@delirium
man, at least this building appears to have ground floor commercial spaces. i passionately despise the goofy ground floor walk ups that the planners forced onto yaletown from 1990-2005 (incidentally, the worst design period in vancouver's history). i remember at some function sitting across the table from larry beasley as he explained them as arising from "eyes on the street" new york/jane jacobs urbanism experience/theory, just wondering at how unrepentantly unironic he seemed. as if what vancouver needed was a westside/westend feel everywhere, that was what you all were lacking lol. the predictable result? a lack of commercial spaces in the downtown means that your commercial leases are very costly, which means well capitalized occupants, which means a pre-disposition to chain shops and restaurants. you even have chain bars! those tend only to pop up areas with the highest barriers to entry. anyway, people talk about the "no fun city" and cultural anomie and the barriers to entrepreneurship, people even vote on it; here, this was literally planned/engineered and the new york/jacobs fetishists missed that lesson because they were too high street-focused.
so that's a rant, but at least this building isn't further de-activating richards street. also and related to an entirely different discussion, the gold is good if only because it's different. i mean, honestly, how can people look at these buildings and that skyline and not just wonder at how incredibly uniform they are? i know that this is also planned, buildings and their envelopes will look that way because of city codes and how the planning process works and the feedback loop and path dependency and incumbent architectural firms who work within that system. but you know that you're contributing to your own oppression when you criticize a slightly different color to a building instead of just throwing your hands up in outrage at the fact that you're forced to endure yet another vancouver building. like, really, this one is nearly identical to a dozen other vancouver towers, with the one difference of the color. let them have that, at least! force yourself to be free, in the rousseauean sense! or, if you're inclined toward real change, take a look at the bigger picture.
Last edited by a very long weekend; Feb 8, 2015 at 12:31 AM.
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