D. Volk makes a visually persuasive case that the new addition to the 500-block Beatty Street is not entirely an aesthetic success, at least as seen from the Sun Tower:
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The view of that shear wall from the street is only slightly better:
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So what to do? Ivy? A mural of leaping orcas?
We can do better. How about it, PT readers – your suggestions?
When the adjoining building adds a few more storeys like the rest of the block to the south, the end wall will no longer be visible. That allowable height, BTW, is 100 ft., roughly that of the Sun Tower’s base.
My thoughts exactly, but since Chambar is below, and there are no signs of construction starting, something a wee bit less grey concrete might have been nice.
Agreed – AND… Chambar is moving into the new building:
http://www.straight.com/food/505511/chambar-restaurant-move-2014
Problem solved and old building potentially available to be redeveloped…
PS – its people trying to avoid an “ugly blank wall” that, in years to come create may legal headaches because someone wants to build “in front of my view”. i.e. Jameson House.
It used to be that owners of mid-block sites were accepting of their location and had two blank walls ready to accept a neighbouring wall – or alternatively, had light wells (like the Vancouver Block downtown) also ready to accept a neighbouring wall.
Great blog! However, seven (7) e-mails in one day is too much! Once a week should be sufficient. Do others agree?
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I think you probably mean “sheer” wall rather then “shear” wall
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Um, no actually, I don’t. Could Google be wrong?
Depends what you find with Google. There is such a thing as a shear wall – and this might be one of them I suppose. http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-a-shear-wall.htm seems to suggest that they are interior walls but I am no structural engineer and had not heard the term before. What it looks like is the problem – a blank wall without windows, but that may be structurally essential in this building
This could very well be a sheer wall and a shear wall. It is flat and unadorned, but it also might resist shear forces (which in this case is a sideways force that would tend to parallelogram the columns). The shear walls of most buildings these days are around the elevator core, but they don’t have to be there.
New mural location for the cities Graffiti Management Program? There’s enough plain concrete downtown already…
Shear wall is the correct term for structural walls, as opposed to “sheer”, i.e., steep or vertical ones. Both terms of which apply here, it seems.