Designing for the world
Apr 24 2008
The Movers and Shapers exhibit celebrates the city’s creative groundswell
The term “Vancouverism,” defined by our much-touted ‘EcoDensity’ of thin glass towers rising from retail and townhome pedestals, has achieved an almost cult-like mystique in international architectural and urban-planning circles. Neighbourhoods in cities as disparate as San Diego, Dallas and Dubai are “Vancouverizing” like mad. In the case of the latter, False Creek has been painstakingly recreated in the desert, and the man behind this project, former Vancouver city planner Larry Beasley, has just been hired by Abu Dhabi in its quest to escape its “second-city” status in the United Arab Emirates. Because of its precise focus and specific mandate, Vancouverism has become our de facto calling card on the international design stage, to the exclusion of nearly everything else.
Of course, there exist certain hallmarks of West Coast design familiar to just about everyone — organic, simple, modern, sustainable, innovative — but these adjectives do little to differentiate our homegrown design aesthetic from that of, say, mid-century Scandinavia or the artisanal output of the American Craftsman movement of 100 years ago. The same determiners work equally well to describe works by Finnish “Father of Modernism” Alvar Aalto, the visionary Frank Lloyd Wright, and local architect/designer Omer Arbel. But comparing these is the equivalent of comparing apples to orangutans.
Is the city’s design community suffering without the benefits of a clear credo, or is this hodgepodge of ecologically responsible modernity an actual movement in and of itself?
“Vancouver is a blank canvas,” says Jane Cox, creative director of local multi-disciplinary design studio Cause+Affect, and co-curator of the upcoming Movers and Shapers exhibit at Vancouver Museum. “Until relatively recently, it hasn’t been a city that is design savvy, being all about lifestyle.
“Look at all the towers in town,” she continues, referencing Vancouver’s architectural trademark. “They all look the same because it’s safe.”
That resistance to change is also felt, according to Cox, by members of the design community.
“The problem many designers face here is the public doesn’t know what [local designers] are doing, and clients aren’t demanding things that are as creative as the designer might want to create, so the design community tends to be very insular. But this is a young city, so there is a curiosity and interest in design and opportunities to create cultural events like this exhibit.”
Launched at the Vancouver Home Show in 2004, Movers and Shapers gathers together 10 local designers from a variety of disciplines to celebrate the creative spark found in the city. In its latest incarnation, Movers and Shapers will highlight the work of 20 designers from the worlds of architecture, fashion, graphic, product, furniture, interior, and interactive design. The work of some will be instantly recognizable to many Vancouverites — even those with a minimal interest in design.
Take, for example, Bricault Design, whose modernist architectural and product design work will be familiar to anyone who has dined at Vikram Vij’s lunch and takeaway spot, Rangoli, or unwrapped a handmade chocolate bar by North Shore chocolatier Thomas Haas. Or take BattersbyHowat, the architects behind the ultramodern strata block at 2386 Cornwall in Kits, and owners and operators of one of the city’s most exquisitely designed watering holes, 1181.
Also in the exhibit is the aforementioned Omer Arbel whose award-winning Bocci lighting fixtures help light up the city skyline in the penthouse turret of the 1000 Beach complex (as well as in the Hotel Alexandria in Barcelona). Red Flag Design, whose award-winning bags are made of reclaimed materials like sail cloth and construction banners, and Molo, whose revolutionary space divider, the “soft wall,” is part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
http://www.westender.com/portals-cod...1201858&more=0
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