More new lighting on Robson – but this time from below, at 545 Robson.
These glass sidewalks are a contemporary reference to ‘vault lights’ that used to illuminate the areaways underneath – a tradition that goes back to the founding of the city.
Vanalogue tells the story in “Sidewalk prisms of Vancouver,” referencing a a ‘Heritage Vancouver’ newsletter from 1999:
Justine Murdy explains that since Vancouver’s incorporation in 1886, property owners in the downtown area ( i.e. The CBD, Gastown, Chinatown) were charged “taxes for sidewalks that aligned their lots, even though using the space above the sidewalk wasn’t permitted”.
Some property owners took advantage of this and decided to use the spaces below the sidewalks to expand their basement space. Murdy explains that “by paying a minimal encroachment fee to the City, basements could be extended into the area under the sidewalk” past the building wall up to the street wall.
By the time areaways came into use in Vancouver, many other cities in North America and the UK were already using glass prisms to safely illuminate these spaces. The idea of lighting otherwise dark and dank areas with “pure, healthful, white light from wall to wall” was very appealing in the Victorian and Edwardian eras.
Eventually the City made them illegal and over time required the areaways to be filled in. Safety argument, no doubt.
But when Woodward’s was being redeveloped, Jim Green made the case, with support from the heritage community, to allow for their replacement. (At least I think that’s the story. Maybe John Atkin or others can correct or provide more detail.)
In any event, it’s nice to see this contemporary interpretation: green light in a grey city.
I believe this is part of the redevelopment of the Telus block. There are more sidewalk lights the Georgia Street side under the entry canopy arch which house the office of Henriques Partners Architects directly below. They designed the complex, and obviously have enough confidence to work in one of their own projects. The Telus complex uses the waste heat from the thousands of km of communications and power conductors that converge on the site to heat the building.
Another interesting factoid: when the apartments went on sale over 400 were sold to Telus employees. Talk about a short commute.
Of interest, the office of Birmingham & Wood was similarly located under the sidewalk fronting the ‘narrowest building in the world’, a heritage wood frame structure located on the SW corner of Pender x Carrall. The old sidewalk prisms were present for probably well over a half century, but are now gone along with the firm. Some here will remember Bud Wood, the dearly departed former icon of the UBC School of Architecture.
Telus employees were offered a special discount on the condo prices.
Those sidewalk lights at Telus Garden are awful at night – they are too bright and people walking on the sidewalk avoid the glass for because of the blinding glare.
In the rain, people avoid the glass for fear of slipping (although those who have walked over it before know it is coated to be grippy (but not everyone knows that, and combined with the obstruction created by the nearby public toilet, that creates dodging, etc. in the area).
There’s also water seepage into the panels, as you can see condensation adhering to the underside of the glass.
The commercial space above is now an accounting office for a company named Bench. The lighted sidewalk may have made sense if the entrance were for retail space, but not offices. 2 levels of retail (on top of at-grade retail) were nixed (in a re-application) after the initial zoning approval and replaced with office use (so much for international retailers looking for large format space downtown).
The architect Joe Wai designed backlit glass panels, constructed by Joel Berman, for the sidewalk outside the renovated building that bacame the Skwachàys Lodge on Pender.
For some reason they have recently fenced the panels off. Perhaps people were slipping.
https://tinyurl.com/lrzgtxx