Douglas Todd: Are iconic buildings good or bad for Vancouver?

[SpongeG]

Douglas Todd: Are iconic buildings good or bad for Vancouver?

Opinion: Iconicism, once found in buildings that celebrated community, now more a feature of ‘hey, look at me’ marketing

DOUGLAS TODD Updated: August 22, 2019

The twisting 59-storey tower rising up next to Vancouver’s Granville Street Bridge — designed to look like it’s about to fall over — is what some call an “iconic” building.

Created by edgy Danish architect Bjarke Engels, the nearly finished luxury condominium and office tower stands out among downtown’s congested skyline of highrises, drawing debate and enticing buyers from around the world.

“Vancouver House” seems to be coming out of a tradition of historic, iconic architecture, which has given us the Taj Mahal in India, St Paul’s Cathedral in London and the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

You could also see more recent spectacular edifices as iconic, such as Singapore’s criss-cross “Chain Structure” apartments, Seville’s crustacean-like arts and science centre and Poland’s weirdly wavey “Drunk Hotel.” Not to mention Toronto’s once-avant-garde city hall.

What does it mean to be iconic? As Ray Spaxman, former chief planner for the City of Vancouver, tries to explain: “You either try to be iconic because you want to stand out, or you are iconic because you stand out.”

As chief of Vancouver’s planning department from 1973 to 1989, Spaxman ranks the white sailed roofs of Vancouver’s original waterfront convention centre belonging to the tradition of iconicism, in part because the sails have come to symbolize the city in a few million visitors’ photos.

Spaxman, 85, also puts in a word for the possibly iconic status of the main Vancouver Public Library (despite the way it looks Roman) and the Lions Gate Bridge, built in 1937.

The trouble these days, Spaxman said, is a lot of real-estate developers want their buildings, especially their high-rise condominium towers, to stand out mainly so they can better market them, particularly to wealthy people in foreign lands.

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https://vancouversun.com/opinion/col...-for-vancouver

[officedweller]

Iconicism and commercialism are not mutually exclusive.

The classic example of iconic Canadian buildings are any of the railway hotels (Chateau Frontenac, Royal York, The Empress, Hotel Vancouver) - and those were certainly built in the chateau style to impress travellers and aid in marketing to those travellers - much the same as current condos are marketed to purchasers.

(i.e. Spaxman's villification of commercialism seems biased against condo developers)

[Vin]

Originally Posted by SpongeG

Douglas Todd: Are iconic buildings good or bad for Vancouver?

Opinion: Iconicism, once found in buildings that celebrated community, now more a feature of ‘hey, look at me’ marketing

DOUGLAS TODD Updated: August 22, 2019

The twisting 59-storey tower rising up next to Vancouver’s Granville Street Bridge — designed to look like it’s about to fall over — is what some call an “iconic” building.

Created by edgy Danish architect Bjarke Engels, the nearly finished luxury condominium and office tower stands out among downtown’s congested skyline of highrises, drawing debate and enticing buyers from around the world.

“Vancouver House” seems to be coming out of a tradition of historic, iconic architecture, which has given us the Taj Mahal in India, St Paul’s Cathedral in London and the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

You could also see more recent spectacular edifices as iconic, such as Singapore’s criss-cross “Chain Structure” apartments, Seville’s crustacean-like arts and science centre and Poland’s weirdly wavey “Drunk Hotel.” Not to mention Toronto’s once-avant-garde city hall.

What does it mean to be iconic? As Ray Spaxman, former chief planner for the City of Vancouver, tries to explain: “You either try to be iconic because you want to stand out, or you are iconic because you stand out.”

As chief of Vancouver’s planning department from 1973 to 1989, Spaxman ranks the white sailed roofs of Vancouver’s original waterfront convention centre belonging to the tradition of iconicism, in part because the sails have come to symbolize the city in a few million visitors’ photos.

Spaxman, 85, also puts in a word for the possibly iconic status of the main Vancouver Public Library (despite the way it looks Roman) and the Lions Gate Bridge, built in 1937.

The trouble these days, Spaxman said, is a lot of real-estate developers want their buildings, especially their high-rise condominium towers, to stand out mainly so they can better market them, particularly to wealthy people in foreign lands.

...

https://vancouversun.com/opinion/col...-for-vancouver

I don't think that is the trouble at all: we all love the Trump hotel tower and Vancouver House. The trouble lies with the City and UDP that want everything to blend with each other, and not have anything that stands out. They don't want anything tall, or have darker colours, or feature interesting light displays, or "non-human" scale, etc. etc. The jealous NIMBYs are not helping either. People here are just satisfied to ride on the glories of yesterday. These, my friends, are the "trouble", and they prevent us from having the iconic structures of the yesteryears, when people here were more progressive and bold.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by Vin

I don't think that is the trouble at all: we all love the Trump hotel tower and Vancouver House. The trouble lies with the City and UDP that want everything to blend with each other, and not have anything that stands out. They don't want anything tall, or have darker colours, or feature interesting light displays, or "non-human" scale, etc. etc. The jealous NIMBYs are not helping either. People here are just satisfied to ride on the glories of yesterday. These, my friends, are the "trouble", and they prevent us from having the iconic structures of the yesteryears, when people here were more progressive and bold.

lol. Trump Tower is only interesting as a result of the viewcone policy you so despise. And Vancouver House only exists because the City Planner of the day introduced the architect to the developer.

And of course the City approved both towers, and Kengo Kuma's tower, and Shigeru Ban's tower, so your narrative seems a bit inaccurate.

[trofirhen]

Originally Posted by Vin

I don't think that is the trouble at all: we all love the Trump hotel tower and Vancouver House. The trouble lies with the City and UDP that want everything to blend with each other, and not have anything that stands out. They don't want anything tall, or have darker colours, or feature interesting light displays, or "non-human" scale, etc. etc. The jealous NIMBYs are not helping either. People here are just satisfied to ride on the glories of yesterday. These, my friends, are the "trouble", and they prevent us from having the iconic structures of the yesteryears, when people here were more progressive and bold.

Originally Posted by Changing City

lol. Trump Tower is only interesting as a result of the viewcone policy you so despise. And Vancouver House only exists because the City Planner of the day introduced the architect to the developer.

And of course the City approved both towers, and Kengo Kuma's tower, and Shigeru Ban's tower, so your narrative seems a bit inaccurate.

I think you both raise a good point. Vin, to me, seems to be stating that the UDP and the viewcones largely limit, or maybe "dumb down" potentially iconic buildings.
Hey, think of Vancouver back in the 1930s, when the Marine Building took the stage in then-small-colonial-outpost lumbering and shipping railway town Vancouver !!
The reactions to the now-tallest building in The British Empire, followed by the castle-like Hotel Vancouver in 1936. Icons of the city then, icons of the city now. Then a seemingly rather
mediocre period when a lot of 30-storeyish buildings, often the green glass type, or concrete blah, filled in spots to form the infamous "tabletop".
But that that's changing, as Changing City points out, with a crop of new, rather daring, buildings on the horizon. I think that if the city "does it right" with sites like Burrard and Georgia
-in the future, and the remainder of Georgia Street, and other parts not yet built out of the CBD and the West End, the city will still manage to turn out 'smartly dessed', so to speak.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by Changing City

lol. Trump Tower is only interesting as a result of the viewcone policy you so despise. And Vancouver House only exists because the City Planner of the day introduced the architect to the developer.

And of course the City approved both towers, and Kengo Kuma's tower, and Shigeru Ban's tower, so your narrative seems a bit inaccurate.

Yes, I wouldn't call Trump Tower iconic: twisting tower, everybody's got one.

[Migrant_Coconut]

(Voony's Blog, https://voony.wordpress.com/2012/10/...istory-part-1/)

British Columbia Centre, which would've been built on the Robson Square site. Progressive and bold? More like hideous. Let's not pretend that it's ONLY the viewcone policy and UDP that's giving us mediocre towers.

But Todd's got a point - when every skyscraper is "iconic," none of them are.