Produced by Saba Farmand and Paul Albi, “Surroundings” is a video series that tells the stories behind some of Metro Vancouver’s well-known public places from the perspectives of the landscape architects who designed them.
Episode 2 features Jeff Cutler and Mark van der Zalm and focuses on park design and creating play spaces for everyone to enjoy. This episode looks at two separate sites: Garden City Park in Richmond and the Vancouver Skate Plaza underneath the Georgia Viaduct in downtown Vancouver.
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I didn’t realize that the skate-board park was built to be temporary, and only had a two-year lease for the site under the viaduct. It’s ten years later and now permanent. Easy guess: it won’t be going away even if the viaducts come down.
Fun Fact: a railing in the park duplicates the one at the CIBC Building on Burrard (below) – considered by skaters to be a ‘perfect rail.’ They came from around North America to be photographed skating on the rail before it was capped. Now they can come here.
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