Cool Thing We Want #278: Local Artist Julie Morstad’s Sweet “Milk Teeth” Drawings
June 1, 2011
Love the sweet and macabre illustrations by local artist Julie Morstad. A collection of her Marcel Dzama-reminiscent drawings is back in print and popping up around town. We spied some at Dandelion Emporium (2442 Main) the other day. Milk Teeth ($17) is published by Drawn and Quarterly.
ALL THE COOL THINGS WE WANT
Cool Thing We Want #267: A Vintage Coffee Bean Bag Chair From Ireland’s “Blanaid”
April 8, 2011
We scoped these sweet Blanaid armchairs on Etsy this morning for $622 apiece. Unfortunately, they’ve already sold. Even more unfortunate is the fact that, when they make more (and they are making more), they are only shipping them within Ireland. It’s a bummer, sure, but as Ducasse once said: “plagiarism is necessary; progress implies it.” Here’s hoping this inspires a local person to make something similar! Give us a call when you do.
Cool Thing We Want #265: For The Girls Who Just Love Having Their Ears Nibbled
March 18, 2011
Baguette Earrings | One Elf | $13.50 | Etsy
Now you can proclaim your love of baked goods by dangling them from your ears. These lovely, crusty loaves are available from Vancouver’s own One Elf. And they don’t stop at baguettes! Check out their Key Lime pie and corn dog earrings too.
Smoke Break #811: “Cargoh”, The Curated Marketplace For Local Artists & Designers
February 15, 2011
Surfed Cargoh today? You should. Even though the etsy-ish, curated social marketplace for independent artists and designers is still in beta, it’s clearly pretty awesome. What you see above is their video profile for Vancouver’s Indigo (done by Gastown’s own Catalog Creative). She’s a local artist, writer and dancer who “currently works in many mediums including stencils, posters, acrylics, oils, photography, printmaking and more.” Have a browse. It’s a cool way to get familiar with some of local imaginations and a great way to peruse their wares.
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
Cool Thing We Want #250: Just About Anything At Old Faithful
December 22, 2010
If you’re shopping for last minute Christmas gifts you can decimate a flock of birds with one stone by heading to Old Faithful in Gastown (320 West Cordova). Proprietors Walter and Savannah have curated a sweet selection of items for the home that are as uncomplicated as they are well executed in design. We love the simple lines of the glass decanters ($21), the old school wool blankets, the stocking-stuffer sized boxes of cedar incense (we go through one every two months – they reek awesomely of Xmas), the coloured twig pencil crayons, the class log cabin sets and the rest. Even the soap kicks ass. And if you’re feeling really nice, the handmade wooden chair pictured after the jump ($700) is right up our alley. We’ve been especially good this year. Take a look… 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
“Glasfurd & Walker Design” Has Joined The Scout Community
November 23, 2010
Our talented friends at Glasfurd & Walker Design are now proud member supporters of Scout. We will be publishing their news on our front page and hosting a page for them in our list of recommended local resources to check out. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank them for their support of our little website. Click ahead to read on or jump directly to their Scout page here… 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.
