West Coast Contemporary Architecture
#121
Posted 08 July 2009 - 10:06 AM
#122
Posted 16 August 2009 - 07:58 PM
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.
more“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.”
-City of Victoria website, 2009
#123
Posted 17 August 2009 - 04:24 PM
(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...)
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