British Columbia

Letter from Dorothy Field to Stephen Harper

June 8, 2012

Letter from my friend Dorothy to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on the question of his profoundly anti-democratic omnibus “budget bill” C-38. The bill’s major intent, among many nefarious minor intents, is to obliterate environmental groups and their opposition to the Alberta tar sands and its pipelines.

Categories: book, British Columbia, green, politics, Uncategorised, Vancouver

Brutalist Vancouver building that hasn’t dated

May 27, 2012

(Thanks to Steven Ballegeer for this photo on Flickr)

Just to prove I don’t hate all tall buildings, this early 1970s brutalist concrete highrise in Vancouver is a long-time favourite of mine, and one that I think has held up really well over the years.

Of Culture and Condos – Northrop Frye on condo mentality/garrison mentality

Interesting article from The Walrus magazine on Northrop Frye’s look at the condominium form and its effects on our attitudes, particularly in the context of Canadian history and our “garrison mentality.” I’d be interested in people’s reactions to this.

Custom pendant lamp at Gudrun Restaurant, Steveston

May 17, 2012

Beautiful lamp commissioned by my friend Patrick Tubajon, proprietor of gorgeous Gudrun Restaurant in Steveston, BC. Steveston is a historic and still operating fishing and cannery village in the mouth of the Fraser River, just half an hour S.

Categories: architecture, art, British Columbia, Canadian design, design, DIY, furniture, interiors, Uncategorised, Vancouver

The Limits of Density

Low-rises in Vancouver’s S. False Creek

Quebec City, successful lo-rise/high density combination

This short essay by Richard Florida in Atlantic Cities magazine has been making the rounds.

“I’ve been told that the tallest building in hell has an awesome view of the emerald city”

May 14, 2012

Heard those lyrics over the car radio last week. I did not know that the Emerald City was close enough to hell that you could actually see it from there, but that whole geography sounds a lot like Vancouver.

Categories: architecture, book, British Columbia, cities, design, politics, Uncategorised, urban planning, Vancouver

Handmade Houses: A Century of Earth-Friendly Home Design

April 22, 2012

I have been looking forward to the publication of Richard Olsen’s book Handmade Houses: A Century of Earth-Friendly Home Design, and it has now been released by Rizzoli.

Categories: architect, architecture, art, book, British Columbia, green, Uncategorised

Lloyd Kahn on Tiny Houses – lecture in Vancouver

April 19, 2012

Lloyd Kahn, Editor in Chief and founder of Shelter Publications, is a North American authority on the handmade house. Visit Shelter for a full list of his book titles on this topic.

On Rize (Or Forcing A Luxury Highrise On A Neighbourhood That Really Doesn’t Want It)

April 5, 2012

UPDATE: This disastrous, precedent-setting development was passed by our City Council, dominated by supposedly “green” Vision Vancouver, in a 9-1 vote. It was not sent back to design; only vague requests to the developer to make it smaller and less ugly were uttered.

It’s spring and the skunk cabbage is out

March 22, 2012

Happy Spring.

Skunk cabbages, Vancouver Island, a few days before the Spring Equinox.

Categories: British Columbia, green, Uncategorised

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This blog is a long, somewhat messy photo essay on the history and politics of design. Design's socio-historical context—that is, the constraints and influences on the way we make objects, dwellings and cities—seems too often ignored. We no longer know where our styles, tastes or objects really come from, and this damages our creativity and sense of meaning. Historical knowledge is so fugitive in the New World, with everything so decontextualized in the rapid flow of commodities and images. Don't even get me started on tumblr and pinterest. As Fran Lebowitz said, "Designers now, they all have these things called mood boards. I suppose they think a sense of discovery equals invention. It would be as if every writer had a board with paragraphs of other writers—'Oh, I'll take a little bit of this, and that, he was really good.' Yes, he was really good! And that is not a mood board, it is a stealing board." As for the sort of design I'm personally interested in, full disclaimer.....read more ____________________________________

To read about my book project on Vancouver's UN-Habitat Forum event of 1976 concerning just and sustainable urban settlements, click here. Few know that Buckminster Fuller, Margaret Mead, Mother Teresa, Paolo Soleri and Maggie & Pierre Trudeau, along with many thousands of others, came to Vancouver in 1976 to talk about better, safer, fairer and greener cities worldwide. In fact it was the founding conference of UN Habitat, an agency built around a foundational document called The Vancouver Declaration. My book is about what happened that year and is a snapshot not just of Vancouver but of how people around the world began to view cities and themselves differently in the wake of, among other things, the first oil crisis. ____________________________________

British Columbia

Letter from Dorothy Field to Stephen Harper

Brutalist Vancouver building that hasn’t dated

Of Culture and Condos – Northrop Frye on condo mentality/garrison mentality

Custom pendant lamp at Gudrun Restaurant, Steveston

The Limits of Density

“I’ve been told that the tallest building in hell has an awesome view of the emerald city”

Handmade Houses: A Century of Earth-Friendly Home Design

Lloyd Kahn on Tiny Houses – lecture in Vancouver

On Rize (Or Forcing A Luxury Highrise On A Neighbourhood That Really Doesn’t Want It)

It’s spring and the skunk cabbage is out

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