Vancouver Convention Centre Expansion Project | Completed

[Delirium]

yeah, the camera took me by surprise. it really doesn't belong there. on one hand you have this welcome post but then your eye goes to camera and it's like, oh.

the canada place logo should have gone where it says cdn icon. swap the two.

[metroXpress]

It's more of an icon for Vancouver. And that camera on top of it...just makes me laugh~smile everyone!

[SFUVancouver]

The IMAX logo used to be where the picture of Canada Place is now. That sign was put up largely to advertise IMAX and a couple weeks after it was finished IMAX closed up shop.

[GeeCee]

Oh man, I didn't know that it closed! Lame..

I wish someone would open up an IMAX theatre downtown that showed first run movies.

[Stingray2004]

The Government of Canada will set aside $21 million toward replacing the roof at the iconic Canada Place, located on Vancouver's waterfront.

The tensioned fabric roof of Canada Place is due for replacement. The outer roof fabric will be replaced with material of current technology. This investment will ensure that Canada Place remains both a hub of economic activity for Vancouver, and a symbol of national pride.

........................

Construction will start immediately after the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games and will be completed some time in 2011.

Canada Place Corporation CEO Mike Shardlow says the sails are beyond their life span. "Since Expo 86 there was a tremendous amount of activity. There have been lots of rips, tears and patches and of course our weather. The greening, that will go away with our new sails."

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Infrastructure-Canada-1082838.html

http://www.news1130.com/news/local/more.jsp?content=20091128_142822_6672

[vanman]

That'll be interesting to watch. I wonder what the construction timeline will be.

[ravman]

Originally Posted by PROSTSHOCKER

An update on whatever it is they are building between the convention centres





copyright 2 me AUM NOM NOM i dont care

Originally Posted by Delirium

ongoing construction in the middle of the plaza


do you really need to say it's an 'icon'? those sorts of things aren't usually spelled out. kinda tacky imo

photos by me

i could say its for security checkpoints etc... but here it is from the devils mouth
[quote]In another signal that the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics are just around the corner, the new Richmond oval will close to the public Tuesday to allow for Games-time conversion.

The closure of the $178-million facility is the latest in a phased shutdown of venues in Vancouver, Whistler and Cypress Bowl to allow the Vancouver Organizing Committee to undertake a complex conversion.

At the oval, workers will string lights, install cabling to support large scoreboards, erect extra seating and install temporary washrooms to handle the sellout crowds expected for the 17 days of speed skating competitions.

It comes on the same day Vanoc will begin to gussy up the mountain venues with its so-called “look of the Games,” hanging banners and other colour-schemed material. It will start employing the “look” in the city starting Jan. 1.

But already there are visible signs in Vancouver and elsewhere that the Games are close. At the Vancouver Convention Centre, temporary security screening and accreditation tents have been erected to process many of the 10,000 journalists expected to attend the Games.

Portions of Cypress Mountain, the site of snowboarding and freestyle skiing, and all of Whistler Olympic Park, the site of ski jumping, cross-country and biathlon, have come under Vanoc’s control for overlay purposes.

In Whistler, Vanoc has also erected a number of temporary structures, including a massive dining hall for athletes, warming huts and media facilities. During the summer it had installed temporary servicing and concrete pads for stands and other equipment at all of the outdoor venues.

Overall, Vanoc will spend $200 million on Olympic imagery and conversion to Games-time use. Of that, about $135 million will go for overlay.

Ted Townsend, a spokesman for Richmond, said the city will mark the looming closure of the oval with a public skate on Sunday. The oval has operated since last December, offering public skating sessions and a variety of fitness programs. All of those will be suspended until April 1, when Vanoc will return the oval to Richmond’s control. Some staff, notably icemakers, will remain at the venue but others, including administration, will move out to allow Vanoc to take over complete control.

The only venues not yet directly under Vanoc’s control are Vancouver’s three civic ice arenas, which will shut down in mid-January, and GM Place. Even the athletes’ villages in Whistler and Vancouver have been turned over for conversion, and Vanoc already has use of the Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic Centre, the curling facility at Hillcrest.

At Cypress Mountain, an unexpectedly early snowfall may help dampen the financial impact the company faces for the five weeks the mountain is closed to public skiing. Cypress has been open for daytime public skiing since Nov. 13, nearly a month earlier than usual, said Kent Rideout, a Cypress spokesman.

“We’re trying to keep our business as normal as possible,” Rideout said. “We opened nearly a month early and we have a base of 180 cm. It’s making all the skiers and riders exceptionally happy. That’s good for us.”

Vanoc has taken control of two parking lots and the new freestyle skiing venue, which was never open to the public. It will take over total control of Cypress on Feb. 1.

Two weeks ago, Vanoc chief executive John Furlong gave reporters an idea of the size and scope of the overlay program, noting that the spectator stands at Cypress were 14 storeys tall.

“They’re certainly impressive to see,” said Rideout.

Vanoc is also doing overlay work at Whistler Blackcomb’s Creekside facility, the site of the downhill events. Blackcomb says the first run closures will take place on Jan. 25, with Vanoc taking over lifts on Feb. 1.

Vancouver’s busy community arenas at Trout Lake, Killarney and Britannia Community Centres will close mid-January. But because they are all designated practice facilities for figure skating, short track speed skating and ice hockey, they won’t need major amounts of overlay. Most of the work will entail security and perimeter fencing.[\quote] van sun

[mr.x]

^ if that's the security checkpoint tent, that's a bit close to the convention centre...no? Considering that they're closing off Burrard and Howe from West Cordova right down to the centre, I had imagined that checkpoint would be much, much closer to West Cordova.

[johnjimbc]

Are there really no conceptual drawings of what the plaza will look like after they complete the current work?

People keep talking about it, and now there's this photo of the torn up plaza. But I'm still having a hard time picturing it, even with the written description a couple of days back. I'm not sure what stairs folks are saying will have a water feature running down next to (or on?)

[Yume-sama]

Does anybody know if Canada Place is still open? Like... could I go to the end of the sails like in this photo...



Or did they close this for the Olympics, too

[jlousa]

It will look exactly the same, the exception is that channel will carry water from a fountain to one of the lights, it will circle the light before entering a drain. There will be another fountain near the top of the stair, water will run down a channel in the middle of the grandstaircase into a pond at the bottom. Everything else will be the same. The planters will be rebuilt, there was a problem with leakage in that area, and they just dug everything up to fix the problem.

[johnjimbc]

thanks, jlousa. that helps.

[deasine]

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 Partnership, 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 human-scaled. 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 black-box 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 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 simplified 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 small-boat 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 north-facing 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 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 picture-takers 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.

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 fine-mesh 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 something 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.

Client Province of British Columbia (PAVCO) with Project Management 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 Beaudreault (partner in charge), Usman Aziz, Harvey Huey, Dale Kosowan, 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

Via Canadian Architect

[jlousa]

Been meaning to post here but kept forgetting, the big globe in the convention centre was deflated, they've now fixed it, I hadn't realized that it was just a giant balloon.

Also they have been building a very impressive scaffolding square about 4 stories in height on the west plaza, not sure what for, yesterday they brought in what must've been a 250'ft crane to lift peices into the centre of the square. I can't say what it is but it does appear to be for a very large flame. Hopefully someone knows for sure. Maybe someone can stop by and post pics.

[Delirium]

i was walking by yesterday as they were removing these large concrete cylindrical things off a flatbed. i had no idea what they were. the one larger piece looked like part of a sewer tunnel with dozens of shower jets all over it.

impossible to descibe. it was just weird. whatever is going on in the middle of that plaza, it's big (and very covered from public view).

[osirisboy]

Originally Posted by Delirium

i was walking by yesterday as they were removing these large concrete cylindrical things off a flatbed. i had no idea what they were. the one larger piece looked like part of a sewer tunnel with dozens of shower jets all over it.

impossible to descibe. it was just weird. whatever is going on in the middle of that plaza, it's big (and very covered from public view).

I saw that thing too. I was driving beside the truck down hastings, I couldnt figure out wtf it was.

[Yume-sama]

SEE! This is what happens when you take down the Nuclear Free Zone signs. Gordon Campbell and his nuclear cronies are building a bomb!

Will Canada Place be open to the public during the Olympics? Or is that a no-no.

[Smooth]

Originally Posted by Delirium

ongoing construction in the middle of the plaza

Would this have been a gas line that they were installing a few months back?

[GeeCee]

Originally Posted by Yume-sama

SEE! This is what happens when you take down the Nuclear Free Zone signs. Gordon Campbell and his nuclear cronies are building a bomb!

Will Canada Place be open to the public during the Olympics? Or is that a no-no.

The convention centers themselves will not be.. they will be the media centers.

[SpongeG]

Originally Posted by Delirium

i was walking by yesterday as they were removing these large concrete cylindrical things off a flatbed. i had no idea what they were. the one larger piece looked like part of a sewer tunnel with dozens of shower jets all over it.

impossible to descibe. it was just weird. whatever is going on in the middle of that plaza, it's big (and very covered from public view).

maybe in case a chemical attack its a quick shower thing?