A classic piece of westcoast modern architecture is back on the market again.West Vancouver—which actually lies north of the rest of the city and on the other side of the harbour—holds most of the city’s best modern architecture. This is due to unwise code restrictions everywhere else, along with other reasons, all too frustrating to go into here. This house has been saved from demolition once before. It will be interesting to see what happens now, but I believe it may already have heritage status.
There is an interesting article on Paul Merrick in The Walrus, in which he talks about not just his own architecture but the development of the city of Vancouver, its successes and failures:
“Vancouver is an immature, adolescent, not quite realized city. But there’s something valuable about youth: they don’t know what they can’t do, or are not supposed to do, so they go ahead and do it. We’ve done a number of things in our youth just by doing them, just because we could. But the world is now full of little pinheads who have this book of rules that says you can’t have a hand railing that isn’t like the others. It’s idiotic. The sadness is that over time you become dead, stifled, out of oxygen.”
I don’t agree with many of his points of view in the article, but I agree with the above, and I like the 70s house.
Photo above via Robert Crowe Realty. Also see posts on Architecture Wanted, Eve Lazarus, Photo of Merrick by Brett Beadle.
