Moving mountains or molehills?

- Recently, I had occasion to visit somebody in the Jimmy Pattison Pavillion at VGH. There was this view of the downtown 'skyline', except from that angle, the real skyline was the mountains behind. There was almost perfect symmetry between the majestic North Shore edifices from the hands of the Gods, and the pathetic little man-made echo below. The effect was so ironic, that I found myself laughing out loud, causing the patient I was vitisting to object that his situation wasn't THAT funny. I explained, and he enjoyed the view with me.

Which Reminds Me..........

........why do schools have to be architectural statements? Or is it going to be explained (down) to me, that it adds to the childrens' collective self-esteem? All I can see is it adds to the cost of schooling, in a direction AWAY from actual education:
http://thetyee.ca/News/2008/01/18/StudentAid/

The MacMillan-Bloedel building...

... is a giant, sterile, featureless, concrete waffle. It's about as far as you can get, conceptually, from an old growth tree. There is absolutely nothing attractive about it.

It's almost as ugly as the SFU library. Say, who design that building?

Arthur Erickson

Adele Weder performs a valuable service in informing us about architecture in our city.

Reading the comments here instantly reminded me why I rarely look at them and in many ways why I have been turned off by the Tyee. It has been taken over by ranters who are "experts" in politics, environmental science, conspiracy theories and particularly those attributed to the dastardly busy neoconservatives, art, dance and now even architecture.

I don't know if Arthur Erickson has been overated. Who was overated him? Yet he is seen as one of our best. Are those who have stated that he is one of our best qualified to state that? More so than those who make their judgment here?

The idea that we should not compete with mountains, if a correct one, would have prevented masons from building the soaring Gothic cathedrals. Surely to try to reach God is just as silly as trying to compete with mountains.

Buildings should be seen as products of their time. Many don't like, our main post office. Some might say it resembles Soviet and Rumanian architecture of the 50s. Much effort has been put to eliminate the idea that the extremely high ceiling of the post office is a terrible thing. So our main post office has been compartmentalized so that we will not be inclined to look up. I love looking up in this building as much as I do at the old CP train station. If we think about it and judge it for its time it can grow on you as much as the wonderful steel postal boxes.

The waffle bulding has minimum (and for me there are more) merit of being a building that has a recognizable style. There is something to be said for that. But many of our condos with their hats are a mish mash of all kinds of styles much as contemporary graphic design.

An Erickson is an Erickson.

Few ever complain at all about the most famous building in Vancouver designed by an architect of world renown. Cesar Pelli designed the Eaton's (Sears) and the black tower next to it. Recently I sat to drink coffee in the Starbucks on the North end of Sears adjacent to Georgia. And when you look up! It is a surprising and soaring view. Perhaps Pelli designed that view to be noticed but shoppers wanting to shop would never look up. Now they have their chance and at least a part of this building lives for me.

The beautiful Forestry Sciences Centre at UBC must surely inspire the students who attend classes there. What is wrong with schools that would inspire students to excel?
Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

Quote:Buildings should be

Building should be seen first and foremost for their function. IF architectural details can be fitted in at no extra cost for public buildings (those paid for out of public funds), then so be it. But when capital budgets are swelled by form over function in the education system, it invariably diminishes what remains for the purpose of the building - namely teaching the little tykes adequately.

However, you may be right (in what I quoted you as saying) when it comes to schools -- the overly much attention paid to architectural detail shows that form today trumps function -- a true product of our time.

Too much attention to schools?

RickW wrote:

I cannot say I agree with you here. I have not been impressed with some of the newer schools out there. Go take a tour of some of the elementary schools built in the suburbs.

Have a look at some of them that are made with cheap materials and are suffering from mold issue

If anything, public buildings (including schools) should be aesthetically pleasing because they are available for ALL members of the public to visit and enjoy.

A child spending a significant portion of their day in a public building should be treated to a bright, pleasing, environment that invites social interaction. Boxes and walls with limited windows don't do this.

Lets spend more thought designing our schools, libraries, and other municipal buildings.

Make them places where people want to spend time and interact with others.

Leaky premise

Everything Erickson's built has leaked. I spend time in the Waterfall building: it will eventually. Guaranteed. Leaky buildings are hardly the basis of greatness.

This comment on the sale of The Sinclair Centre:

> and potentially even losing them to neglect and
> the wreckers' ball.

at the very least *implies* that Federal ownership would prevent neglect: this is hardly true. Look to the many buildings in Ottawa that are in horrible condition as a result of neglect (you could start with 24 Sussex Drive, which would probably best be torn down at this point.)

Moat

Which goes to show that form is important, function far less so............building schools and other public buildings has degenerated into shovelling public money intpo private pockets. IF a building happens to serve some public funtion, it is entirely coincidental.

If the planners and architects (such as Erikson) were up to the task, they would be designing buildings to reflect shifting populations - buildings capable of being added to and subtracted from, as usage demanded.

But they are stranded in the 19th century concept of static populations.

Form and function should compliment each other

I suppose we can go to trailer parks or look to the modern modular construction if we want to account for shifting populations.

Really, if we go that far, we could build groupings of temporary low-rise warehouses and connect them with rapid bus networks to shuttle people from work or school and back to their home module.

It would be efficient and functional, but not very inspiring.

Erickson is a "selfish" architect

The problem I have with Erickson is that almost all his creations are so inward looking. They may look grand by themselves, but don't relate to anything but themselves. The current skyscraper going up is only the most recent example. The twisted form is mildly interesting, but what does it have to do with the rest of Georgia Street? Nothing, so far as I can see. The Mac-Blo building doesn't look good on the street - the windows are recessed in a waffle shape, the courtyard is recessed below street level. Even the hair salon building on Granville, an early work, near 16th is tucked away by itself. He even wanted to put Christ Church Cathedral underground once!

I say thank goodness we don't have as many Ericksons as we might have. Our city planners Ray Spaxman and Larry Beasley worked for decades to get buildings to begin to relate to each other and to the environment. They were only planners, and the results weren't perfect, but at least the Urinal... I mean the Eaton's/Sears building was about the last build to present to the street nothing but a blank wall. Yaletown is quite good and I think will eventually grow into a really nice, neighbourly community - and the buildings relate to each other and to the street.

Erickson buildings are monumental, but ultimately quite sterile, in my view. They don't grow on you... and it's right, they leak!

leaking

The fact a building leaks has zero relevance to the quality of the design and its realization as a piece of architecture.

Many of Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings leaked - the story is told of Hibbert Johnson (Johnson Wax) who, sitting eating his Thanksgiving dinner in a Wright designed house, discovered that a drip from the roof was landing on his head.

He picked up the phone and called Wright and asked what he should 'do' about it.

Frank answered, "Move your chair, Hib, move your chair."

The Johnson Wax headquarters building - one of the absolute gems of modern architecture leaked for years....

Erickson is probably the greatest architect this country has ever produced - that doesn't mean that every building he designed is a masterpiece....

...and not just rain either

Erickson seems to have been as lousy a businessman as FLW was as well. Sounds like neither could keep the budget from leaking red ink for long.

DNA, you may well be right about Erickson's bigger buildings, although I happen to like SFU and UA-Lethbridge, and the lighting inside the MacBlo building lobby really evoked the understory of the old-growth that the company was committed to chopping down. In fact, I got "old growth" from the lobby of that building far more emotionally than I do from an Emily Carr. I understand they've since screwed with the lighting in there and ruined the effect - it's been twenty years since I was in there.

And that's not to mention the old Waterfall building which I never really looked at until it was under the knife, but his houses really are more works of art than his bigger buildings.

I had the good fortune due to friendship to spend time in Eppich house and really appreciated the unity of design due to the flow of made forms from inside out, and of landscape from outside in. I also got to walk around Smith house a few times, because I lived in the nieghbourhood, though I was never inside. It, too, demanded you stop your busy life to appreciate the beauty of the natural world as you moved through it within your built-form house. Like living in a rain forest or a terrarium, or a submarine in a tropical sea.

These houses speak to Erickson's abilities and imagination in the kind of "self---ishness" that's usually reserved for comtemplative Buddhist thought....

But in this so-called Age of Green......

....it would be energy efficient.

Besides, why can't function and form coalesce? The notion that function must look like warehouses would suggest that architects are pre-occupied with picayune grandiloquence.

GWest:
Erikson may be the greatest architect Canada has regurgitated, but it doesn't mean he's any good. I build custom ceramic tile showers for a living, and I am definitely required to combine form and function.
If I (as a peasant) can do this, surely the "greats" can do this as well.

Not necessarily - there's a difference

There's a difference between form and function and one doesn't always flow from the other.

I think good shower stalls are great - and the craftsmen who bring them into existence are important parts of the 'built' environment.

But, I think the whole is far more than the sum of its parts and I tend to define architecture in a different way. Buildings and the negative space between them, the roads and sidewalks, the streetscape and the built environment are all part of the architectural realm.

All these things can and do give meaning to life and human relationships - without ever going inside a building’s lobby, flushing a toilet or taking a shower.

Those things deserve to be well done - and it's sad when they're not and the technical means to realize a vision are not available, but taken all together, the sum of the technical and functional elements may never reach the level of 'architecture' at its best.

Frank Lloyd Wright put it this way:

"Architecture is that great living creative spirit which from generation to generation, from age to age, proceeds, persists, creates, according to the nature of man, and his circumstances as they change. That is really architecture."

Look how the Gothic Cathedral, the Roman Coliseum or the Parthenon each characterizes an age - but say nothing about the functions of day to day life.

Gothic Cathedral, the Roman Coliseum or the Parthenon

And we have leaky condos..........?

Not to diss Erikson (I couldn't begin to design the stuff he can), but the architectural trade in general today is completely incapable of designing (and bringing to completion)a "Parthenon". I would go so far to say that they prostitute themselves before the alter of filthy lucre -- although to fair, the cost accounting bean counters are always hovering nearby........

RickW

Not much I disagree with there...most big projects in North America are the product of Civil Engineers and Autocad.

The age of the heroic architect is probably over - as Daniel Liebeskind discovered in New York.

And those condos...I'm not sure the architects are actually to blame as much as poor building practice.

You might be interested in this lady's work though:

http://www.rocioromero.com/

This guy is kind of interesting too:

http://www.calatrava.com/

www.rocioromero.com/ One

http://www.rocioromero.com/
One step away from custom-designed modular construction. I like it - not to mention that something along these lines should be used for government offices, schools, and anywhere public money needs to be spent on accommodation.

I have little doubt that many calling themselves "architects" only do so because they can manipulate autocad -- much like interior decorators calling themselves interior designers.........the notion of bringing desert-oriented construction to one of the wettest places on earth (in the wintertimes) amply demonstrates this. The same people would insist on planting palm trees in the Arctic, then pointing at the gardeners when they succumbed to reality.

www.calatrava.com/
Kind of cool! (but not for PPP's.....)

Overall, government needs to understand the definition of the word "utilitarian", and leave "spectacular" to the private sector.