Holden West
May 5, 2007, 2:51 AM
DWELLING: KUDOS: BRITISH COLUMBIA'S 2007 LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR'S AWARDS FOR ARCHITECTURE
Is Vancouver building a design gap?
Condos, condos going up everywhere, but apparently none are worthy of a medal
TREVOR BODDY
Last year, more than half of all buildings constructed by British Columbia architects were multi-family housing - townhouses, apartments, and condos, condos, condos of all shapes and sizes. Yet when it came to the short list for this year's B.C. Lieutenant-Governor's awards in architecture, only three of 37 finalists were multi-family housing, and none won medals or even merit mentions. What gives?
Granted, multi-family housing is the Rodney Dangerfield of architecture - it don't get no respect. It is quite surprising to some non-architects to learn that many students of architecture graduate never having designed a single duplex, apartment block or condo tower. In all the years I taught at Carleton University's school of architecture, my colleagues never once deigned to set a design studio task on the topic of multi-family housing. A "dwelling for a poet in a cave," yes; a "hut for a philosopher on a pole," yes. But never a project that looked at housing as a public good and as the binding texture of our cities.
Similarly, the trend-setting glossy architecture magazines that get ritually passed around design studios almost never feature standard residential housing - art galleries, interpretive centres, and mansions for millionaires by the dozen, but rarely multi-family housing. Both of the key American magazines, Architecture and Architectural Record, put the topic of social housing on their covers in the same month in the early 1990s - and ignored it for the decade to follow.
But the real reason multiple-family housing rarely makes it onto design awards lists is that architects are not paid enough to do it well. The fact is that here in B.C. we devote around 4 per cent of total housing costs to all design fees (architecture, engineering, landscape), while we pay four times that amount for real estate marketing (advertising, display centres, agent's fees). Well, you get what you pay for.
The only individual house on the 2007 BC Lieutenant-Governor's awards list is the radical renovation of a West Vancouver single family house by Peter Cardew, singled out for one of LG's "special jury awards."
The home is a silent protest against the practice of "knock-downs" in Vancouver and West Vancouver's toniest neighbourhoods. As Mr. Cardew puts it in his design statement: "If judged by contemporary standards, the architecture of the recent past is often rejected as being of little worth when compared to that which is very old or very new."
In part because of environmental concerns about this throwaway attitude to older or under-sized dwellings on lots in our most expensive neighbourhoods, the architect and client Jean Claude LeBlanc decided to keep key portions of an all-too banal 1970s split-level bungalow as they brought its look and appointments into the new century.
To begin with, they cut out the schmaltz -- the dormers, the multi-paned fake archaic picture window, the harvest gold exterior paint job. Into the shell of the house they cut strategic insertions -- new stairs in birch or concrete, removal of walls to make a continuous living-kitchen-dining room, some handsome metallic railings.
The LeBlanc renovation's most obvious change is a skiff of concrete that now covers the entire main floor, and extends out to rear garden. Contrasting beautifully with the warm tones of the new millwork, this brings an urban loft sensibility to the land of tweed and Land Rovers. Taking a note from the Oak Park houses of Frank Lloyd Wright, Cardew's design projects the renewed house's spatial patterning and palette of materials out into the garden, LeBlanc's most splendid and comfortable zone of all.
Even with its new dark brown paint job, and much-widened front door, the street-side exteriors are subtle enough to fool many that the house is unchanged. "This Split-Level not only retains architectural evidence of the most significant residential building boom in Canadian history," says Mr. Cardew, but "it also shows that [existing] building stock can be adapted to satisfy the requirements of modern living." Neither I nor the L-G design jury could say it better.
The top six awards
Winnipeg Library Addition:
Patkau Architects of Vancouver won the Lieutenant-Governor's Medal for its addition to the Winnipeg Library. A tight budget and an architecturally bumptious existing library energized rather than handicapped this work by Canada's most internationally famous designers. It's time for a major B.C. building from them.
Desert Cultural Centre:
Constructed for the Nk'Mip First Nation in Osoyoos, this interpretive centre also received a medal.
The area in and around reserve lands is the northernmost extension of the great Sonoran Desert, which starts in Mexico, and is the only such landscape in Canada. The structure designed by Bruce Haden of Hotson Bakker Haden Boniface takes the idea of sedimentation and the sandy textures of deserts literally, by making a compacted earth wall its spectacular central set piece. The space-making around this earthy eye candy (call it terra-toffee) is subtle, the other details deferring to this one big move shaping plan and elevations.
Aberdeen Centre:
Bing Thom Architects of Vancouver was awarded a Certificate of Merit for the Aberdeen Centre. Amoeboid in shape, and checker-boarded with multi-coloured glass in transparent, translucent and opaque variations, the building overturns suburban shopping centre clichés.
Killarney Community Pool:
Hughes Condon Marler Architects of Vancouver won a Certificate of Merit for this, the latest in a string of fine pools from the firm. Light-filled and user-friendly, it is a welcome public spa for all in Eastside Vancouver.
LeBlanc House:
Peter Cardew Architects of Vancouver was given a Special Jury Award for its innovative renovation (see sidebar).
Mole Hill:
Hotson Bakker Boniface Haden of Vancouver was give a Special Jury Award for this housing project, a $1-million-per-house conservation of the West End's last intact block of Edwardian residences, including laneway improvements.
tboddy@globeandmail.com
Is Vancouver building a design gap?
Condos, condos going up everywhere, but apparently none are worthy of a medal
TREVOR BODDY
Last year, more than half of all buildings constructed by British Columbia architects were multi-family housing - townhouses, apartments, and condos, condos, condos of all shapes and sizes. Yet when it came to the short list for this year's B.C. Lieutenant-Governor's awards in architecture, only three of 37 finalists were multi-family housing, and none won medals or even merit mentions. What gives?
Granted, multi-family housing is the Rodney Dangerfield of architecture - it don't get no respect. It is quite surprising to some non-architects to learn that many students of architecture graduate never having designed a single duplex, apartment block or condo tower. In all the years I taught at Carleton University's school of architecture, my colleagues never once deigned to set a design studio task on the topic of multi-family housing. A "dwelling for a poet in a cave," yes; a "hut for a philosopher on a pole," yes. But never a project that looked at housing as a public good and as the binding texture of our cities.
Similarly, the trend-setting glossy architecture magazines that get ritually passed around design studios almost never feature standard residential housing - art galleries, interpretive centres, and mansions for millionaires by the dozen, but rarely multi-family housing. Both of the key American magazines, Architecture and Architectural Record, put the topic of social housing on their covers in the same month in the early 1990s - and ignored it for the decade to follow.
But the real reason multiple-family housing rarely makes it onto design awards lists is that architects are not paid enough to do it well. The fact is that here in B.C. we devote around 4 per cent of total housing costs to all design fees (architecture, engineering, landscape), while we pay four times that amount for real estate marketing (advertising, display centres, agent's fees). Well, you get what you pay for.
The only individual house on the 2007 BC Lieutenant-Governor's awards list is the radical renovation of a West Vancouver single family house by Peter Cardew, singled out for one of LG's "special jury awards."
The home is a silent protest against the practice of "knock-downs" in Vancouver and West Vancouver's toniest neighbourhoods. As Mr. Cardew puts it in his design statement: "If judged by contemporary standards, the architecture of the recent past is often rejected as being of little worth when compared to that which is very old or very new."
In part because of environmental concerns about this throwaway attitude to older or under-sized dwellings on lots in our most expensive neighbourhoods, the architect and client Jean Claude LeBlanc decided to keep key portions of an all-too banal 1970s split-level bungalow as they brought its look and appointments into the new century.
To begin with, they cut out the schmaltz -- the dormers, the multi-paned fake archaic picture window, the harvest gold exterior paint job. Into the shell of the house they cut strategic insertions -- new stairs in birch or concrete, removal of walls to make a continuous living-kitchen-dining room, some handsome metallic railings.
The LeBlanc renovation's most obvious change is a skiff of concrete that now covers the entire main floor, and extends out to rear garden. Contrasting beautifully with the warm tones of the new millwork, this brings an urban loft sensibility to the land of tweed and Land Rovers. Taking a note from the Oak Park houses of Frank Lloyd Wright, Cardew's design projects the renewed house's spatial patterning and palette of materials out into the garden, LeBlanc's most splendid and comfortable zone of all.
Even with its new dark brown paint job, and much-widened front door, the street-side exteriors are subtle enough to fool many that the house is unchanged. "This Split-Level not only retains architectural evidence of the most significant residential building boom in Canadian history," says Mr. Cardew, but "it also shows that [existing] building stock can be adapted to satisfy the requirements of modern living." Neither I nor the L-G design jury could say it better.
The top six awards
Winnipeg Library Addition:
Patkau Architects of Vancouver won the Lieutenant-Governor's Medal for its addition to the Winnipeg Library. A tight budget and an architecturally bumptious existing library energized rather than handicapped this work by Canada's most internationally famous designers. It's time for a major B.C. building from them.
Desert Cultural Centre:
Constructed for the Nk'Mip First Nation in Osoyoos, this interpretive centre also received a medal.
The area in and around reserve lands is the northernmost extension of the great Sonoran Desert, which starts in Mexico, and is the only such landscape in Canada. The structure designed by Bruce Haden of Hotson Bakker Haden Boniface takes the idea of sedimentation and the sandy textures of deserts literally, by making a compacted earth wall its spectacular central set piece. The space-making around this earthy eye candy (call it terra-toffee) is subtle, the other details deferring to this one big move shaping plan and elevations.
Aberdeen Centre:
Bing Thom Architects of Vancouver was awarded a Certificate of Merit for the Aberdeen Centre. Amoeboid in shape, and checker-boarded with multi-coloured glass in transparent, translucent and opaque variations, the building overturns suburban shopping centre clichés.
Killarney Community Pool:
Hughes Condon Marler Architects of Vancouver won a Certificate of Merit for this, the latest in a string of fine pools from the firm. Light-filled and user-friendly, it is a welcome public spa for all in Eastside Vancouver.
LeBlanc House:
Peter Cardew Architects of Vancouver was given a Special Jury Award for its innovative renovation (see sidebar).
Mole Hill:
Hotson Bakker Boniface Haden of Vancouver was give a Special Jury Award for this housing project, a $1-million-per-house conservation of the West End's last intact block of Edwardian residences, including laneway improvements.
tboddy@globeandmail.com