View from Vancouver: Vancouver on Canada's West Coast is currently experiencing a housing boom, but numerous other infrastuctural, cultural and community projects are also making their mark on the city

Architectural Review, The, Dec, 2001

Vancouver is in the midst of a new housing rush in the city centre. The last rush to downtown Vancouver was the rebuilding of the West End during the '60s. During the last decade, Vancouver planning department has been leading the charge to develop a city centre that is livable, beautiful, vital, humane and sustainable. Most of their strategies appear to be working. The planning and rebuilding of the Expo 86 Fair site on the North Shore of False Creek jump-started the resettling of the Downtown Peninsula. Yale Town and Coal Harbour followed. East False Creek and Downtown South are under way. Southeast False Creek and False Creek Flats are currently being planned. The planning projections call for an additional 54 000 people moving into Downtown Vancouver. More than 30 000 already have.

Most housing is in small footprint towers with three- and four-storey townhouse bases. Retail street areas have become more concentrated. A planning policy of assuring public pedestrian walkways directly associated with the water's edge has resulted in a continuous seawall walk of 20km. All those planning platitudes extolling an 'alive downtown with eyes on the Street and accessible, walkable, neighbourhoods' are growing before our eyes. It feels good. The city is being revitalized. Projects such as The Residences on Georgia, by Jim Chang and Associates, The Roundhouse Community Centre by Baker McGarva Hart, The Coal Harbour Community Centre by Henriquez & Partners and related Waterfront Walkways have upped the dialogue in our building and landscape design communities.

Before I introduce the major regional transportation construction project, The Millennium Line, I must tell you that we have just finished an unpopular four month long transit strike. The Provincial Government finally brought it to a legislated end and the buses and SeaBuses are moving again. SeaBuses are marvellous, not as design objects, but certainly as pedestrian ferries that link the downtown with North Vancouver across the Vancouver Harbour. We need more of them, And I love the little baby ferries around Granville Island.

The Millennium Line is currently under construction, with stations due to open this month. It is the continuation of the existing SkyTrain line, again, a legacy of Expo 86.

SkyTrain is an elevated track LRT system. The ambitiously conceived new Millennium Line is 17km long with 11 passenger stations. It will link two points on the existing line, starting at the Commercial Drive/Broadway intersection, looping north, then east through Burnaby and Coquitlam to its New Westminister-Surrey connection.

Vancouver architects were given leading roles in the design of the neighbourhood stations. The design process involved public consultation and the key issues were security, creating a warmer and more welcoming atmosphere and responding to local context. All stations were designed to a standard functional template but specific site and local community concerns were translated into making each station unique. Several stations have roof structures constructed in heavy timber, uncommon for this building type. The results look promising. Early favourites in the station race are the Rupert Street Station by Baker McGarva Hart and the Brent-wood station by Busby Associates. Soon, commuters will begin to actively use the line and the public favourites will emerge.

The Goal Harbour Community Centre was built for Marathon Realty, the developer of the Coal Harbour area, as a required public amenity. It is a beautiful bit of communal planning and architecture. The concrete building is buried into the slope of the land, opening with a glazed wall adjacent to the waterfront walkway. Its roofscape is a wonderful public garden and playground with this submarine' light tower rising through it. Its diagonal juxtaposition with the landscaped elevation of the Evergreen Building by Arthur Erickson is sublime.

The career of Arthur Erickson, the eminence grise of the Vancouver School is having a renaissance as of late. Recently completed is the Liu Centre for the Study of Global Issues at UBC designed by Arthur Erickson with Noel Best of Architectura. It serves as an international policy research centre and teaching facility. The building includes conference spaces and offices and is set in a dramatic wooded site near the Nitobe Gardens. Its sustainable design strategies include natural ventilation and the use of significant quantities of local and salvaged materials. The Lui Centre won a 2001 AIBC Merit Award. At the award ceremony, Arthur shocked the assembled audience with his criticism of architecture patronage, '... no one is willing to pay for the most important parts of architecture. Value engineering continuously strips out important detailing'.

The Waterfall Building, designed by Arthur Erickson and Nick Milkovich Architects, is 39 artist lofts and 11 street level retail units. It is a cast concrete building, quite unsentimental and stripped down in its material usage and detailing. The building is a rectangular doughnut of housing with its centre a landscaped court. Its sensory treat is a horizontal waterfall that falls as a water curtain under the Entrance Bridge. In the central courtyard, you are connected to the street by a large rectangular framed opening, but the waterfall provides for a startling but soothing visual and auditory break.