March 29, 2011
In 1967 a group of citizens waged a fractious and clever fight against a massive freeway system that would have flattened much of Vancouver’s downtown core and surrounding heritage districts. The fight was led by Vancouver citizens Shirley and Mary Chan, Mike Harcourt (later mayor and then premier of the province) and many other volunteers.
“Application to the City of Vancouver to develop an abysmal chasm for purposes of facilitating public reverie, contemplation and longing.” Makes me laugh every time I look at it. By my friend & Vancouver artist Aaron Carpenter.
March 13, 2011
[UPDATE: I was just informed by the artist’s son Guy that this mural is now threatened, after gracing the lowest floor of City Hall for over 40 years! It’s odd that the City now says it will demolish or paint over the mural, having recently asked Guy and his sister for a bio of their father, suggesting that City Hall had intended to preserve his work.
March 12, 2011
Tunis’ Hotel du Lac, above, was apparently the inspiration for the sandcrawlers in Star Wars.
It’s interesting that this example of sci-fi brutalism isn’t very well-known and in fact I can’t even locate the name of the architect or year it was completed.
February 20, 2011
Above is an artist’s rendering of the new mega-casino planned for Vancouver. Those three towers jammed up against the stadium in that awkward manner are the “entertainment complex” hotel towers, where presumably you can rent by the hour.
February 5, 2011
Storm sewer cover by Coast Salish (Musqueam) artist Susan Point and her daughter Kelly Cannell, depicting four small eggs in the centre, spinning out to tadpoles that become frogs radiating out to the edges. Point is a Vancouver-based Coast Salish artist and master carver whose work has been commissioned for the Vancouver International Airport, the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology and the Smithsonian in Washington.
January 15, 2011
The entire 16th C town of Trinidad on Cuba’s south coast is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its heritage designation, as well as the complete—and for a Vancouverite visually relieving—absence of land speculators and developers in Cuba has kept the town very close to its original condition.
November 30, 2010
Vancouver architect Ned Pratt produced work in an era that—from the standpoint of our developer-led moment—is quickly starting to look like a golden age. Pratt and Arthur Erickson along with their contemporaries Ron Thom and Fred Hollingsworth still rank among Vancouver’s best and most influential architects.
November 25, 2010
Inspiring story about the 10-year long restoration of the Wadi Hanifah oasis outside Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, via Globeandmail.
“A Canadian planning and architecture firm has won an Aga Khan Award for Architecture for the sweeping transformation of a once-polluted Saudi waterway into a system of parks in the heart of the desert, using a system of bio-remediation.
November 20, 2010
Above: the superb book design on Davis’ often-reprinted books from the 1970s.
Chuck Davis died early this morning at age 75. Chuck was arguably Vancouver’s most well-known historian; certainly he was its best-loved historian for anyone who grew up in Vancouver in the 70s or 80s.
