This morning I saw a construction crew (or, rather, a de-construction crew) tearing down the wall that separated the Georgia Street sidewalk from the Queen Elizabeth Plaza – truly one of the more dreary open spaces in the city, in part because of that wall.
As an expression of architectural modernism, the QE Plaza was a pretty good symbol: the design of the underground parking garage overrode any other priority. The plaza itself was really just a flat expanse to set off the modernist box, with its blank walls on two sides, in which to put the theatres.
Now there will be a set of stairs, rising from three to ten steps as the street descends, providing seamless and viewable access for those walking by. And the plaza itself will no doubt be refurbished – though I wasn’t able to find a rendering of the final result. We’ll soon see.
Hopefully when the Larwill Park site is redeveloped (Art Gallery or otherwise) the elevation difference (between Cambie and Beatty and along Dunsmuir and along Georgia) will be incorporated into the design to be sympathetic to pedestrains.
I always thought that corner where the media club is should house a small floor plate ~12-15 storey office tower. It wouldn’t need to infringe much into the plaza but would add some body heat into what is currently a dead zone.
One of the original schemes for the proposed civic centre complex was to have a pedestrian bridge from the theatre plaza across Georgia to a proposed sports facility or conference centre. It’s nice to see the wall come down.
What is interesting is that the civic centre idea is slowly coming into being 50+ years after it was first proposed, though more by accident than by design.