’s own bio-diesel powered cogeneration plant. Green innovation for survivalists!
BUT, IS IT REALLY STARCHITECTURE? | The Jameson’s marketing materials are convincing: this building expresses a great architect’s unique vision. Foster this, Foster that. It takes a little digging to find out the lead architect is actually Nigel Dancey, who in turn, runs a team of 160 architects. No, I wasn’t under the impression that Norman Foster jetsets around the world whipping together 3 or 4 monumental projects per month. But it would be interesting to know whether he does anything more than sign off on these things.
At the end of his career, Vancouver’s own ziggurat poet, Arthur Erickson, was as much branding tool as concrete waffler. Such is the state of the industry. In an age of so-called ‘apostrophe’ books, video games, and films, where the author/creator is merely a franchise dispensary, this comes as no surprise. While it’s too harsh to compare Norman Foster to Tom Clancy, think of the video game spinoff opportunities. Norman Foster’s Commando Architects II: Special Ops! Perfecting the art of assassination while using built space to conjure a sort of sublime humanism, transgressing artificial barriers that separate inside from outside, public from private.
Indie Profile: Five Minutes With MGB Principal Michelle Biggar
March 7, 2010
Michelle Biggar is an Australian interior designer who has made her home in Vancouver. She is a principal at mcfarlane | green | biggar ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN INC, better known as MGB. Gathering 11 years of international experience, Michelle has worked professionally in Australia, the UK and in Canada on a vast range of projects from multi-residential interiors to fashion retail, offices, and restaurants. Some of her recently completed Vancouver projects include Giovane café, bakery + deli and Oru restaurant (both in Vancouver’s new Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel), Obakki’s flagship store in Gastown and an office and gallery for Bob Rennie in Chinatown. She believes in beautiful, timeless solutions born of intelligent design. Her aesthetic is clean, modern, and contemplative. Her calm and clement manner, while indispensable on multi-million dollar projects, comes in handy at home, where she is the proud mother of Max Lucy Biggar, born February 6th, 2009. Read more
Scout Welcomes Raef Grohne, Architectural Photographer
October 5, 2009
Architectural photographer Raef Grohne is now a proud member supporter of Scout. Click ahead for a taste of his work, or visit his Scout page here… Read more
