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17 Vancouver Olympic Village Sustainability initiatives deployed in the newly constructed Olympic Village in Vancouver’s Southeast False Creek are critiqued. TEXT Hannah Teicher

26 Vancouver Convention Centre West A detailed report of the evolutionary process of Vancouver’s new convention centre. TEXT Frances Bula

36 Richmond Olympic Oval Tom Soar

Gracing the banks of the Fraser River, this award-winning project is one of few purpose-built speed-skating ovals in existence. TEXT Ian Chodikoff

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Contents

11 News

Office dA selected for University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design expansion; deadline for nominations and submissions for the RAIC Gold Medal and Architectural Firm Award.

45 Insites

Graham Livesey introduces the concept of and key figures in the landscape urbanism movement.

49 Practice

In this second installment, the pros and cons of the P3 process are presented by Helena Grdadolnik and David Colussi.

56 Calendar

P arallel Nippon: Contemporary Japanese Architecture 1996-2006 at the Design Exchange; Construct Canada 2009 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

58 Backpage

Adele Weder speaks about multidisciplinary design firm Cause+Affect and their contributions to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

NOVEMBER 2009, v.54 n.11

The highly expressed roof structure of the Richmond Olympic Oval by Cannon Design. Photo by Hubert Kang.

COVER

The National Review of Design and Practice/ The Journal of Record of the RAIC

11/09 canadian architect

7

© VANOC/COVAN

Viewpoint

­­Editor Ian Chodikoff, OAA, MRAIC Associate Editor Leslie Jen, MRAIC Editorial Advisors John McMinn, AADipl.

Marco Polo, OAA, MRAIC Contributing Editors Gavin Affleck, OAQ, MRAIC Herbert Enns, MAA, MRAIC Douglas MacLeod, ncarb Regional Correspondents Halifax Christine Macy, OAA Regina Bernard Flaman, SAA Montreal David Theodore Calgary David A. Down, AAA Winnipeg Herbert Enns, MAA vancouver adele weder Publisher Tom Arkell 416-510-6806 associate publisher greg paliouras 416-510-6808 ABOVE Cheerful and welcoming ambassadors Quatchi and Miga, two of the three official mascots of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

Circulation Manager beata olechnowicz 416-442-5600 ext. 3543 Customer Service malkit chana 416-442-5600 ext. 3539 Production jessica jubb

In February, Vancouver (along with Whistler, Richmond and West Vancouver) will host the 21st Winter Olympics, and the world’s media will focus on one of North America’s most dynamic cities. However, considering the staggering amount of new construction over the past several years and the many high-profile projects that have literally paved the way for the 2010 Winter Olympics, what does Vancouver have to show for itself in terms of precedent-setting and innovative architecture in the public realm?

Certainly, the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics will not be anything like the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, where China showcased its new iconic architecture to the world with unparalleled bravado. In the case of Vancouver, competition venues like the Richmond Oval and non-competition venues like the Olympic Village and the Vancouver Convention Centre West exist as effective catalysts for urban development to occur around their respective sites over a period of time—rather than operating as instant icons of architecture for the purposes of global media consumption. However, in the opinion of some within Vancouver’s design community, the projects being completed for the Winter Olympics have largely resulted in architecturally flaccid entities whose greatest success will be fostering the development of places like Richmond and Southeast False Creek. What could have been done to avoid this perception of lacklustre buildings, and did the conservative assembly of public-private partnerships hinder the expression of the architecture?

With so much of the Olympics being about media, and with so much of Vancouver’s new architecture being about the pragmatics of providing cost-effective sports facilities, one begins to wonder how the architectural experience of 8 canadian architect 11/09

these facilities could someday be heightened through “augmented reality” (AR), a term used to describe the indirect experience of a physical real-world environment that has been mediated with—or augmented by—a computer-generated virtual reality. AR is already being heavily promoted and developed for certain applications like broadcast sports. An example would be digitally placing virtual yellow lines over scrimmage lines, or digitally colour-enhancing the lane of the fastest swimmer to better identify her progress in the pool. Recently, the software company Yelp released the first AR iPhone application that enables users to aim their phone’s camera at a restaurant, and a review of that restaurant will instantly appear on screen. Other offerings will soon include the possibility of simply aiming the phone at a person in the street to access his or her social networking page. Layar, an Amsterdam-based software company, has developed an application that lets people see pictures and information about World War I battlefields simply by holding up their phones at certain inter­ sections or empty fields in and around small towns in northern France. Already, the Royal Bank of Canada is experimenting with AR to further the objectives of energy efficiency, and the campaign is being promoted throughout the Olympic torch relay.

As the concept of AR advances, perhaps we’ll be able to satisfy architectural critics by giving them a special iPhone application that will allow them to see the world through a lens that reveals the dream potential of what a building could have been without the reality of budget cuts, free of the detrimental effects of value-engineering to sat­ isfy short-term financial requirements. Let the Games begin.

Ian Chodikoff

ichodikoff@canadianarchitect.com

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News Projects Office dA selected for University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design expansion.

The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Land­scape and Design at the University of Toron­ to announced that a design team led by Bostonbased architectural firm Office dA has been chosen to transform its facilities. Led by partners Monica Ponce de Leon and Nader Tehrani, the firm has designed award-winning pro­jects around the world. The Daniels Faculty was renamed in 2008 to recognize the historic gift by alumnus John Daniels and his wife Myrna, directed at re­ newing its facilities as well as providing financial support to students. Earlier this year, the Faculty began a search to select an architectural team to design a project that would address the acceler­ ated growth of its programs and research endeav­ ours, as well as situate new technologies and labora­tories. Office dA’s concept was selected after successfully meeting the criteria for origi­ nality, technical and aesthetic innovation and sustainability. The pro­ject will integrate highperformance environmental elements in the façade with revitalized interior spaces in the Daniels building. Key features include a new au­ di­torium, a vertical telescoping atrium, upgraded studio and meeting spaces, a rooftop library and adjoining green terrace with views of downtown Toronto. The scheme aspires to meet the highest possible standards of environmental sustainabili­ ty and performance, and will help advance the Faculty’s ambition to become a focal point at U of T for research and speculation on better ways to design and inhabit the built environment. Of­ fice dA has received notable acclaim for its work, including an award in architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and nine Progressive Architecture Awards in architecture and urban design. Recently, the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum honoured Office dA with the prestigious National Design Award in ar­ chitecture. Ponce de Leon is dean of the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Plan­ ning at the University of Michigan, and Tehrani is professor of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Toronto firm Adamson Associates is the architect of record on the project and Coen + Partners of New York/Minneapolis is the landscape architect.

Diamond and Schmitt Architects to design new Bridgepoint Hospital.

Bridgepoint Health, Canada’s leader in the pre­ vention and management of complex chronic dis­ ease, and Infrastructure Ontario have partnered with Plenary Health to design, build, finance and

Designed by the Boston-based firm of Office dA, the new John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto will eventually see a new external carapace built over its existing structure to make it more energyefficient and visually dynamic. ABOVE Coen + Partners landscape architects have designed a newly landscaped roof for the school to provide a new vantage point from which students can experience the city.

TOP

maintain a new hospital specifically geared to pa­ tients affected by multiple, lifelong illnesses such as advanced diabetes with complications, renal failure, brain injury, multiple sclerosis, HIV/ AIDS, stroke, and other chronic diseases. As part of the Plenary Health Team, Dia­mond and Schmitt Architects in association with HDR Ar­ chitects has designed a revitalized medical cam­ pus comprised of the new Bridgepoint Hospital and the Bridgepoint Collaboratory for Research and Innovation to be located in the renovated Don Jail. The new Bridgepoint Hospital will be a 10-storey, 680,000-square-foot facility that will incorporate: increased ambulatory care space for outpatients and community programming; abun­ dant natural light and spectacular views of the city, Riverdale Park and sur­round­­ing communi­ ties; double the number of patient lounges; more room for specialized wheel­chairs; bright, open dining rooms and common areas for visitors; new

areas open to the public including a cafeteria, audi­torium, library, internet café, rooftop garden, labyrinth terrace and 12,000 square feet of retail space; and environmentally sustainable features targeting LEED certification. The Bridgepoint Collaboratory for Research and Innovation will be located in the historic Don Jail. The heritage building will be preserved and restored to house a vibrant world-class centre for education, research and innovation, and will be open to the public for the first time since 1977 with interpretive displays in the rotunda and some cells and gallows pre­ served for historical interest. The new Bridge­ point Hospital and renovated Don Jail are sched­ uled to open in 2013.

KMBR Architects Planners Inc. to design third major project for College of the Rockies.

KMBR Architects Planners Inc. has been selected to design a third major project for the College of 11/09 canadian architect

11

Awards the Rockies in Cranbrook, BC. The $12.7-million project is a major expansion of the south entrance of the college’s main building—the Kootenay Deadline for nominations and submissions Centre—and is funded by the federal-provincial for the RAIC Gold Medal and Architectural Knowledge Infrastructure Program that is invest­ Firm Award. ing in postsecondary institutions across BC. This The RAIC Gold Medal is awarded in recognition of expansion will have a significant impact on the a significant body of work deemed to be a major local community, creating over 80 direct jobs and contribution to Canadian architecture, and having helping the College build upon its role as a cul­ lasting influence on the theory and/or the practice tural and economic pillar in the region. The ex­ of architecture. Any individual, living or dead, may tensive use of wood responds to the community be nominated to receive the Gold Medal. In excep­ context, local resources and the close cultural tional circumstances, the Gold Medal may be ties between the College and the Ktunaxa First awarded to more than one individual architect Nations. The College will see a transformation of where it is clearly demonstrated that the nominees the Kootenay Centre’s lower level to add faculty have individually and collectively met the selection offices and seven classrooms featuring state-ofcriteria. Formerly offered as part of the RAIC the-art technology, while the upper level will Awards of Excellence, the Architectural Firm become an iconic port of entry, reinforcing the Award recognizes an architectural firm or practice College’s identity as a high-calibre, degreethat has consistently produced distinguished ar­ granting institution. The design is centred chitecture. Those eligible include archi­tectural around a foyer with an interior of grand propor­ firms or architectural practices which are resident tions, while a south-facing façade and expansive in Canada or have their principal office located in clerestory glazing will allow light penetration Canada, and possess the appropriate Certificate of deep into the building and reveal the expressive Practice or authorization to practice as required by structure that unifies the existing and new build­ the provincial licensing authorities, and who have ings. In order to meet the project’s fast-tracked been together as an organization or as successor schedule, KMBR has implemented its Holistic firm for at least ten years. Nominations and sub­ Project Delivery method (described in CA, June missions for both awards must be received by 2009).

Bothadphases of the project are scheduled Friday, December 11, 2009.

Vicwest 03-butterfly:Layout 1 1/21/094:00pm 9:36onAM Page 1 for completion in March 2011. www.raic.org

Richmond Olympic Oval wins first major international award.

Fast + Epp Structural Engineers of Vancouver re­ ceived the Award for Sports or Leisure Structures for the firm’s work on the Richmond Olympic Oval Roof. The award was announced at the Insti­ tution of Structural Engineers 2009 Structural Awards Gala, and marks the first major inter­ national award for the Richmond Olympic Oval.

Based in London, the Institution of Structural Engineers is the world’s largest membership or­ ganization dedicated to the art and science of structural engineering. This annual competition recognizes the work of the world’s most talented structural designers and their contribution to the built environment. Fast + Epp conceived the de­ sign idea for the Richmond Olympic Oval Roof by capitalizing on the opportunity to use a unique blend of materials, including lumber from BC pine beetle-killed forests. This wood, along with other materials, was used to design the structural elements that integrate and conceal the roof’s mechanical systems, providing the Richmond Olympic Oval Roof with the warm, impressive and unique structure it is receiving acclaim for today.

The Richmond Olympic Oval, designed by archi­ tectural firm Cannon Design, is a multi-purpose sports and recreation facility that will serve as the Long Track Speed Skating venue for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. The one-of-a-kind

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6.5-acre roof structure features hollow, triangu­ lar-shaped composite wood steel arches. Span­ ning the arches are “wood wave” panels also de­ signed by Fast + Epp in collaboration with fabri­ cator StructureCraft Builders Inc, and are con­ structed from one million feet of pine beetle-kill wood boards from the forests of British Columbia.

As one of the largest timber roofs in the world, it not only represents an economical design solu­ tion, but also striking aesthetic quality and en­ hanced acoustic performance. Fast + Epp also re­ ceived commendation for the Richmond Olympic Oval Roof by the Institution of Structural Engi­ neers for the David Alsop Sustainability Award for achievement in structural design, where out­ standing commitment to sustainability and res­ pect for the environment has been demonstrated.

2009 ARIDO Awards honour Ontario’s best interior designers.

The Association of Registered Interior Designers of Ontario (ARIDO) has announced the winners of its annual ARIDO Awards Program, which hon­ ours innovation, creativity and professional achieve­ment in the province’s interior design in­ dustry. Judges selected 32 designs from 10 cate­ gories; among the winning entries were 11 Awards of Excellence, 20 Awards of Merit and one Project of the Year. The winning projects showcase a wide range of interior design talent, from retail to residential, corporate to health care, public and institutional spaces to major restoration projects, and specialty elements to trade show displays.

They include a museum of biodiversity, a 2010 Olympic Games store, a retail concourse, confer­ ence centre, dentistry office, and restaurant, as well as private residences, condo sales offices, corporate offices, and a design show display of crystals. An integrated graphics program was honoured, along with a custom-made conference table system and a fireplace. www.arido.ca EVDS professor recognized for his exemplary contributions to architecture.

Architect and University of Calgary Environmen­ tal Design professor John Brown is this year’s winner of the Residential Architect Magazine Leadership Award in the rising star category. The Leadership Awards are the editors’ choice awards, where architects and firms specializing in residential architecture are singled out for their exceptional accomplishments and contri­ butions to the profession. “This award means a lot to me. I am passionate about improving the quality of the average house,” says Brown. “This isn’t the sexiest type of architecture and it doesn’t get the big headlines, but it affects the lives of so many people, and even small improvements can have a really big impact. It is very gratifying to have this kind of work recognized by your peers.”

With the help of his partner Carina van Olm and designer Matthew North, Brown runs House­ brand, a multidisciplinary firm that specializes in approachable, practical modern architecture. As an architect, builder, real estate agent, and inte­ rior designer, he helps clients find, rehabilitate, and tailor houses to their needs. In 2006, Brown founded Slow Home, a Web-based initiative that promotes alternatives to builder-driven housing through how-to videos and other features.

Through Slow Home, Brown teaches the public about the elements of good design.

Competitions Winner of the Montreal movable street festival furniture competition announced.

Among the five finalist concepts for this compe­ tition, the jury selected the proposal submitted

by Morelli Designers and Signature Design Com­ munication for the ingenuity and effectiveness of the anchoring system and mounting brackets, and its modular system of nesting ballast blocks.

The jury also remarked on the great flexibility of the various elements. “The movable furniture el­ ements can be quickly installed by the setup teams, and will help prevent deterioration of the festival sites. The proposal is discreet, and re­ spects the architectural concept of Place du Quartier des spectacles,” explained Mario Ga­ gnon, President of the Association des designers industriels du Québec and the jury Chair. The jury also sought to underscore the innovative nature of the concept submitted by NIP paysage by awarding the firm an honourable mention.

The City of Montreal will issue a call for tenders between now and spring 2010 for the design and production of the winning concept. www.realisonsmontreal.com

What’s New Online interviews from The Roadshow: Architectural Landscapes of Canada.

Eight interviews can now be watched online from the participants of this fall’s cross-country tour of The Roadshow: Architectural Landscapes of Canada. The Roadshow tour took place from Sep­ tember 23 to October 2, 2009, a series of linked, broad-based national events that focused archi­ tectural discourse in Canada at the level of the public, the profession, and the schools of archi­ tecture. The Roadshow seeks to promote and fa­ cilitate an emergent and evolving discussion re­ garding contemporary architecture in Canada.

Beginning in Vancouver, The Roadshow brought together a group of eight critical architects and designers from across Canada. At every venue, each of the eight architects and designers had 10 minutes to present one project and articulate this project’s engagement within a consistent frame­

work around which intentionality and meaning have emerged. The goal was to allow for a broad­ ening of understanding of the points of conflu­ ence and difference between various forms of ar­ chitectural practice in Canada. The online inter­ views feature the following architects and de­ signers: Lisa Rapoport, Philip Beesley, Neil Minuk, Annie Lebel, Roger Mullin, Randy Cohen, Manon Asselin and David Battersby. http://the-roadshow.tumblr.com/ Will Alsop returns to work in Canada.

Will Alsop, the internationally acclaimed British architect who is responsible for the design of high-profile and award-winning buildings in Toronto is to once again focus his attention on winning work in the city which he describes as his spiritual home. Alsop, who designed the iconic Sharp Centre for Design and who is responsible for revitalizing neighbourhoods with modern res­ idential developments in the city, has announced he is to create a studio called Will Alsop at RMJM, as part of the RMJM worldwide architecture firm.

His studio, based in London, UK, will seek to win ambitious commissions inter­nationally and Alsop has expressed his intention to focus particularly on Toronto, where he has worked extensively since the year 2000 after winning the Sharp Cen­ tre for Design project, which picked up the pres­ tigious RIBA Worldwide Projects Award. Another of his designs, for a major office and event space at the Filmport film studio project in Toronto, is currently under construction.

Omer Arbel collaborates as industrial designer of the 2010 Olympic Medals.

Every medal won at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games will be unique—a first in Games history. Recently unveiled to great critical acclaim, the medals designed by Omer Arbel are characterized by an undulating form meant to abstractly represent ocean waves, drift­ ing snow and the mountainous landscape sur­ rounding Vancouver. On the medal’s surface, Arbel applied two large master artworks of an orca whale (Olympic) and raven (Paralympic) by Vancouver-based Corrine Hunt, a Canadian artist of Komoyue and Tlingit heritage. Hunt’s artwork was produced at a large scale, and then a specific, cropped section of the larger art was applied to each of the individual medals, making each unique. A silk scarf printed with the master art­ work will be presented to each medallist along with their medal, enabling them to see how their medal connects with those awarded to other ath­ letes at the Games and to make the artwork com­ plete. Like a puzzle, it takes all of the individual medals to complete the artwork. Omer Arbel is an industrial designer and architect based in Vancouver who leads his own design office. www.omerarbel.com 11/09 canadian architect

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Vancouver’s Olympic Village reveals its bid for sustainability and its transformative effect on Southeast False Creek.

PROJECT Millennium Water—2010 Athletes’ Village, Vancouver, British Columbia ARCHITECTS GBL Architects Inc., Merrick Architecture_Borowski Lintott Sakumoto Fligg Ltd., Nick Milkovich Architects Inc., Walter Francl Architecture Inc., Acton Ostry Architecture Inc., and IBI Group—Lawrence Doyle Young + Wright TEXT Hannah Teicher

Conversations on building are often centred on sustainability these days, claims to LEED credits flying, either as one-upmanship or creative bluster.

What is often lost in these conversations is a sense of the underlying transformation that any real bid for sustainability would require. The City of Vancouver and the Millennium Water design team set ambitious goals for the Olympic Village, alternatively referring to developing “new ways of living in the city” or more simply, developing “a sustainable community.” And there is a sense in much of the framing policy documents and design work that realizing this goal necessitates more than the sum of its technical parts.

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ABOVE

strides in creating more livable, healthier cities, conducive to density.

There’s little question that anyone who has grown accustomed to its benefits would roll back the clock to a time when a hapless stroll down the street could involve the overturned contents of a chamber pot landing in unfortunate places. And it is hard to fathom the basic disconnect between “in here” and “out there” on the part of the person doing the overturning, a person who would surely be walking down that same street that same day. However, the sanitary sewer, the storm sewer and all their attendant advances have only served to reinforce that disconnect, fostering a convenient dependence on underground systems to hide the unpleasant realities of everyday life.

Intricately connected to those unpleasant realities is the more unpleasant reality which has now come to the fore, one which will inform urban engineering just as much if not more so than the 19th century’s advances. The growing unease about climate change and resource depletion underlies the design team’s stated goal of developing “new ways of living in the city.”

While these unpleasant realities could inform the design but be incorporated to disappear, both the design team and the city seem to have strongly taken the side that they should be incorporated as a legible aspect of the development. In the Official Development Plan, this is stated very plainly.

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Danny Singer

led by Durante Kreuk Landscape architects, some marvellous and surprising land­ scape elements have been inserted into the Athletes’ Village site. RIGHT AND OPPOSITE Several views illustrating GBL Architects’ residential projects that comprise the Athletes’ Village.

“SEFC (Southeast False Creek) is to demonstrate a comprehensive approach to sustainability reflected in both open space and building design.”

This is a useful point of departure, but could still lead in a number of directions: displaying technical prowess, offering up the subtleties of passive design, or revealing the nuances of everyday systems deliberately manipulated to foster a more sustainable version of modern urban life.

Where the Olympic Village achieves the latter, it is most successful in laying the groundwork for a new way forward for development in Vancouver, another stated goal of the ODP. “SEFC is to promote the implementation of sustainable development principles in an urban setting, and thereby contribute to improving the mainstream practices of urban development throughout the region.” This occurs most strongly on an infrastructural level; both the stormwater manage18 canadian architect 11/09

ment system and the neighbourhood energy utility bring the bowels of the city to the surface, affording selective glimpses of systems at work, hints of the messy realities behind comfortable, convenient human inhabitation.

Though incentives for disconnecting downspouts are taken up in a haphazard fashion around Vancouver, most stormwater goes directly into the combined stormwater and sanitary system with the result that in heavy rainfall events, sewage overflows into False Creek. This untenable situation has added to the impetus for alternative approaches to stormwater management, relieving the burden on the combined system by allowing rainwater to infiltrate where it hits the ground. Within the Olympic Village’s building parcels, rainwater is collected in cisterns to provide irrigation and feed a greywater system for toilet flushing, a feature which required an ardu-

Martin Tessler

ABOVE

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Martin Tessler

Martin Tessler

GBL Architects

Martin Tessler

the city’s relationship to the resources it draws in and discharges.

Expressing this interface of water systems could have been taken further, exposing the stream that had been boarded over during the site’s industrial period. Restoring it would have created a practical challenge for the developer by cutting the site in two, but could have offered an opportunity to preserve a piece of ecological heritage in a city whose small streams have been lost to development. It might also have provided a unique site constraint for the residential buildings, pushing the quest for a new form of development beyond the adoption of a mid-rise form.

Filling in the stream did give rise to one distinct feature. Though the stream’s habitat value had been low as a consequence of being covered over for 60 years, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans required 2 to 1 compensation for filling it in. The result has taken the form of reconstructed fish habitat along the length of the foreshore and a “Habitat Compensation Island.” This highly visible reshaping of the interface of land and water in just one single instance reveals the possibility of many more such constructive operations in the future. Imagine an altered False Creek dotted with habitat compensation islands, peninsulas and spits.

Where “the reveal” in architecture operates in a limited manner, expressing the junction of two materials, here it operates instrumentally, at a larger scale, expressing the interface of multiple systems and even multiple times.

Mapping character-defining elements of the Olympic Village—or Shipyard—neighbourhood, the public realm plan identifies the progression of shorelines from the 1889 foreshore through multiple iterations of a ship-

Danny Singer

Danny Singer

ous negotiation process with the Engineering Department due to concerns over non-potable water in residential units. This is a significant accomplishment which could begin to have an impact city-wide by establishing a precedent; for good and for bad, nobody using the facilities would give a second thought to where the water in the toilet came from.

In the public realm, on the other hand, stormwater management is made highly visible. Rather than sloping toward the curb, the streets slope toward the middle. A narrow, open runnel carries water to pipes at the end of the street, which then drain into a bioswale on one side of the site and a wetland on the other. The meandering wetland with its habitat shelves and dark water provides a glimpse of a water system at work for anyone who cares to pause and consider it, and a picturesque diversion for anyone who doesn’t.

More subtle, and perhaps more powerful, are the direct rainwater outfalls which punctuate the boarded slips protruding from the seawall. Where groupings of large granite blocks step down to the water in between the slips, steel channels protrude from the level of the seawall promenade. If someone with an affinity for the rain happened to be sitting on the granite blocks appreciating a wet day, they just might be surprised by a sudden waterfall as the rain reached a critical mass in the channel above. More than the other visible stormwater strategies, this episodic event stitches together the constructed system branching through the site and the large body of water which absorbs the effluvia of its urban surround. At the edge, it cracks open a reveal. It viscerally challenges the lingering notion that the city is functionally distinct from an unconstructed “nature.” This seemingly minor moment has the potential to act as a catalyst, transforming attitudes about

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Danny Singer

a visual panorama of Vancouver, with Southeast False Creek (SEFC) visible to the left of the Science World Sphere—an earlier intervention into False Creek that was built for Expo 86. OPPOSITE BOTTOM, LEFT TO RIGHT A view of False Creek from the VanCity building; Hinge Park; a pedestrian walkway leading into the village; another view of site—the green roof is that of the Southeast False Creek Community Centre.

OPPOSITE TOP

larger issues the development sets out to address. But the residential architecture falls down in this regard.

A number of practical sustainable strategies were applied across all the residential buildings. Exterior sun-shades on the south and west sides of the buildings automatically unfurl to reduce unwanted solar gain. Daylit corridors and wide stairs have views to and from public spaces in order to encourage walking. Corner units and through units are prioritized to provide cross-ventilation wherever possible. The neighbourhood energy utility captures waste heat from sewage and redirects it to a capillary mat system in the ceiling of every unit. Rainwater is collected on each roof to provide water for irrigation and toilet flushing. Fifty percent of the roofs are green.

The walls achieve an average R-value of 16. Twenty percent of the units are affordable housing and an additional 110 units are rental housing. All of this is a major improvement on conventional development in Vancouver, and if repeated, could make major inroads on the energy and water fronts.

And yet, even though the buildings are low- to mid-rise, in distinction to their towering counterparts across False Creek, they look and feel remarkably the same. Squinting east from Southeast False Creek to CityGate or

Danny Singer

Danny Singer

building, working waterfront. On this map, the new sustainable community incarnation of the area with its own shoreline alterations represents the latest iteration in a changing waterfront. It only requires a small leap to imagine that just as the rise and fall of shipbuilding were inscribed into the physical built character of the area, future economic changes linked to climate change and resource pressures will inscribe themselves. Given such evident physical evolution, development on the site is uniquely situated to capture and convey this sense of change unfolding over time, not only as “history,” but as an adapting, shifting future.

The Salt Building, the sole industrial building retained on the Shipyard portion of the site, fulfills its heritage mandate through the refurbished cladding and exposed wood trusses which recall its industrial function and time period. But this static representation of history is upended by a simple move in the ground plane. The building was raised in order to meet the new plaza level at the north end, presenting the opportunity to leave a gap where the plaza meets the building at the south end. Passersby on the south side catch a glimpse of piles and pile extensions while on the north side, those who happen to use the public washrooms descend from the current landscape to the historic one, coming face to face with the original piles, a built consequence of the 1889 shoreline. As the force of history gathers such a strong presence in this small space, it undermines the sense of permanence embedded in the current built condition, suggesting an inevitably evolving role for both the community and its inhabitants.

At their best, both the public realm and the public buildings reveal the site and its systems in nuanced, provocative ways which engage the much

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Acton Ostry Architects INC.

Michael Elkan

Acton Ostry Architects INC.

Walter Francl Architecture Acton Ostry Architects INC. ABOVE, TOP TO BOTTOM Walter Francl Architecture and Nick Milko­ vich architects are working hard towards completing their Southeast False Creek Community Centre; a view out toward False Creek with the new community centre still under con­ struction; Acton Ostry’s Salt Building is the only remaining historical structure on the site.

north and west toward the downtown core, the buildings blur together with their window-walled neighbours. The mandate to achieve an R-value of 16 could have given rise to a distinctly different envelope, revealing the sustainable ambitions of the development, or at least provoking questions as to what drove the difference. To make heating with a single neighbourhood 22 canadian architect 11/09

utility plant feasible, a window to solid wall ratio of 70 to 30 was applied across the site. In the market-rate buildings, this ratio was distributed uniformly through window wall systems, such that the walls are still made of glass, but with a slight spandrel panel creep to make up that 30 percent. In order to convey that this development is qualitatively different, the 70/30 might have been deployed more inventively across all four façades, both responding to solar orientation and reimagining the irrefutable primacy of “the view” in market housing, working from the understanding that the views might be just as valuable when carefully framed.

Given its prominent waterfront site, and its soon to be prominent place on the world stage, the architecture operates at more scales than most buildings. It operates at a large urban scale, given its high degree of legibility from across False Creek or up on the Cambie Bridge. It has an impact at an intermediate urban scale from within the site, and at a more intimate scale from within the units. An additional scale is made meaningful through the massing of the roof gardens, situated a storey or two below the ultimate roof line such that these semi-private green spaces rest within the field of view of a significant portion of the occupants on an everyday basis. These spaces become an easily accessible part of life, a place for casual use and encounters, rather than a questionable amenity requiring a special trip or the exclusive domain of penthouse dwellers. And this is where an evolution of form can be felt, a byproduct of the mid-rise massing perhaps, but more than the introduction of mid-rise in and of itself. Four or five storeys above the street, with perhaps one storey enclosing them on one side and several on another, these spaces become a lifted ground plane with an indeterminate relationship to the city. The surrounding units frame offset, fragmented views, affording a surprising connection to the bridges and viaducts inhabiting the same strata.

Where these tangible differences emerge, they really do reinforce the City’s aspirations to create a more sustainable community. Where the sustainable strategies are shaped in service of a “marketable” package, becoming either attractive amenities or invisible features, they do much less than

Ed White/GBL Architects City of Vancouver SiTE PLAN

they could to foster the qualitatively different relationship to the urban environment that a sustainable community would entail. CA Hannah Teicher currently works for SHAPE Architecture in Vancouver.

Client Millennium Southeast False Creek Properties Ltd. Structural Glotman Simpson Group of Companies Mechanical Cobalt Engineering & Associates Ltd. Electrical Nemetz (S/A) & Associates Ltd., Acumen Consulting Engineers Civil Vector Engineering Services Ltd., Stantec Geotechnical Geopacific Engineering Inc. Landscape Durante Kreuk Ltd., PWL Partnership Landscape Architects Inc. Interiors Coordinated Hotel Interiors Ltd. Contractor Metrocan Construction Ltd., ITC Group of Companies

Environmental Keystone Environmental Ltd., Aqua-Tex Scientific Consulting Ltd. Code & Certified Professional Pioneer Consultants Ltd. Building Envelope Morrison Hershfield Group Inc. Transportation Ward Consulting Group Sustainability Recollective Consulting Commissioning KD Engineering (TBC) Co. Cost Consultant BTY Group Scheduling Quoin Project and Cost Management Ltd. Area 1,500,000 ft2 Budget $1 billion Completion November 2009

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26 canadian architect 11/09

Beyond the Edge In advance of this winter’s Olympic games, an ambitious extension of Vancouver’s shoreline accommodates a much-needed convention centre facility and additional public space along the waterfront.

PROJECT Vancouver Convention Centre West, Vancouver, British Columbia ARCHITECTS DA Architects + Planners, Musson Cattell Mackey Partner­ ship, LMN Architects TEXT Frances Bula PHOTOS DA Architects + Planners

The most popular images of the new Vancouver Convention Centre West show it from above or afar—images that emphasize its vast acreage of green roof set amid the city’s downtown towers or its waterfront profile of low hills faced in glass. Neither of those distant images conveys the experience that the average person has at ground level up close. Approaching the centre along the seawall that runs from Stanley Park—a walk that is among one of the city’s most popular—is akin to a small boat gliding alongside the world’s largest ship.

The glass walls of the 11-storey-high-equivalent convention centre slope out the way the hull of a freighter does from its narrow underwater keel.

High above is the roof edge, the deck rail of this mammoth. The roofline continues, angling up and finally extending to a point beyond the edge of the building, forming a triangular prow high above. That’s just one of the many unusual physical experiences of the building that the photographer’s lens can’t capture. It’s also a distinct contrast to the original convention centre to the east, where public access on terraces high above the water make it feel more like the deck of a cruise ship.

Inside, the view of the city through the exceptionally clear, tilted-out glass walls—reminiscent of an airport lounge—makes Vancouver’s towers and streets look like the most vivid museum display imaginable. The famous six-acre living roof, which has been planted to reproduce the look of a verdant island off the coast of BC, pops into view at unusual points inside and outside the building, jolting visitors with touches of cognitive dissonance as they register the line of ragged wild grasses waving in the wind next to the city’s sleek glass office towers.

And it’s not until one is inside, walking through the vast hallway spaces that surround the interior meeting rooms, that the wood pattern in the building is understood. From the outside, all that is seen is the warm glow of cedar and hemlock. Inside, it’s evident that the wood panelling is designed to look like lumber stacked in a mill yard. On the walls running from east to west are the regular lines of what look like 1” x 4” strips of wood. On the walls extending from north to south, it appears as though the ragged ends of milled boards haven’t been properly aligned; this result is achieved by gluing on wood caps in varying sizes to create an uneven mosaic.

That disconnect between the faraway images and the up-close reality has happened for many people in this city, including architects who once feared that the centre was going to become a hulking, life-draining box in the middle of prime harbourside land.

Ever since LMN Architects of Seattle—renowned convention-centre builders working with the Vancouver firms of Downs Archambault and Musson Cattell Mackey—came out with the first designs for the convention centre in 2003, people worried about how a 1.2-million-square-foot building was going to fit into the fabric of Vancouver’s unique downtown, where a couple of generations of planners have worked to ensure that mountain views are preserved and that city streets feel comfortable and humanscaled. As they looked at the models and the drawings, images that shrank the centre to miniature scale, they imagined what it would look like in real life and were almost always concerned about the sheer bulk. That was even though LMN kept emphasizing that they weren’t building the usual blackbox convention centre. They kept reminding people that they would be putting the meeting rooms inside or underground, wrapping those functional spaces in wood, and then designing glass façades on all sides so that there would be a sense of connection between visitors and passersby alike, both inside and out.

The project got poor reviews twice by the city’s influential Urban Design Panel during 2003 and 2004, which included one formal vote of non-support. As a corollary to their concerns about the bulkiness of the building’s The new convention centre leans toward Burrard Inlet. It will serve as the main media centre for the 2010 Winter Olympics. BELOW LEFT Vancouverites enjoy a sunny day on the newly built plaza in front of the new facility. BELOW Visitors assemble on one of the external balconies to appreciate the view of the mountains beyond.

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massing, the panel members noted on several occasions that the interior and exterior spaces needed to incorporate quality materials because they were covering such vast spaces. Cheapening out on a few details in a small structure can go unnoticed, but mediocre-quality pavers or wall materials covering a few acres would be the equivalent of looking at skin blemishes through a magnifying glass.

A second major concern was how the centre would contribute to Vancouver’s urbanism and create a sense of civic life around it. Another contentious point was its relation to the original, smaller convention centre designed by Eb Zeidler, whose Teflon-coated sail-shaped roofline has become one of the symbols of the city. Architects and planners didn’t want the new centre to compete with the old one, but at the same time they wanted it to be distinctive and beautiful.

Finally, the green roof—one of the building’s most commented-on features—generated considerable attention. Landscape architect Bruce Hemstock’s original idea was to make the roof look like an uninhabited island off the BC coast, with planes rising and folding up from the water. But it’s expensive to recreate BC topography, so the roof eventually became a sim­ pli­­fied collection of angled planes. And because the roof needed to be strong enough to support the soil required for the vegetation, its edges became very deep. The aesthetic of that broad edge became the focus of many subsequent critiques.

When the centre finally got approval in 2005, it was only by a slim 4-3 margin. At the next stage in the process, under the review of the Vancouver Development Permit Board, there was equal ambivalence from the Advisory Committee. Craig Henschel, an architect whose role it was to represent the public, voted against the project, calling its design awkward and clumsy.

Today, the finished building has pleasantly surprised the project’s detractors. “It appears to me that they have largely pulled it off architecturally,” says architect Bruce Haden, who was on the Urban Design Panel when the convention centre was being reviewed. “They made some smart moves in materials. In terms of the level and quality of details, it’s better than I expected.”

He is concerned, though, about how well the building connects to the city.

It’s still too early to tell how the wide walkways on two sides and the city’s biggest public plaza on a third will be energized over time. The city’s planning department and Urban Design Panel had consistently urged the centre’s design team to wrap the lower level of the building with retail to attract more people to the area. The storefronts exist, but only on the north side, and they won’t be leased until after the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games are over. The restaurant, a complementary building on the west side of the plaza, also won’t open until after that time. And the planned smallboat dock is yet to be built, so it’s hard to know how the completed urban space will operate.

And there are still some regrets by various other architectural observers who consider it a lost opportunity that the public cannot gain access to the huge green roof as originally planned. Others think that the roof edge looks too heavy, with little thought into making it a design element instead of what might be the world’s largest roof gutter. And there are still others who complain about other unresolved elements, like the second-floor northfacing terrace that looks like a large fire escape with a blank wooden wall behind it.

But the public is prepared to embrace this new facility. More than 65,000 With its folding roof planes, the convention centre forms a pleasant complement to a most striking context.

OPPOSITE BOTTOM with the public forbidden to walk on the rooftop garden, the visual composition of the folding roof planes is apparent only when viewed from above. LEFT to maintain visitors’ orientation, the central atrium space permits a clear visual connection to several levels.

OPPOSITE TOP

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people came out to visit the centre on its opening weekend in April. Since then, it has also attracted a steady stream of walkers, joggers and picturetakers because of all the pathways through the site. It not only extends the city’s enormously popular seawall along its north side, but it also includes a grand staircase further south and, in between the staircase and seawall, there are angled walkways that allow people to wander through what feels like a green hillside that rises slowly from the west.

the new convention centre has improved connectivity for cyclists, jog­ gers and pedestrians along Vancou­ ver’s sea wall. MIDDLE LEFT The interior of the exhibition hall allows myriad acti­vi­ ties to function simultaneously. LEFT blocks of wood resembling the stack­ ing of sawn lumber 100 years ago comprise the aesthetic for the interior public spaces. above, TOP to bottom Visitors gawk at the mountains beyond the North Shore, as seen from the centre’s expansive windows; The new conven­ tion centre sits along the shoreline, with the downtown skyline rising behind.

TOP LEFT

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Folding Floor

A construction photo illustrating the placement of hundreds of piles to support the new convention facility.

ABOVE The low rise of the new conven足 tion centre almost blurs into a land足 scape form along the edge of Burrard Inlet.

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CLIENT Province of British Columbia (PAVCO) with Project Man足 agement by Stantec Consulting DA Architects + Planners TEAM Ron Beaton (Partner in Charge), Christian Audet, Michael Canak, Tomas Cho, Mark Ehman, David Galpin, Sean Hemenway, Patrick McTaggart, Alex Piro, Natasha Saksman, Svetlana Sharipova, Alan Shatwell, Peter Smith, Jessica Winters, Patricia Yam Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership Team Jacques Beau足 dreault (partner in charge), Usman Aziz, Harvey Huey, Dale Koso足 wan, Alan Kwan, Beatriz Leon, Felito Liao, Elena Martynova, Paul Mason, John Moorcroft, Tyra Moorcroft, Frank Musson, Janet Nepromuceno, Gustavo Rodriguez, Mark Thompson, David Weir, Mark Whitehead, Edith Wormsbecker, Ivona Zebrowski LMN Architects TEAM Rob Widmeyer (partner in charge), Chris Baxter, Jim Brown, Tom Burgess, John Chau, Rina Chinen, Kirk Hostetter, Joseph Lee, Fred Novota, Niti Parikh, Mark Reddington, Brian Tennyson, Lori Wilwerding, John Woloszyn STRUCTURAL Glotman Simpson Consulting Engineers and Earth Tech (Canada) Inc. MECHANICAL Stantec Consulting ELECTRICAL Schenke/Bawol Engineering Ltd. Marine/Foundation Westmar Consultants Inc. LANDSCAPE PWL Partnership Landscape Architects Inc. Building Envelope Morrison Hershfield Environmental EBA Engineering Consultants Ltd Specialty Lighting Horton Lees Brogden Lighting Design Acoustical Arup Acoustics and Daniel Lyzun & Associates Building Code LMDG Building Code Consultants Ltd. Fire Protection Engineers GHL Consultants Ltd. Construction Manager PCL Constructors Westcoast Inc. BUDGET $625.9 M COMPLETION SPRING 2009

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That public approval is sweet relief to the provincial government. During construction, the project, which was mostly paid for by the province with some money from the federal government and Tourism Vancouver—eventually doubled in cost to $883 million. Several negative headlines were generated during construction because of both cost overruns and the tremendous noise resulting from 1,443 concrete pillars being driven into Burrard Inlet to support the portion of the centre that is built out over the water.

For the architects who worked on the centre, that public interaction with the building is a key point. Mark Reddington of LMN believes the building succeeds because it addresses so much, from large to small. The roof, the greywater recycling, the daylighting, the addition of a concrete skirt underwater to encourage marine life, and many more features make it a sustainable building. The major plaza is the city’s biggest, and it’s a people-welcoming space. And the thought given to even small architectural details—the finemesh aluminum grating that is used extensively to provide a lacy screen in front of mechanical elements—give the building a visual lightness that is unusual for a structure so large. Reddington doesn’t mention it, but the wood beams suspended from the ceiling do the same. They look structural, but they’re really just a visual trick, one that makes the ceiling look like it’s entirely made of wood, even though the mechanical systems are visible above the beams.

There’s so much in this building to look at— now Vancouver’s biggest indoor space apart from sports stadiums—that it will keep laypeople and architects busy debating for years to come about which elements are successful and which aren’t.

As Vancouver architect Oliver Lang says about the centre, it works because the team took some chances. “It has a real presence. It says we’re here and we can go head to head with anyone on the West Coast. In terms of materials, it’s very contemporary and doesn’t try to mimic some­ thing from the past. It takes positions and they’re confident ones.” CA Frances Bula is a journalist specializing in Vancouver urban issues and city politics. She has a regular column in Vancouver magazine, and makes frequent contributions to The Globe and Mail.

RIGHT Vancouverites relax along a newly constructed elevated boardwalk, one of several outdoor amenities resulting from the construction of the conven­ tion centre.

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Oval and Above As part of the 2010 Winter Olympics, this innovative speed-skating facility will eventually be part of a thriving new community on the banks of the Fraser River.

Richmond Olympic Oval, Richmond, British Columbia Cannon Design Ian Chodikoff

PROJECT

ARCHITECT

Nic Lehoux

TEXT

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Hubert Kang Hubert Kang

Across the Fraser River from Vancouver lies the city of Richmond. Spread out across 17 islands, Richmond operates as a busy transportation hub for the Greater Vancouver Regional District, yet over half of its total area is comprised of farm­ land, parkland and natural areas. With a popu­la­ tion of just under 200,000, slightly over 60 per­ cent of its people are either Chinese or South Asian in origin, making it one of the most diverse municipalities in British Columbia. Long consid­ ered a vast suburban wasteland known primarily for the Vancouver International Airport and for malls catering to its strongly Asian popu­la­tion— rather than its industrial riverfronts popu­lated by fishing boats and historic canneries—the urban identity of Richmond continues to evade the hearts and imaginations of most Vancouverites.

However, this is about to change. Having enjoyed con­siderable growth over the past several years, Richmond’s reputation for banal sub­divisions and a lack of pedestrian-scaled public space will final­ ly be put to rest, now that its new speed-skating facility and athletic centre is set to play host to the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games in February.

Already open for nearly a year, the Richmond Oval will not only become a competition venue for the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games, but will also remain as an anchor building to bolster future interest in redeveloping the surrounding region once the speed-skaters return to their respective nations after the Winter Olympics.

When visiting the site today, the area’s potential still remains locked in the imagination of archi­ tects and planners. If it weren’t for the building’s supergraphics declaring its presence, visitors to the new facility would certainly feel lost, con­ vinced that they took a wrong turn in the middle of an industrial park. But despite the current barren qualities of the site, one could be con­ vinced that with the addition of the Oval, a very livable community with vibrant commercial and residential activities could be established in a relatively short time frame. Already, some meas­ ures have been taken. The Water Sky Garden and Riverside Plaza (also known as BC Spirit Square) occupy some of the vacant land sur­round­­ing the Oval. Here, the installation of public art and amenities have been encouraging accessibility for pedestrians to this newly formed public space.

The first of the two initial site improvements is the Water Sky Garden, which contains a $1.2million public art project—the largest ever under­ taken by the City of Richmond. Designed by Boston-based public artist Janet Echelman, 70-foot-tall lanterns suspended by fishing line will change colour throughout the day and night.

When designing the Water Sky Garden, attempts have been made to naturalize the landscape with a series of shallow retention ponds to slow the stormwater run-off flowing into the Fraser River.

While the design doesn’t recreate the lush cran­

A soaring, wing-like canopy greets visitors at the entrance of the new facility. TOP Concrete buttresses on the Richmond Olympic Oval feature Coast Salishthemed bas-reliefs of salmon, herons and the Fraser River by Musqueam artist Susan Point. Set in concrete runnels, the fish design carries stormwater from the roof into the Fraser River. ABOVE The Richmond Oval exudes an inviting glow at night.

OPPOSITE

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Hubert Kang

Hubert Kang

Hubert Kang

berry bogs of Richmond, the landscape strategy involves re-engaging the variety of plant material naturally present in the local low-lying marine en­ vironment. The second public space intervention is Riverside Plaza. Featur­ ing Coast Salish-themed sculptures by Musqueam artist Susan Point, it will host a range of year-round public activities. Other public art installations on the site include Buster Simpson’s less ambiguous sculptural interpreta­ tion of skate blades adjacent to a new bridge crossing the Hollybridge Canal.

Designed by Cannon Design, the 7,600-seat Richmond Oval represents one of the finer structures designed and built for the 2010 Olympic Games.

Cannon, which has offices in Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria and Calgary, employs close to 800 people in 17 offices throughout North America, as well as in Shanghai and Mumbai. The 506,000-square-foot sports facility is or­ ganized on three levels. The lowest level contains support functions and parking while the main space on the second level contains the central pro­ grammatic feature—a 400-metre speed-skating track that will host 12 medal events. The uppermost level contains a mezzanine for fitness programs and spectator seating as well as a hospitality lounge with views of the Fraser River and Coast Mountains to the north.

A key programmatic feature of the facility is its anti-doping lab, which will handle the drug testing for all of the medal events held at the Winter Games—a vital aspect that helps regulate and administer the realities of to­ day’s world of competitive sports. In its legacy post-Olympic Games mode, 38 canadian architect 11/09

An expansive 100-metre clear span marks a significant milestone in contemporary wooden construction. ABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT supported by concrete buttresses, the rhythmic wooden roof elements are apparent to visitors; a detail view of the composite glulam-and-steel beams.

TOP

the Oval will evolve into an international centre of excellence devoted to sports and wellness, while allowing the multipurpose athletic facility to be used by the local community, something that has already been done for the better part of this year. Many people frequent the facility to work out on treadmills, enroll in exercise classes, or play sports like badminton on one of the four hardwood athletic courts.

The Richmond Oval is the second purpose-built facility of its kind. The first purpose-built Oval was completed for the 1988 Calgary Olympic Games. Before that, all long-track speed-skating events occurred outdoors.

The facility in Calgary was never designed to have a legacy mode, and there­ fore remains a single-use building. A flexible program was very important for the long-term viability of the Richmond Oval, where it could be easily converted for track-and-field activities. All four sports courts and the re­ maining one-third of the Oval’s section can be used for two internationalsized ice rinks. The Oval is designed to revert to the 400-metre-long speed-skating track at any point in the future.

Hubert Kang Nic Lehoux

Hubert Kang

Building the facility was not without its chal­ lenges. The site is located on top of a river delta where soft soil extends down over 200 metres.

Because a high-performance speed-skating track requires tolerances that vary no more than 20 millimetres over the entire length of the Oval, it was decided to raise the slab above the ground plane through the design of a two-level structure partially supported by a raft foundation, with the remaining portion supported by concrete piles.

The resulting structure created 450 parking stalls, additional athletes’ services, retail outlets and even an indoor paddling training facility.

The most distinctive aspect of the Oval is its roof. Its gentle curvature is inspired by a heron’s wing, where the feathered wing tips are repre­ sented by a segmented roofline that helps break up the visual monotony of the large structure.

Designed by Fast + Epp, the roof’s surface area is vast—6.5 acres—so it is not surprising that over one million feet of salvaged lumber was collected from trees killed by pine beetles to create a struc­ tural ceiling that incorporates a significant num­ ber of services, while visually breaking down the scale of such a large building component. The massive amount of wood used remained relatively affordable, largely due to the fact that the majority of it was locally harvested lumber from dead pine forests. The bones of the structure, 15 steel-andglulam composite arches—the longest of which provides a 100-metre clear span—are integrated into the complex ceiling matrix that curves in two directions. The arches are made of BC Douglas fir which rest upon 30 enormous concrete buttress­ es. To increase the lateral stiffness of the beams, a composite steel beam—referred to as a “skateblade” beam—forms the base anchor for the glulam arches. Building these structural members was no small feat. The glulam elements were transported to a steel fabrication facility where the two materials were integrated into the com­ posite structure that we see today. Because the interior architecture is dominated by the vast sur­ face of the ceiling, it was important to create an appealing aesthetic that was unmarred by the mundane yet necessary services of the facility.

For this reason, the centres of all the structural beams were designed to be distinctive V-shaped elements that integrate heating, ventilation, airconditioning, plumbing, acoustical, electrical and lighting systems, resulting in a visually coherent aesthetic. The HVAC ducts that are integrated into the beams have motorized nozzles to distribute cool air to wherever it is needed; appropriately, effective environmental separation between the rinks and other sports functions is maintained.

Because the design team couldn’t find any pre­ cedents for large wooden ceilings of this size and span, they developed their own. Known as the WoodWave Structural Panel System, the panels used for the ceiling span 15 metres in between the

Providing very clear visual orientation upon entry into the building, the main lobby spatially conditions the visitor to the larger space of the speed-skating oval.

ABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT A speed-skater practices on the new 400-metre track; a generously scaled exterior plaza helps to establish the facility as a civic institution along the banks of the Fraser River.

TOP

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composite glulam beams. The panels are built up from very pedestrian 20 3 40 lumber strips of pine beetle-killed wood to form a 26-inch-deep zigzag section. The WoodWave system is able to transfer loads to the arches and absorb sound while meet­ ing existing fire safety requirements. The ceiling’s structural loads are distributed diagonally through the spliced wood members, and into supports at either end. The final result is truly admirable and will likely become a seminal case study for archi­ tecture and engineering students.

Upon close inspection, the expansive wavy ceiling is actually quite crude, revealing the par­ tially concealed electrical and miscellaneous con­ duits along with the acoustical blanketing and sprinkler system. But given the fact that the ceil­ ing is mostly viewed from a distance, the overall appearance is impressive, even mesmerizing.

Certainly, the ceiling’s use of naturally soundabsorptive lumber, with its thousands of open­ ings, provides a significant acoustical dampener for the space, reducing its tendency to feel cav­ ernous and making the interior architecture warm and inviting.

By utilizing innovative solutions in wood de­ sign to create a successful sports venue for the 2010 Winter Games, the Oval is a landmark building that will undoubtedly raise the profile of Richmond while helping to prime an important site for future development. Given the nature of the program, designing such a massive structure while maintaining a sense of warmth and in­ timacy is quite an achievement. The number of awards that the building has received thus far is well-deserved. CA

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CLIENT City of Richmond Special Structural Design Fast+Epp Structural Glotman+Simpson Electrical/Mechanical Stantec Consulting Landscape Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg Civil/Marine Delcan Engineering Group Building Envelope Morrison Hershfield Group Inc. Geotechnical Thurber Engineering Ltd. Wildlife and Ecology ECL Envirowest Consultants Ltd. Feng Shui Fortune Teller & Associates Urban Design Hotson Bakker Boniface Haden ARchitects + Urbanistes Wayfinding/Signage Karo Group Code/Fire/Life Safety LMDG Building Code Security 3Si Risk Strategies Inc. Costing BTY Group Project Managers MHPM Project Managers Inc. Builder Dominion Fairmile Construction Ltd. Area 506,000 FT2 Budget $178 M Completion December 2008

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Insites

A Look at Landscape Urbanism

new projects and approaches to landscape urbanism help designers appreciate the interconnectedness of ecology, architecture and the future of our public realm.

TEXT

A rehabilitated wetland and watercourse comprises just a small component of the geographically vast and highly anticipated Lake Ontario park, a redefined landscape that will extend eastward from Toronto.

ABOVE

Graham Livesey

The landscape urbanism movement emerged following the Landscape Urbanism Symposium and Exhibition coordinated by Charles Waldheim in Chicago in April 1997. While there were key forces at play prior to this, this event signalled the emergence of a reasonably coherent group of theorists, designers and apologists, including James Corner, Stan Allen, the Dutch firm West 8 (with Adriaan Geuze), the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), and Foreign Office Architects (FOA), operating under the banner of landscape urbanism. The movement has been largely centred in places like the University of Pennsylvania, the Architectural Association in London, and Toronto, although these are not necessarily where the best examples can be found. The movement has been strongly motivated by the important design competition held in 1982 for the Parc de la Villette in Paris. The winning scheme by Bernard Tschumi was influential, but probably even more so was the scheme submitted by Rem Koolhaas and OMA with its provocative ideas about the organization of functions and landscapes. What are the theories behind this movement, and what have been the accomplishments of its proponents so far?

We will begin by briefly examining the theories of James Corner and his firm Field Operations; Corner is a landscape architect who is probably the key figure in landscape urbanism. A reading of his text “Landscape Urbanism” is a useful starting point into the subject. Corner begins by stating that this new discipline is a hybrid merger of landscape (understood as a broad cultural condition) and urbanism. Landscape urbanism is an interdisci-

plinary approach that, in theory, amalgamates a wide range of disciplines including landscape architecture, urban design, landscape ecology, engineering, etc. It is also committed to addressing the many challenging issues and conditions facing contemporary cities. He argues that it is an approach that focuses on process rather than a style. He writes that landscape urbanism “marks a productive attitude towards indeterminacy, open-endedness, inter-mixing and cross-disciplinarity.” Ultimately, the landscape urbanist recognizes no singular authority.

In the essay, which reads like a manifesto, Corner identifies five general themes that characterize the practice of landscape urbanism: horizontality, infrastructures, forms of process, techniques, and ecology. In his discussion of horizontality, Corner writes that it “maximizes opportunities for roaming, connecting, interrelating, assembling and moving—while allowing differences to commingle and proliferate.” In the text there is a strong emphasis placed on the earth as surface and a number of references made to the field of landscape ecology. The targeting of urban infrastructure systems has been an important legacy of the movement, infrastructural systems that include transportation networks, utilities, code systems, and the like. Corner, describing the role of this new process-oriented professional consultant, stresses a collaborative and anti-heroic approach that employs a panoply of design techniques from cartography to diagramming. Probably the most significant aspect of the approach is the recognition of the vital role of ecology in design. This refers to Corner’s own connections to the work of the influential landscape architect/ecologist Ian McHarg and to prominent landscape ecologists such as Richard T.T. Forman. In summary, we can sug11/09­canadian architect

45

gest that Corner and his colleagues in the landscape urbanism movement are supporting complex design processes, and engaging ecology and contemporary urbanism.

According to Waldheim, who continues to be an important polemicist for the movement, landscape urbanism is engaging with the “renovation” of the postindustrial or contemporary city, as he writes in The Landscape Urbanism Reader: James Corner’s projects for Downsview (with Stan Allen) and Fresh Kills are exemplary in this regard, illustrating mature works of landscape ur­ban­ism through their accumulation and orches­tration of absolutely diverse and po­ tentially incongruous contents. Typical of this work, and by now standard fare for projects of this type, are detailed diagrams of phasing, animal habitats, succession planting, and hydrological systems, as well as programmatic and planning regimes. While these diagrams ini­tial­ly overwhelm with information, they present an understanding of the enormous complexities confronting any work at this scale. Particularly compelling is the complex interweaving of natural ecologies with the social, cultural and infrastructural layers of the contemporary city.

The ideas, and many of the early landscape urbanism projects, are highly evocative. However, when we begin to examine projects produced over the last decade under the landscape urbanism title, it would seem that landscape urbanism is stuck in the history of grand park design, while remaining well outside the history of urban design. Despite claims for the “renovation” of the contemporary city, many of the noteworthy projects by landscape urbanists tend to involve either isolated brownfield sites on the extreme periphery of the city (such as Downsview Park in suburban Toronto, or the Fresh Kills site on Staten Island) resulting in large parks on one hand, or fairly conventional and discrete landscape projects, typically along waterfronts, on the other. From a formal point of view, the most convincing landscape urbanism projects to be completed are schemes by FOA, including the Yokohama International Port Terminal, the South East Coastal Park in Barcelona, and the recently finished Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle by Weiss/Manfredi Architects. The FOA projects demonstrate significant topo­graphical complexity, while the Seattle park fuses together a complex set of site forces, supports a remarkable set of sculptures, and replicates various local ecologies.

What is missing from landscape urbanism is how the projects re-envisage the city in ecological terms; much of the work is tentative at best. Exceptions include a small handful of projects such as James Corner’s provocative 46 canadian architect 11/09

the recently completed Campus Complex at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea incorporates six levels of programmatic and circulation requirements while creating a very dynamic landscape for the students. Designed

by Dominique Perrault, the building takes the form of a boulevard that starts from the entry to Ewha Square and ends in front of Pfeiffer Hall.

ABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT

drawings for the radical greening of lower Manhattan for the World Trade Center “Biopolis” competition sponsored by The New York Times, West 8’s competition-winning Markeroog (U-Meer, Markermeer, 2006) project, and Stan Allen’s Taichung Gateway Park project in Taiwan, each of which attempts to address urbanity in a significant way. Similar and ambitious projects by those not directly linked to landscape urbanism include Will Alsop’s Bradford City Centre Master Plan (2003) and various provocative projects by the Michael Sorkin Studio (some of which date from the early 1990s). A project that begins to capture the full scope implied in the landscape urbanist position is Dominique Perrault’s Ewha Womans [sic] University Campus Centre in Seoul, Korea. Completed in 2008, the project, while not extensive, demonstrates a compelling inter-relationship between landscape, architecture and urbanism that is not found in many of the park projects listed above.

Toronto has become something of a hotbed for landscape urbanism, partly due to the fact that Charles Waldheim taught at the University of Toronto until recently, but, mainly due to the Downsview Park competition held in 2000, probably the most celebrated demonstration of landscape urbanism’s principles (see CA, October 2000 and November 2003).

The current status of the project, which was won by a team involving OMA, Bruce Mau Design and Oleson Worland Architects, is somewhat uncertain. The Waterfront Toronto initiative is an ambitious group of pro­ jects that includes a number of projects by design firms associated with landscape urbanism. These include the Central Waterfront project by West 8 (in association with DTAH), Lake Ontario Park by James Corner and Field Operations, and the Don River Park by Michael van Valkenburgh Associates (with the Planning Partnership and Ken Greenberg).

American landscape architects Michael van Valkenburgh and George Hargreaves have produced many notable large urban projects, but they remain somewhat peripheral to the landscape urbanism effort. When

completed, these projects will give a general coherence and continuity to much of Toronto’s waterfront, and will also restore a number of vital lakeshore eco-systems. Unfortunately, they will do little to connect the city itself to the lakeshore, or provide answers to the many larger environmental issues facing contemporary cities.

Has landscape urbanism created a new mode of practice? The short answer to this question is no. Ultimately, landscape urbanism would be more provocative if it embraced interdisciplinarity with greater conviction.

Further, the movement must actually address urbanity in all its complexity, moving beyond the strictures of landscape architecture. As in the Garden City movement, the dichotomy between the “country” and the “town,” or, as Waldheim proposes, the “natural” and the “infrastructural,” remains largely unresolved in the landscape urbanism movement. There is no doubt that the movement has invigorated landscape design with its provocative schemes that blend landscape, digital processes, ecology, and various ideas drawn from recent philosophy. The attempt on the part of some landscape urbanists to incorporate the potential design strategies inherent in landscape ecology is also a significant development.

The use of long-term or “scaffolded” planting strategies is a good idea, and was used extensively in the winning project for the Downsview Park project. The emphasis placed on the ground surface as a stage for future “appropriation” is also intended to allow for a general design to evolve over time, rather than existing as a static pictorial composition. While landscape urbanists justifiably criticize the failings of much of recent urban design, they are not actually proposing an alternative that embraces the full complexity of the contemporary city. This brings us to the “large park” notion which is the historical category into which the movement most comfortably fits, a tradition going back at least to Central Park in New York, or even further back to the London royal parks and the 18th-century picturesque park tradition.

Landscape urbanism, with its emphasis on landscape ecology, is consistent with what Galen Cranz and Michael Boland suggest as a new park typology that has emerged since the early 1980s—what they label the “sustainable park,” which places a strong emphasis on ecology. As Cranz and Boland wrote in Landscape Journal in 2004, characteristics of this new type include “the use of native plants, restoration of streams or other natural systems, wildlife habitat, integration of appropriate technologies or infrastructure, recycling, and sustainable construction and maintenance practices.” The policies associated with this new park type include resource self-sufficiency and integration into larger urban systems; challenges include issues of infra­structure, land reclamation, health and alienation. Cranz and Boland identify a number of recent parks that fit this typology, including a number of landscape urbanism projects.

The proponents of landscape urbanism focus on process over form, and on striving for complex proposals for complex problems. There is an abiding commitment to the surface of the earth as a field of operation, to en­gaging ecologies, and to designing infrastructure as ways of producing non-deterministic projects, or the striving for open-endedness. This is refreshing compared to the tired efforts of the New Urbanist movement.

Nonetheless, landscape urbanism is most strongly realized in the theoretical writings of Corner, Allen, et al, and is much less convincing in practice.

Most examples of landscape urbanism projects are restyled examples of landscape architecture or large park design, with an emphasis placed on new programming possibilities (extreme sports, skateboarding, etc.) and the digital manipulation of topographies. The tenets of landscape urbanism remain very compelling, particularly the notion of marrying ecology and urbanism. However, as suggested above, the “landscape” component of the movement has been established, but not the “urbanism” element. CA

A perspective and computer model for Stan Allen Architect’s new Taichung Gateway Park in Taiwan. ABOVE James Corner’s firm Field Operations offers a vision of Lake Ontario Park.

TOP AND MIDDLE

Graham Livesey is Associate Dean (Academic-Architecture) and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary.

11/09­canadian architect

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Practice

Doing your Homework

This is the second article in the series examining the changes to the role of the architect within the P3 process using lessons learned from the UK. the P3 process from start to finish is presented from the perspective of an architect within a successful bidding consortium.

TEXT

Helena Grdadolnik and David Colussi Tom Soar

PHOTOS

Since the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) P3 program began in 2001, two English secondary schools (Hampden Gurney by Building Design Partnership and Westminster Academy by AHMM Architects) have been shortlisted for the Stirling Prize, the premier architectural prize in England; both schools were delivered outside of the government P3 initiative. Meanwhile, CABE’s research found half of the BSF schools delivered to be mediocre or poor. Is the discrepancy in design quality inherent in the process or due to architects’ inexperience with this new way of working? This article will try to address these questions by examining the P3 process from pre-qualification to on-site delivery from the perspective of a project architect for two BSF schools.

BSF contracts range in size from as few as four to more than 100 schools, awarded to a contractor through a competitive process. The competition includes the design of a series of “sample schools” to demonstrate design ap-

Completed in 2008, the Michael Tippett School in Lambeth

by Marks Barfield Architects is an excellent example of a UK project delivered through a P3 process.

ABOVE

proach, working method and understanding of the brief, as well as a review of the team’s qualifications and additional criteria such as financial models, information technology provision, long-term facility management commitments, and a pledge to use local workforce or supply chain.

The first stage of BSF is pre-qualification and is similar to most RFQs, though in this case it is contractor-led. As an architect within the contractor’s consortium, you can be named as a “preferred supply-chain partner” for future work in the contract (and have no further responsibilities through­out the bid) or be the bidding architect on one of the sample schemes. I will relay my experience with the Tuke School for the latter through a case study of a successful bid for 12 schools in London.

Once qualified, bidding consortia enter into a three-month “competitive dialogue” stage—a process of testing the project brief and presenting design ideas to the school and school board for feedback. Through this stage, the contractor is taking on all of the financial risk, including paying the consultant teams for each stage of work. Frequent structured meetings are often held with an unruly number of participants, due to the number of interests involved. This is the only chance for bidding consortia to consult directly 11/09­canadian architect

49

The award-winning Westminster Academy (2007) by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris architects is a remarkably cost-effective educational facility completed outside of a P3 process.

ABOVE

with the user, so the architect’s communication skills are put to the test. Also, these meetings can at times be strained (kicks under the table from the contractor if you unknowingly mention something that hasn’t been “cleared”—easy to do in these circumstances) and it can be difficult to get meaningful client feedback due to limited time and the client’s reluctance to speak candidly for fear of compromising competition fairness.

In my most recent experience, the brief contained several core requirements that we disagreed with. As the project designers, we had to strike a balance between challenging the brief’s preconceptions without appearing to ignore the school board’s brief or feedback. These conditions are not unique to a P3 process, but are amp­li­fied by the structure of the discussion and the compressed schedule.

The consortium enters the competitive dialogue with a full design team, including specialist consultants (acoustics, traffic, fire) as required.

One truly positive result of this fully engaged consultant team is an integrated design process that I have not experienced on traditionally procured pro­jects. At the conclusion of this phase, bidding teams are required to submit their proposed scheme to CABE design review for evaluation, where a passing grade on design quality is a requirement for proceeding to the next stage. It is crucial that this evaluation is conducted prior to the close of the competitive process, while the school board has a stronger bargaining position with the bidding consortia. This step is even more vital for non-sample schemes (the subsequent schools that are awarded after the initial 50 canadian architect 11/09

competitive process), but due to the sheer volume of schools, CABE only reviews non-sample schools on a randomly selected basis.

A “preferred bidder” is then selected for exclusive final negotiation with the client, though the contractor is still working at risk until achieving “financial close.” During this period, the scheme is further refined to detail the consortium’s final interpretation of the client brief including area/ finish schedules, external materials, indicative construction details and a full schedule of furniture/fixture/equipment. This binding agreement between client and consortium becomes the contract documents, though it is closer to a performance specification for the entire building than more conventional contract documents. The financial close agreement also establishes a benchmark for subsequent projects in the contract, so the client is pushing to have as many elements defined as possible while the contractor is trying to stay non-committal. The architect is stuck between the two. The task of trying to sufficiently define the final building in the absence of traditional prescriptive contract documents while upholding design quality is incredibly onerous and demands a different working method—one that many firms are still trying to reconcile. Additionally, beyond meeting the client requirements for achieving contractual financial close are a parallel set of contractor-imposed deadlines relating to sequentially tendered work packages for a construction date that will inevitably start the day after financial close is achieved. Aside from the challenge of coordinating this work, the difficulty lies in negotiating appropriate fees against a project schedule that does not align with a typical design development sequence.

In P3 school projects, all buildings are provided with new furniture, computers and sports equipment. The impact of this exercise on time and resources cannot be underestimated, and additional fees should be negotiated for this additional service. Seen from another perspective, however, it offers another opportunity for architects to add value to the process and extend design control to an area beyond conventional scope.

After financial close is achieved, there is enormous pressure on the construction schedule, as contracts typically include an optimistic fixed hand­over date. The on-site delivery phase of the project is where differences bet­ween the UK and Canada are the most profound and where refinement to the P3 process could bring the greatest improvements to finished buildings. In the UK, an architect’s seal/signature is not a requirement for either Building Permit submission or as a condition for occupancy. Coupled with contract documents which, though incomplete, have been signed off by financial close, the architect’s role risks being made superfluous. In my own experience on the Lanchester School, this phase of the

project was the most frustrating. The inevitable lack of coordination that results from incomplete construction documents was compounded by a site team that did not feel obliged to follow details/specifications as long as financial close requirements were not compromised. In addition to eroding the goodwill established between architect and contractor during the bid stage, it raises a serious question over liability. The architect is expected to maintain design responsibility, but with specifications/details incomplete and purposely kept vague prior to financial close.

Coupled with reduced control on site, legal liability lies in a troubling grey area. This lack of control during construction is evident in even the best examples of BSF projects, where detailing and coordination is too often wanting. This disparity is being addressed through the introduction of a new role from the client’s side; a combination clerk of works/technical advisor who will regularly be on site to ensure the design intent of the broader financial close documents are carried through at detail level. While this will almost certainly have positive results, it is indicative of a shortcoming in the wider P3 process where mechanisms are forced into place to compensate for the reduced role of the architect.

Despite the diminished role on site as outlined above, CABE’s assessment of the design quality of P3-delivered schools found evidence that, although the P3 process is no longer architectdriven, the architect is still the key to a successful outcome rather than the contractor. Schools built by the same contractor with different architects showed a range in quality, but schools by the same architect for different contractors showed similar levels of quality. The conclusion was not only that some architects were more skilled designers, but some practices are more skilled at getting the best building from this new procurement method.

As evident from the examples presented, some aspects of the traditional role of the architect are reduced through P3, but the question remains, with more familiarity and experience (as well as the addition of suitable mechanisms within the system itself to ensure design quality and appropriately apportioned risk) can architects find new avenues to influence the final delivery of the building projects completed through this procurement route? CA David Colussi, MAIBC, was the designer and project architect of several new P3-delivered schools with Haverstock Associates Architects in the UK. He is now practicing in Toronto.

Helena Grdadolnik, MRAIC, was a senior advisor at CABE, the English government’s advisor on architecture, urban design and public space. She is now based in Toronto and is a partner in Public Workshop.

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Calendar Canadian Museums Now

September 19-December 13, 2009 This exhibition at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton includes con­ tributions from the recently opened Art Gallery of Ontario, Royal On­ tario Museum and the Gardiner Museum in Toronto, the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa and the new Cana­dian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg. www.artgalleryalberta.com Expanding Horizons: Painting and Photography of American and Canadian Landscape 18601918

October 17, 2009-January 17, 2010 This exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gal­ lery compares the extraordinary work of American and Canadian landscape artists during the forma­ tive days of each nation. Beginning with the American Civil War and ending with the conclusion of the First World War, the exhibition presents some of North America’s greatest artworks from a time when

each country was aggressively ex­ tending its boundaries westward. www.vanartgallery.bc.ca deegan day design: Blow x Blow

October 23-December 13, 2009 This exhibition at the SCI-Arc Gallery in Los Angeles stages a bout between two trends in exhibition: gallery space as installation designed by ar­ chitects versus the use of the gallery space within the realm and possi­ bilities of new media. To chart this collision, deegan day design repur­ pose techniques of cinematic pro­ jection and scripting to spur new orders of spatial and structural se­ quencing, and new environments for communing with new art. www.deegandaydesign.com Parallel Nippon: Contemporary Japanese Architecture 19962006

November 10, 2009-January 11, 2010 Taking place at Toronto’s Design Exchange, this companion exhibi­

tion to the book Parallel Nippon re­ traces how Japan’s architectural scene has responded to the de­ mands of the age amid the transi­ tion from the period of the Japanese speculative bubble to the post-bub­ ble period. The exhibit is built around the idea of contrast: expand­ ing metropolises versus local com­ munities plagued by declining birth rates, grand cultural facilities with an international focus versus small but sensitive community facilities for local children and the elderly. www.dx.org Quebec in Design

November 12, 2009-April 18, 2010 This exhibition at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec in Quebec City presents 75 years of work from its own collection, and provides an overview of the history of design in Quebec, from the interior decora­ tors of the 1930s and the entrench­ ment of design in the aftermath of World War II to the period of effer­ vescence surrounding Expo ’67 in

Montreal. The exhibition also ex­ amines the contemporary period in design, sequenced to enable explo­ ration of design landscapes from the late 1970s to the present. www.mnba.qc.ca Sick Rooms

November 24, 2009 Roger Ulrich of Texas A&M University delivers this lecture at 6:30pm in Room 103 of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Ar­ chitecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto. www.daniels.utoronto.ca Journeys to the East: Arthur Erickson and Japan

November 25, 2009 Professor Michel­ angelo Sabatino from the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture at the University of Houston delivers this lecture at 7:00pm at the Vancouver International Film Centre’s Vancity Theatre + Atrium. In the summer of 2009, Sabatino retraced Arthur Erickson’s first journey to Japan in 1961, revisiting the sites Erickson

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Ijq`h]`m -0' -++4(A`]mp\mt -3' -+,+ Ocdn adgh kmjbm\h \o oc` >\i\_d\i >`iom` ajm <m^cdo`^opm` `s\hdi`n oc` `aa`^on ja nk``_ \i_ o`^cijgjbt ji jpm k\no' km`n`io' \i_ apopm`) Oc` adghn ji ncjr `skgjm` oc` _dn( mpkodji \i_ ^pmdjndot ^\pn`_ ]t pi( pnp\g m\o`n ja nk``_' amjh `\mgt m`( \^odjin oj i`r o`^cijgjbt oj ijno\g( bd^ d_`\n ja \i pih`^c\idu`_ k\no) rrr)^^\)l^)^\

oc` I\odji\g B\gg`mt di Joo\r\) \m^cdo`^opm`;^\mg`oji)^\ Construct Canada 2009

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Tim and Pat Murray lecture

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E\ip\mt ,3' -+,+ B`m\g_ R) =dgg`n ja =dgg`n <m^cdo`^opm` di I`r Jmg`\in _`gdq`mn ocdn g`^opm` \o 15++kh di Mjjh B,+ ja oc` H\^_ji\g_(C\m( mdiboji =pdg_dib \o H^Bdgg Pidq`m( ndot di Hjiom`\g) Interior Design Show 2010

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odji dn 3 rcd^c di^gp_`n \ ^\o\( gjbp`) Oc`m` dn ij ^c\mb` ajm oc` Gjq`?@NDBI K\mot rcd^c fd^fn jaa \o ,+5++kh ji N\opm_\t' E\ip\mt -.) rrr)^jh`pkojhtmjjh)^jh Radiant Dark: Assets & Values

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BackPage

Affective Change

Michael Boland

Cause+Affect’s interdisciplinary design approach energizes the 2010 Winter Olym­ pics through its temporary pavilion called Vancouver House.

TEXT

Adele Weder

The big mean Olympic machine has gathered its share of detractors as it lumbers through town.

From the old-boy distribution of the Olympic venue architecture, to the Draconian bylaws prescribing exactly what bon mots an individual is allowed to hang in his window, the epic process has occasionally seemed overzealously corporate and artless. But in a city of Olympic-sanctioned everything, a unique design firm is providing a refreshing counterpoint. Cause+Affect is a design and branding firm that has already done more to raise awareness of architecture and design in the lead-up to Olympic-frenzy Vancouver than the architects themselves. And crucially, they’ve proven that edgy, risk-taking design is actually good business.

Principals Steven and Jane Cox were both educated at the University of Manitoba—Steven in architecture, Jane in interior design. After completing their studies, they migrated to London, 58 canadian architect 11/09

Chris Allen

A rendering of one of the exhibition areas inside Vancouver House, an exhi­bi­ tion space intended for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games. ABOVE RIGHT At a recently held Pecha Kucha event in Vancouver, an excited crowd holds up copies of the evening’s promotional poster designed by Cause+Affect.

ABOVE LEFT

and spent several years career-building at multidisciplinary design firms. “I don’t think we realized what we learned in London until we came back here,” says Steven. One glaring North American predilection was towards compartmentalization—“siloed design,” he calls it, rather than interdisciplinary design.

Cause+Affect was founded five years ago on the couple’s dining-room table. A year later, they moved to their present abode, a century-old converted meatpacking warehouse with a view that looks out onto mountains, ocean and a jumble of rail cars.

Everything starts as an open-ended concept, most notably their Pecha Kucha nights—the Vancouver franchise of the worldwide series of cultural micro-talks. And, the pair have almost single-handedly transformed the fusty image of the city’s Vancouver Museum with their Movers & Shapers exhibition series: its beautifully understated slogan is “20 designers you should know.”

Now just in their mid-thirties, they seem at the

top of their game. As for those Winter Olympics, it’s no surprise that they weren’t on the old-boy radar of the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC). But Cause+Affect is making an Olympic appearance after all, as co-creators with fellow maverick firms Haymaker and Brand Live— of the symbolically important Vancouver House, the temporary Olympic pavilion that will be the city’s calling card to the world. Comprised of an exhibition component, a networking lounge and other “spatial experiences,” as Jane puts it, the pavilion will showcase Mayor Gregor Robertson’s “Green Capital” promise. Their basic ambition for Vancouver House, according to Steven, is that people will walk away and say, “Vancouver is cool.” Jane adds, “You’ll want to move here, set up a shop and produce wonderful things from here.” CA Adele Weder is an architectural critic and curator based in British Columbia.

It’s not just a buIldIng. It’s what your reputatIon Is buIlt on.

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Circle Reply Card 37

Coming March 2010!

3 2 1

The Next Generation Skylight

3 layers of water protection

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VELUX also offers Solar Thermal and Residential and Commercial Sun Tunnel products Circle Reply Card 38

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