Renowned landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander is now in her mid-nineties – and so able to appreciate her earlier work as it, like her, has matured. Here’s one of her best-known achievements: the landscape design for Erickson’s Robson Square:
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It’s as good as the modernist utopian renderings might have originally suggested:
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And while Robson Square might have its issues, don’t forget what proceeded it:
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And what might have been developed if the Social Credit government for W.A.C. Bennett had been able to proceed with the tallest tower in Canada at that time:
As the stepped and un-populated picture attests the area is typically what Vancouver does best which is park-like hide-away spaces. We need a simple, large and traditional open square where people gather and improvise. Large please say between Howe and Hornby just put the law offices underground with the rink, etc.
Cornelia Oberlander’s personal story is as interesting if not more so than her work. She was one of several Jewish children on a train who narrowly escaped the Nazis in the 1930s after Kristallnaght. If I have this correct, most of her family did not make it.
The stepped terraces are, in practice, widely used every day the sun comes out. One of the finest prospects is from the second level café terrace. One could easily surmise it was a lost opportunity to not have closed Robson Street and create a public square, but at the time no one gave Arthur Erickson the mandate to do so, and if he did propose it, the idea was obviously rejected.
Now his former business partner, Nick Milkovich, has designed a square on the Georgia Street side. It appears to be well programmed for both events and leisure.
http://www.vancitybuzz.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/vancouver-art-gallery-west-georgia-plaza-1-984×500.jpg
Funny. Last time I climbed up on to the raised area on the corner of Hornby and Robson it was swarming with flies and smelled strongly of feces. It was obvious that the screen of shrubbery on hill was providing a convenient absence of ‘eyes on the street’ leading to the are street-folk to be using it as an outdoor lavatory.
I have to agree – part of the design works well and then there is the part that is a CPTED nightmare that no one ever seems to critique. I once ventured up the garden path stairs (in the company of another person because I wouldn’t go up alone) and found people in bushes doing questionable things. I haven’t been up that way since.
Good details…times and priorities change and hopefully the work of Nick Milkovich provides the kind of public space that is needed.
Can you provide any more information on that “before” shot of Robson Square? What year was that taken? Where is the photo from?
That is a very powerful image and I’d like to be able to refer to it.
Thank you.
Interesting – what goes around comes around in design.
The one storey perimeter building proposed for Herzog & de Meuron’s new VAG looks a lot like the one storey perimeter building around WAC Bennett’s courthouse tower (though the courtyard at the courthouse tower would have been larger)
https://postmediavancouversun.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/img_1672.jpg?w=437&h=583
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showpost.php?p=7393143&postcount=1358
The sketch of the provincial proposal was the initial one circa 1965, and it is unclear if that has been much further than the sketch stage. In 1972, the Provincial proposal have evolved into that:
https://voony.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/robson_section_proposal5.jpg
(at the time, the city commended the tower but objected it was not nearly enough parking!)
You can notice the Province proposal of the time doesn’t extend south of Smithe: the block south of Smithe was then expected to become a “central park”.
the picture showing the parking lots is a screen capture of a documentary short titled “chairs for lovers”, and represents the state of the area circa 1973. (after most of all the blocks have been cleared for future construction of the Court house)
To answer to MB: In the mind of Erickson, he was thinking he had created a public square on; or rather under; robson street…
Regarding Robson street itself, his take,, as stated in its 1974 submission, was that The only traffic through the square will be inner city buses, linking the Westend and False Creek. Since buses function as people movers, they are seen as a compliment or enhancement to the pedestrian activity of the civic square,
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More detail on all that here: https://voony.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/block-51-the-north-plaza/ (which include that link on other Robson sqaure and court house history…
Thanks for the history, Voony.
There’s also this plan from the City Archives circa 1960, showing Robson St. and Georgia St. traffic in underpasses, with pedestrian plazas above.
https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1720/26123428915_a8b3d0bed5_k.jpg
https://www.flickr.com/photos/vancouver-archives/26123428915/
It’s great to see that the old original plans have been archived. Just makes me appreciate Robson Square more, except for the CPTED issues mentioned above. Overall, it’s a success, but an imperfect one.