122 replies to this topic

[Nparker]

More locally, there is a house in Sidney around which the new firehall was built some 15 - 20 years ago. I can't imagine wanting to live there with the noise of sirens and alarms.

[Holden West]

Almost Grown

Paul Merrick thinks Vancouver is finally outgrowing its architectural adolescence
Walrus Magazine

by Melora Koepke

He tells me about some of the city’s near misses at greatness — for example, his first-hand knowledge of an early-’80s I. M. Pei proposal for a downtown skyscraper that would have “punctured the pablum skyline,” but that was rejected by Mayor Mike Harcourt because he didn’t want to interrupt the view from City Hall to the mountains.

“There’s the Marine Building, which you can’t hardly see anymore for everything that surrounds it, and the Hotel Vancouver, which you can’t see anymore either,” he says. “They used to be the head of the skyline, when everything else was domestic scale. Now, look at the Convention Centre and tell me if it makes your heart leap. Compare that with Arthur [Erickson]’s terrace building over there, like a Mayan ruin left over from some previous era. That high one over there, [James K. M. Cheng’s] Shangri La, is a really fine piece of work. It has finally punctured the pablum skyline of Vancouver, at last. It will be interesting for whoever tries next, because downtown is getting full. The only place to go is up.”

more

[Ms. B. Havin]

^ Nice! Thanks for posting that link.

(Now I'll go off and cry a bit 'cause Victoria could have had a James Cheng-designed auxiliary Art Gallery building next to a James Cheng-designed high rise / tower, but pablum-lovin' folks nixed that one...)