P4A

The next instalment of Party For Architects is slated for September 26th. Vancouver Special is hosting and Campos Leckie Studio will be in attendance as special guests.

See Trevor Boddy's insightful article for a primer on Campos Leckie's residential work in Mexico.

Telling Details of Clifford Wiens

Just came across this volume on Clifford Wiens at the Charles H. Scott Gallery bookstore on Granville Island. It's the companion piece to an exhibition on Wiens that toured various galleries across the country in 2006-2007, including the Charles H. Scott.

I unfortunately missed the show on this important prairie modernist but the book covers his work from 1955-1995 and includes residences, offices and industrial and religious projects.

Wiens is perhaps best known for his Heating + Cooling Plant (1967, above) at the University of Regina and the Silton Summer Chapel (1969, below) in Saskatchewan. The former is an expressive work that goes well beyond the often perfunctory nature of industrial buildings and features board-marked concrete beams and a unique removable endwall glass curtain. As the architect himself comments, it is "a concrete temple to technology."

The chapel is a lesson in the strength of perceived simplicity: an open air structure, supported by glulams and tension rods that transfer forces up through the centre rather than at the corners. It's a beautiful re-imagining of religious space that maintains an essential connection to the natural world.

Telling Details is published by the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon (kudos for mounting an architectural-based exhibit) and was curated by Trevor Boddy. It includes essays by Mendel Director Vincent Varga and Clifford Wiens, who discusses the deep impact a prairie upbringing had on his architecture.

Though there are a surprising number of errata in the book, the photographs are lovely and it's nice to have something on Wiens; his work seems to have flown under the radar, likely because of its prairie setting. But it's important work and makes me wish for an expanded volume that more fully explores the subject, especially for those who missed the original exhibition.

Photographs: Clifford Wiens

Boddy and the Globe

Whither Trevor Boddy in the Real Estate section of the Globe and Mail?

The Boddy-curated Vancouverism exhibition opens in Paris this week (after a summer run in London) but let's hope for a return to the ink-stained pages of the national daily. The Kelly Deck decorating feature doesn't carry quite the same bite.

In the meantime, check out Timothy Taylor's illuminating bi-weekly feature on urban issues and life in the city here.

The Changing City

In a recent article in The Globe and Mail's weekly Real Estate section, Trevor Boddy makes a case for Vancouver's creative class being pushed out of the city due to recent development and increasing cost of living. Vancouver's East side and parts of the downtown peninsula have traditionally served as locales for cheap rents, supporting studios and arts spaces, however as the development boom pushes east, those buildings are quickly being razed or repurposed.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080314.re-boddy-0314/BNStory/RealEstate/

The same day the above article was published, CBC Radio One's Sounds Like Canada ran a report on Vancouver's density bonus program that provided insight into how the city is being radically reshaped. CBC Producer Theresa Lalonde focused on the plight of the Homer Cafe which is due to be closed and redeveloped as part of the 'last true Yaletown address' named "The Beasley" - a tribute to Vancouver's former Director of Planning.

As part of the density bonus program, the facade of The Homer building is to be retained while the rest is subsumed into the greater development. The report touches on the issues of the loss of greasy spoons such as The Homer Cafe (and their under-appreciated contribution to the city's fabric), the relationship between developers and the city, as well as the complexity of heritage preservation in a city in the throes of a building boom.

http://www.cbc.ca/radioshows/SOUNDS_LIKE_CANADA/20080314.shtml