Downtown Vancouver Updates

[jollyburger]

(Fantasy mode) They should stick the new VAG on top of the Sinclair Centre site and use Larwill Park for the new Federal Government Hub.

[Vin]

Originally Posted by Changing City

In Montreal they're not planning on reconfiguring the building, so they look for new tenants when any leave, and change the building if necessary. Here they've been planning on redeveloping the building for several years, so they aren't trying to fill the vacant spaces. Is that hard to follow?

Of course, at the expense of tax payers, the Feds do not need to fill up the vacant spaces. Sure makes it easy when there is always a free flow of money, eh?

A private owner in such a situation will lose not just an arm and a leg, but all limbs by now.



On the other hand, if Sinclair Centre's tenancy has always been great with good businesses operating in it, perhaps the Feds would never have thought of reconfiguring the buildings in the first place, correct? Like would you reconfigure the Parliament building and stick a skyscraper in the middle?

[Migrant_Coconut]

A private owner that can afford a redevelopment will most definitely be getting revenue from more than one property.

[Klazu]

Can I take a moment to recognise that 14 years later this thread has hit 1,000 pages. It is quite interesting to read what the hot topics were back in 2007 and how far we have come since then.

[Zepfancouver]

Hope I'm still around for page 2000 celebrations.

[Kwalter1]

Originally Posted by Vancouver_Highrise

yup.. apparently it will be a 16 story huge fat blob in downtown.

Looks like a view cone from shitty hall.

[officedweller]

Pics by me today:







Note there is some variation in the colour of the siding trhat doesn't show up well in the pics.

[Spr0ckets]

Originally Posted by officedweller

Pics by me today:

....

That's such a weird juxtaposition if ever I saw one.
And it'll be even weirder looking once they re-install that cornice crown molding at the top of the older building (which doesn't even look like it fits (aesthetically) with the style of the older building to begin with - adding another unnecessary layer of disjointedness) all the way around.


It's like someone forced a building onto the top of a totally different building and didn't bother to make them fit properly.
They just jammed it in there.
And then added a tacky cheap-looking crown molding in the middle there to try to hide their shoddy work from street level.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by Spr0ckets

That's such a weird juxtaposition if ever I saw one.
And it'll be even weirder looking once they re-install that cornice crown molding at the top of the older building (which doesn't even look like it fits (aesthetically) with the style of the older building to begin with - adding another unnecessary layer of disjointedness) all the way around.


It's like someone forced a building onto the top of a totally different building and didn't bother to make them fit properly.
They just jammed it in there.
And then added a tacky cheap-looking crown molding in the middle there to try to hide their shoddy work from street level.

Actually, it's a faithful reproduction of the building as it was first built. (On the Changing Vancouver blog.)

[jollyburger]

The metal poles above the cornice looks odd as well.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by jollyburger

The metal poles above the cornice looks odd as well.

I think that's the structural frame of the 3 floor lightweight addition on top of the old building. You can see they line up with the columns on the top two floors. They show like that because of the inset floor (which is intended to make the old and the addition differentiated). I'm not convinced it works that well, but there were presumably limitations related to the integrity of the old building. (On the Beatty Street office that's a bit like this they were able to add a concrete frame, as the old building was surprisingly solid).

[officedweller]

I took the long shots down Hamilton and Homer because I think it looks bulkier than it would have if it was an all glass addition.
I also think it would have benefitted if there was maybe a slight setback on the Homer and the Hamilton facades.

The Hamilton facade of the old building also seems to protrude out more than the neighbouring buildings, so the addition does the same.
The addition's horizontal banding (taken from the bands on the old building) are also at odds with the vertical elements prevalent on its neighbours down the block.

[Migrant_Coconut]

IMO the only real problem is that reddish-brown wood; give it another paint job that complements the brick, and 99% of the controversy goes away.

[officedweller]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

IMO the only real problem is that reddish-brown wood; give it another paint job that complements the brick, and 99% of the controversy goes away.

Apparently they studied it to death:


Cladding colour and composition studies for Yaletown Square.
https://twitter.com/actonostry


https://twitter.com/actonostry

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by officedweller

Apparently they studied it to death:

Call me colour-blind, but that looks like fifty shades of the exact same thing. Needs to be slightly more orange.

[Spr0ckets]

Originally Posted by Changing City

Actually, it's a faithful reproduction of the building as it was first built. (On the Changing Vancouver blog.)

I think what makes it look odd and like it doesn't belong is that a crown cornice molding typically is meant for the top of a building and not the mid-band section.

So in the original design you can see it works, because that's how the style language work.

With this re-design the crown cornice is not longer a "crown",...but more of a mid-band that doesn't look as such and thus the whole thing just looks.......well.....messy.

I doubt the original designers would love this new re-do.

It's the whole "one-foot-in" and "one-foot-out" approach they seem to be taking.
I know it's hard doing these kinds of classical architecture-to-modern-extension re-do sort of projects, but in this case it seemed like they could never decide fully which way they were going.

Either be fully faithful to the early design language and make your extension lean more on that style of design and language. Or make a clean break of it and take a more unified approach (...to the modern side).

If it's a heritage building, the problem typically solves itself because there's not much you can do to the original building to alter its design.

I agree with Migrant's approach that a colour that was a hueing (forgive the pun) close to the red brick tone of the original might have helped tons to not make it look like they just cavalierly stuck 2 unrelated buildings on top of one another and that just now seem to be stylistically fighting with one another.

[Spr0ckets]

Also, it's clear from the building's design that over the years through several alterations it went through, they got rid of the crown molding altogether.

I'm not entirely convinced that bringing a version of it back just as some sort of homage to the original design was the way to go.
Remember that a crown molding like that was in itself (even back at the time) a callback to actual Classical (not Neo-Classical) architecture from antiquity and Ancient Roman/Greco era.

The Neo-Classicists themselves weren't necessarily great themselves at knowing what works and what didn't.

So deciding to go with a design that's a callback to the original design when the original designers might not have gotten it right, would be kind of emphasizing that fact.

Remember that once upon a time (not that long ago, even) we thought that putting pitched roofs on top of highrise towers and skyscrapers was (somehow) a great callback or "homage" to pediment features of architecture of the past as well.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by Spr0ckets

... a colour that was a hueing (forgive the pun) close to the red brick of the or original might have helped tons to not make it look like they just cavalierly stuck 2 unrelated buildings on top of on another and just seem to be stylistically fighting with one another.

Quick example (not sure if I matched the colour 100% right):

[Spr0ckets]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Quick example (not sure if I matched the colour 100% right):

Yes, something closer to that.
That's exactly right.

[officedweller]

I agree with Sprockets comments on the cornice. Since the addition is trying to blend in (via colour) the top of the old building doesn't provide the 'edge' that a cornice would mark. i.e. if the old building were vertically expanded (in brick) back in its day, as many buildings were, the old cornice would have been removed and relocated to the top of the new floors. Another approach would have been to wrap the cornice along the Drake frontage, even if it was not original.