498 Drake St | 121.9M | 43Fl | Completed

[Jimbo604]

Photo credit: me

Yep, site is clear.

[Byron]

A few more from my balcony...

[Delirium]

great vantage point! thank you.
i drove by the other day and it's so weird seeing it all open like that.

[Klazu]

It doesn't appear so open from Byron's balcony, but from street level it feels like a huge open area. Two 40+ floor towers will look so great in here!

[osirisboy]

Not much new but thought I'd post the pic from today
[IMG] The Charleston by Rudytoottoots, on Flickr[/IMG]

[Vanelevatorman]

A lovely picture of a bike lane!

[osirisboy]

The point was if u zoomed in you can see what appears to be a pile driver on site

[Vanelevatorman]

I saw that, my comment was meant to be sarcastic.

[Delirium]

i think this building is a disaster. consider it's the same architects as the Mark (Dialog) who think that turned out to be a architectural masterpiece.

the laneway elevation still looks terrible. they tried adding punched windows, texturing the wall but it's still awful. i'm just not sold on the gold colouring either. it's not a timeless colour imo.

if anyone is interested in reading their design rationale, here it is. it's kinda funny. you're expecting some amazing looking building but then you see the renderings and you're like, oh.
http://former.vancouver.ca/devapps/4...nrationale.pdf

here are updated renderings. unanimous UDP approval;











all are screenshots from PDF docs

[officedweller]

Thanks.

This may not be saying much, but I think that the gold/yellow wrap-around balconies will hide a number of sins (spandrel!) and provide the building with a uniform appearance, like the balconies at Wave in Surrey (as long as the colour is bold enough) - and unlike Telus Garden or the rectangular side of Capitol.

[Klazu]

Thanks for extracting these renderings. Burrard Place (Gateway) looks absolutely massive!

[Jimbo604]

Source: me

One level of shot-crete excavation done. Will their excavation plans and development permit sync up or will there be a gap between them? They currently don't have a meeting scheduled on the development permit board calendar.

[Byron]

Delirium: Thanks for posting this!! The yellow is certainly going to be hard to look at every day. Almost as much as the horrible orange colour of the Marks fence that I have to look at. *shudders*

[Delirium]

according to the original UDP report, it's supposed to be gold coloured which could be worse than yellow imo.

some interesting notes from their 'design rationale';
- building is 51ft wide
- The south, west and north facades of the tower are expressed in a lighter glass treatment where window wall is the principal cladding material comprised of clear glass, metal and glass spandrel and aluminum composite panels
- vision glass is approximately 35% of the façade area
- the extent of balcony being used is an architectural expression in the design of the building: gradient coloured balcony guardrails wrap around the southwest corner of the building to create texture and visual interest.
- the guardrail system is a unique combination of an aluminum frame and clear and tinted glass.
- there will be sunshade devices on both south and west facades

[phesto]

I heard that the building will be rental apartments, not condos. Not sure if that will help or hurt the quality of the exterior finishes...

[vanman]

Bird's eye view taken from a friend's place earlier today.

[Genauso]

Originally Posted by phesto

I heard that the building will be rental apartments, not condos. Not sure if that will help or hurt the quality of the exterior finishes...

There's always the chance of building sooner as a rental, for the intent of converting to condo later

[officedweller]

Nice shot.
Also shows the other remaining site in Yaletown - that electric co. and Bella pizza frontage.

[a very long weekend]

@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.

[trofirhen]

... and this building is still classified as "proposed?" Sure looks u/c to me ....