Design the Next Vancouver
'FormShift Vancouver' contest invites new ideas for a vibrant, greener, denser city.
Calling all creatives.
A new competition invites the world to help Vancouver imagine itself as not only a denser city, but one more green, livable and exciting to the eye.
And though the contest welcomes entries from the best architects in B.C. and beyond, you don't have to be in the business of designing buildings or neighbourhoods to enter and win.
FormShift Vancouver is an "open ideas competition" say its joint primary sponsors, the Architectural Institute of British Columbia (AIBC) and the City of Vancouver.
What will the highly decorated panel of jurors be looking for? FormShift's website lays it out this way:
"The City of Vancouver has developed Climate Change Action Plans as well as EcoDensity Charter -- policies and principles to guide greener and denser development, improve building performance, reduce carbon emissions, and improve the city's overall livability. Vancouver was the first city in Canada to adopt the 2030_Challenge for greenhouse gas reduction, committing each of us to reducing our collective environmental impact. Vancouver City Council has taken that commitment a step further with the stated goal of becoming 'the greenest city in the world.'
"FormShift Vancouver challenges you to give shape to these goals through ideas and design solutions that will help shape the future of the city. Be it by expanding upon Vancouver's traditional design solutions or offering an entirely new perspective, this is your chance to build a hypothetical neighbourhood of the future, one that is in keeping with the vibrant, ecologically-friendly and sustainable city to which we aspire."
Entrants can choose among three categories:
1. A mixed-use site along a major Vancouver street that includes a rapid transit station. ($6,000 to the winner.)
2. A small residential site in an established Vancouver neighbourhood near public transit. ($4,000 prize.)
3. A 'wild card' design that pushes the envelope of sustainable design and community building for Vancouver. "This may be an aggressively imaginative, speculative and/or futuristic concept that suggests a radically new model of sustainable design for Vancouver, even not currently viable. Solutions that are adaptable to other sites are strongly encouraged," says the FormShift website. ($2,000 to the winner.)
(Aspiring entrants should head to the FormShift website this Thursday, Feb. 26, to download the complete competition package containing three-dimensional site models, plans dimensions and other requirements.)
Toward EcoDensity 2.0
The contest arrives after a frenzied boom of building in Vancouver, little of it world calibre in its design or execution, according to some critics.
In his award-winning book Dream City, urban planner Lance Berelowitz argues that B.C.'s cities are boring because so much urban building is mandated by provincial and federal bean counters. "This strikingly hierarchical, condescending power structure has severely limited local governments, Vancouver's included, from playing a more activist role in shaping their cities," writes Berelowitz.
The last major design competition in Vancouver was for Library Square. Unlike this one, that contest included a public poll that helped yield architect Moshe Safdie's controversial neo-Roman design.
Some say organizers of the 2010 Olympics missed a chance to wow the world when they opted, for the first time in half a century, not to create an architectural competition for at least one of its venues.
FormShift's professional advisor, architect Walter Francl, is hoping this competition will draw out new ways of thinking about densification: "This is a marvelous opportunity to cross-fertilize the ideas of designers here with architects and urban planners from elsewhere.
"There have already been a lot of examples of densification in Vancouver, around the Expo lands, for instance, but much of that densification is not particularly exciting or designed with sustainability in mind. We're excited about the new possibilities we might find in the submissions. I'm especially looking forward to submissions from other cities like London or Berlin or Vienna -- or cities in China or India -- cities that have had to grapple with density issues and sustainability in a more urgent way," says Francl.
Creative stimulus in lean times
This could be a way to deepen the conversation around EcoDensity, agrees jury facilitator Gordon Price, who runs Simon Fraser University's City Program. Price expects FormShift Vancouver "will show people all the choices and nuances you can have" with denser building. Architectural writer Adele Weder, who's on the FormShift organizing committee, says a surge of new ideas might even impress those traditionalists nervous about the oft-murky concept of density. "Some people associate the very word 'density' with 'boring' or 'crowded,' which it definitely does not have to be."
But given the slide in the real estate market, isn't this a strange time to seek new ideas for building out Vancouver? To the contrary, argue the contest's organizers. The lull offers time to focus for idle architects and designers and other creative minds. In architectural circles it's known as a "recession renaissance." Some of the best ideas and small projects happen during busts, not booms.
"Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and a generation of European modernists used the austere period after World War I to invent new ideas of low cost housing, bold cities, never seen before details. With this city's architectural talent, why can't it happen here?" asks architectural critic and curator Trevor Boddy, also on the FormShift organizing committee.
Star-studded jury
The FormShift jury is headed by architect Peter Busby, who is not a voting member. Voting jurors include Ian Chodikoff, architect and editor of Canadian Architect; Stan Douglas, photo-based artist; David Miller, principal of Miller Hull Architects and chair of the University of Washington Department of Architecture; Nancy Knight, vice president campus and community planning, University of British Columbia; Brent Toderian, director of planning, City of Vancouver.
Top submissions will be showcased in April here on The Tyee, the media sponsor of FormShift Vancouver.
Other supporting sponsors include The Grosvenor Group, ParkLane Homes and MGB (MacFarlance/Green/Biggar).
The official launch date for FormShift Vancouver is this Thursday, Feb. 26, when the complete entry package will be available for downloading on the FormShift website. Entrants must register by March 13 and make their submissions by April 3. Winners will be announced on April 15, 2009.
The competition will include a public exhibit of the best entries, and a chance for everyone to vote for a "people's choice" winner.
AIBC executive director Dorothy Barkley is hoping the competition will kick start a new round of creative thinking about Vancouver's future -- not just the fast changing city's form, but its feel.
"The architects and the city have a history of collaboration that has produced some of the most exciting urban design in the world," Barkley notes. "That isn't to say that both of us couldn't do our tasks better a little better. And we'd like not to rest on our laurels, but rather see what the future holds for new innovative approaches for sustainability -- socially, environmentally and culturally."
Related Tyee stories:
- Can 'Eco-Density' Be Beautiful?
New initiative means new architecture. But how will it look? - Wake up, Vancouver!
'Dialogue of Cities' aims to deliver creative jolt. - The Myth of Dense Vancouver
Stats show city isn't countering flight to suburbs.
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
Urbanismo
23-02-2009
Form Shift
Congratulations, FORM SHIFT people, you are not a minute too soon albeit decades too late.
The recent demented, speculative whirly-gig has been catastrophic to the well-being and reputation of Vancouver that the plethora of feel-good nonsense belching from academe and media has obviously not hidden. Some one should be facing dismissal!
Had they been awake enough twenty years ago to read my book "The Canadian City" we would have been spared the bleak blight of, for instance, Coal Harbour and FCN.
http://www.theyorkshirelad.ca/New.Nanaimo.Center/pudpn/Commentary.pdf
For urban amelioration, we now face a daunting task. When first the closure laws were enacted some 200 years ago little did they realize. Now the tenured and august members of the literati must bite the bullet, risk their cozy sinecures and start teaching . . .
Form Shift is a start!
Even though Form Shift's initiating protagonists have been more culpable for the blight than saviors of the public place they are helping us to wake-up time!
Anyway, dios bendice y paz, personally and professionally I am delighted.
Rod Smelser
23-02-2009
The Gospel of Oberlander and Hardwick
With Gordon Price facilitating the panel's deliberations, and one of the two sponsors being the City of Vancouver, I would expect that for any entry to be even partially successful it will have to adhere very strictly to the received orthodoxy of Vancouverism, the Gospel of Oberlander and Hardwick.
According to the Globe architectural writer Trevor Brody, Hardwick and Oberlander together were instrumental in founding the planning philosophy that is now enshrined in most Lower Mainland municipal halls as an official truth. Among its core principles are freeway damnation and automobile ostracism. These doctrines are, of course, not applied to the rich and famous nor are they practiced by the planners and politicians themselves. Rather, they are applied to the majority of the general public, the people most in need of their purifying effects.
Urbanismo
23-02-2009
Form Shift
Actually,Mr. Smelser,
You are referring to the 1970's LIVEABLE REGIONAL PLAN, of itself an unmitigated disaster. There is, indeed, an ever decaying group (LRP authors) of self-servers who still pump that delusional "paradise."
But hey that is what they thinq they are paid to do . . . and maybe some of us are wiser now . . . don't blame Walter, he was one of the good guys . . .
Actually, if I may return to the subject, FORM FIT is co-opted: VPSN invited us to a "Where's the Square" competition eons ago. I'll try for both but my heart with the latter.
"But given the slide in the real estate market, isn't this a strange time to seek new ideas for building out Vancouver? To the contrary, argue the contest's organizers. The lull offers time to focus for idle architects and designers and other creative minds. In architectural circles it's known as a "recession renaissance." Some of the best ideas and small projects happen during busts, not booms."
Whooo-ah here! Are the "contest's organizers" saying, design professions are only interested in "context" when we are "idle?"
Ummmm, "recession renaissance:" I've been a MAIBC for over half a century: that's new!
We've always been interested: try blaming bottom-liners and the corporate mind-set!
"Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and a generation of European modernists used the austere period after World War I to invent new ideas of low cost housing, bold cities, never seen before details."
And let's hope we avoid their blatant horrors: jeezless need I explain?
Rod Smelser
23-02-2009
Yeah, actually, I would like an explanation!
Urbanismo
Actually,Mr. Smelser,
You are referring to the 1970's LIVEABLE REGIONAL PLAN, of itself an unmitigated disaster. There is, indeed, an ever decaying group (LRP authors) of self-servers who still pump that delusional "paradise."
But hey that is what they thinq they are paid to do . . . and maybe some of us are wiser now . . . don't blame Walter, he was one of the good guys . .
I wouldn't argue that the planning document you refer to is one of the faith's sacred texts, but the faith existed before taking form in print. AFAIK, it's an arguable case that Peter Oberlander and Walter Hardwick were indeed the original prophets.
Hardwick didn't want Vancouver to build freeways that would go through the Eastside to connect to Hwys 1 and 99, because under the Vancouver City Charter Act local ratepayers, not the BC Govt, would have to pay or borrow for them. The net result would be that Westside homeowners would be paying elevated property taxes for highways that principally benefitted residents of the suburbs in terms of travel time, and what's worse, residents of the Eastside in terms of traffic being taken off city streets and onto a dedicated highway. Without that traffic disamenity, some Eastside homes would be increased in value, with Westside residents picking up a proportionately larger part of the tab for the public work that made this possible.
Hardwick would have none of it, and began a unique, Vancouver-centric belief system that carries on to this day. In some ways the faith in no freeways has expanded and become even more exacting in its requirements. The faithful must now oppose not only any and all "free-flowing highways" within the City's boundaries. They are even required to vigorously oppose the construction of bridge and freeway projects such as Port Mann which are fifteen kilometres outside the City. It's a kind of imperial NIMBYism, not in my backyard, and sure as Hell not in your's either!
"Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and a generation of European modernists used the austere period after World War I to invent new ideas of low cost housing, bold cities, never seen before details."
And let's hope we avoid their blatant horrors: jeezless need I explain?
OKay, so what's wrong with Mies and Le Corbusier?
RickW
23-02-2009
Something to Consider
http://www.waterbucket.ca/cfa/index.asp?sid=19&id=306&type=single
sassamatt
23-02-2009
Eco Density
Eco Density is an Oxymoron. Density since the beginning of time has never been environmentally sound. I think developers and visionaries hiding behind this word, are fundamental dishonest and should not be trusted.
the-grouse
23-02-2009
Frankly my dear...
Speaking as a devoted denizen of what Vancouver - if it thinks of the rest of BC at all - would consider, "the sticks", I couldn't care less what the city does to itself. Whatever "clever" new ideas Vancouverites come up for how to improve their environment, one can be sure that the rest of BC will join in footing the bill as has been the case for the fortnight of folly coming up next year.
But maybe just one poetically just possibility should be entertained: turn the environmental decision-making for the city over to locals from some of the other regions of BC to decide (e.g. the Central Coast), much as Vancouver jumped in and grabbed a lead role at planning tables for our purportedly"pristine" places far from the latte dens of Kits. As a crusty old logger friend of mine once pointed out rhetorically: where's the biggest clear-cut in all of BC? Nope not the Bowron cut, the lower mainland.
Sandwichman
26-02-2009
Elephant in the Room
FormShift appears to be concerned solely with the efficient design of the container -- the room -- without considering what goes on in the room or whether it's necessary. Fifty years ago, John Kenneth Galbraith complained about conservationists focusing on everything but the appetite for geometrically increasing consumption. It's like discussing how to reduce traffic accidents, he pointed out, while agreeing not to mention speed.
There's an elephant in the room and that is the failure to take part of the productivity gains over the last half century as reduced working time. It all has to go into "growth" -- more stuff, more buildings, more GDP. And to keep the population employed, requires even more growth, more jobs, more credentials to obtain those jobs and so on.
The Greenest Elephant in the Room is the reduction of working time. It's the most effective and immediate way to REDUCE material throughput while maintaining or even creating jobs. Yet respectable people treat it as a fringe idea. As JMK remarked of bankers, "worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for one's reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally."