An easy choice: This shot by Ken Ohrn, who found himself along with a wedding party on this scenic stretch of Hornby near the Courthouse. Says Ken: “Many thanks to the City of Vancouver for creating this beautiful space in the middle of the city.”
.
.
It is Cornelia Oberlander, the landscape architect working with Arthur Erickson on the courthouse design that should be credited for the allee of maple trees. The City was dead against the allee, citing the trees being too close together, and all the same species.
Cornelia is an internationally recognized landscape architect and has watched and insured the allee remained as the City changed the street over time.
True, it has been a fight between the city and the architect on those trees…but
-The maple trees (acer rubrum), have been imposed by the city against the wish of the architect (london plane).
-furthermore, If you read the architect’s intentions of the time: Both Howe and Hornby side of the block 61-71 was not designed to be pedestrain friendly, and this could be an understatement
(pedestrian was supposed to stay either on the shopping side of those streets, or circulate in the middle of the block 61-71…Howe is full of access Ramp to parkings, Hornby a bit less, because it was supposed to be a rapid transit to run underground there)
More here, http://voony.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/vancouver-courthouse-blocks-51-61-71-the-final-erickson-proposal/
Notice the photo of the maquette doesn’t show a double row of tree on the Hornby side of block 61.
This become really the beloved “allee” (a nice definition) as we know now, only with the introduction of the separated bike lane on Hornby: which has replaced a lane of parked car, making the space less confined and still intimate enough (a kind of urban retreat)
so, it could be not intentional, but yes, along Cornelia, the city, at different stage, deserve credit for what we see in the picture
Voony – thanks for this insight into the original intentions of the architect, to actually not make those frontages pedestrian-friendly. An undertatement for sure. Dead, is more like it.