I overlooked one major issue in my previous note that will prevent some of the potentially best informed people from helping us solve what I am calling “The Telus Case”. While, in a later note, I will go further into what best equips people to discuss urban planning and especially urban design, we may not have the benefit of a good debate involving architects.
Architecture is the profession which you might believe is most likely to be equipped through their arduous training and experience to help us deal with issues of building a city. Yet the profession is very sensitive about allowing architects to criticise colleagues’ products. It came home to me quite forcibly, many years ago, when a good friend of mine, an eminent architect, inadvertently criticised a building in town when being interviewed about what he thought about architecture in Vancouver. He was reprimanded by the professional institute after the project architect complained. So, while architects will talk about good and bad design principles, they will understandably avoid referencing specific buildings.
I believe the only publishable comments I shall get about the Telus Case from architects will be from those who have something positive to say about it. The Telus building has been designed by one of the most accomplished and respected architectural firms in the city so it is not difficult to find positive things to say about it.
In a similar vein, it might also be difficult to obtain much comment from the development community for they also will be circumspect about criticising a new building involving their colleagues.
Perhaps we will have to leave the Telus Building challenge alone and instead discuss the issues it has raised. I wish I had more time to research the history of the rezoning process that led to this building, but in my quick search of the city’s website, I could not find that information. (Thanks to “guest,” here’s the Development Permit Board Staff Committee report for the Complete Application: 520 West Georgia.)
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Here are some of the issues it has raised:
Is it acceptable to you that the public realm, such as the public street right of ways, that accommodate our main municipal services, provide access for commercial, transit and private vehicles and people moving to and from a variety of destinations, provide space between increasingly dense building forms, and sun light and air circulation, and provide visual connections so we can recognise where we are and what is around us when we are in the public realm, and sometimes longer views of water or mountains – be interrupted by private development?- Is it a good precedent that has now been established by the City that any developer can ask the city to expand his development footprint to include the public realm? Presumably fairness in public policy would now be a consideration?
- Does the city have publicly discussed policies or guidelines that will guide the future use of street overhangs?
- Is it reasonable for other owners on Richards and Seymour, and perhaps other streets, to seek projections over the street?
- What price did the City establish for the air rights on Seymour and Richards? Perhaps these two major projections are for community use?
- What say or rights aught adjacent neighbours to have when the public right of way they share in law is utilised in this way?
- Are continuous street frontages a valuable characteristic of our enjoyment of the city?
- Just as the highest stand-out building in town aught to express some special community function and pride, should similar criteria be set for buildings that stick out into the street? What sort of criteria would that be? Perhaps the City in anticipation of this issue already developed such criteria?
- In our city, especially with its special climate, what consideration should be given to encroachments on access to sun and daylight?
- Ten issues should be enough to continue the discussion,. So the tenth one is one I have raised before. This is another of the increasingly ubiquitous Comprehensive Development zones. They are created to vary the normal zoning provisions on a site to establish much higher densities for the developer and significant Community Amenity Contributions to the city. Do we know where the next one will occur. Is there a policy that proposes where they would be so that everyone knows what to expect? Do we know what criteria is used to assess them?
The developer I discussed Telus with last week said, “Mmm, can we have that?”
All very good questions. There is no compelling reason that Westbank should have been allowed to build the boxes into the public realm. What kind of benefit does the public get from it?
Do we know what uses will be allowed in the overhang? To me this is am important factor that needs to be considered before forming an opinion on the issues raised here.
If the overhang can be used as additional rentable office space then of course this is setting a precedent that other developers will try to take advantage of. If the overhang is limited to being an architectural feature, or a space that can be used by the general public, then I don’t see this as a precedent that many developers will be interested in.
Keep in mind that there already is a projection over Seymour street less than a block away from this location.
https://www.google.ca/maps/@49.2821372,-123.1167034,3a,75y,63.68h,91.35t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1s8ZIYw-1gxSCDRrsxG1nGJg!2e0
7. Are continuous street frontages a valuable characteristic of our enjoyment of the city?
On their own, no, I don’t believe so. I don’t believe it should be a rule that all streets be free of projections because they are somehow inherently distasteful. Some neighbourhoods can have certain design features, and others could have different ones. To force all areas of a city to conform to the same aesthetic does not increase one’s enjoyment of a city. Indeed, I would argue that diversity and contrast between one neighbourhood and another INCREASES our enjoyment. Gastown looks and feels different than the business district, Kerrisdale different from the Westend, Main St different from Yaletown (for now). Projections could be what makes a part of the city unique, where the strict grid gives way to a more fluid, give-and-take environment.
Totally agree. While I respect Ray’s comments, in my opinion this commentary which is shared by many, may shed some light on why so many people from outside of Vancouver find it conservative and somewhat boring.
I sense that the issue with this project is that ideas about architecture and urban environments are not always scalable. Project approvals are based on tiny models which we tower over while listening to “design rationale” that purports to account for things which will soon happen at full scale in the context of the city. The element under discussion has been described through the approval process as a sky garden, horizontal office extrusion, cantilevered space, penetration of the bar through the building and so forth. This is language suitable for a discussion around a tiny model, but does it account for the experience of the real thing?
Architecture is a plastic art, sculptural in nature and perceived through the senses. The language of sensation is quite different than the cerebral language of design rationale spoken around tiny models. Sensation is visceral in nature and for some pedestrians Seymour Street at the Georgia corner has become a claustrophobic environment. At full scale the project does not live up to the rhetoric that gained its approval. Not all ideas are scalable.
Reblogged this on Rob Nordrum and commented:
I share many of Gordon Price’s concerns with the new Telus building. Personally I don’t think the overhanging box should have been approved. Public places include the space above them in my opinion.
Westbank has another project in progress that also has overhangs: Vancouver House.