Browsing “Architecture”

We’re knocking on doors and taking a look around peoples’ homes to see where your neighbours relax, hang out with their pets, and create! It’s an invitation to snoop, but we’re staying away from their medicine cabinets. Photos: ayeeloy604@gmail.com | @art3fact

Our Host: Gina Rossi and Steve Wood

Whose that? Gina is a realtor and Steve is a communications coordinator

Beverage Offered: Chai Rooibos Tea

Where do you live?

Steve-We live by Oakridge in an old 1950s vintage penthouse, built by one of Vancouver’s first architects who did “New Formalism”. This is one of the first apartment high-rises in the city. It’s kind of a form of modernism. It’s the same guy that did the planetarium; Gerald Hamilton. He designed the planetarium and the really cool Greek Orthodox church on Arbutus Street. He also did a lot of towers and office buildings downtown.He’s like the first guy to bring the modern style into Vancouver.

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

Today on Illustrated Vancouver I present to you, A Souvenir of Vancouver, BC, on glorious printed silk. I have posted souvenir plates before, but I have to admit I’m even more captivated seeing this type of artwork printed on fabric. In fact, it’s given me a thought. I’ve only featured textile arts once in the past with this piece called Slocan Park by Culture Crawl artist Bettina Matzkuhn. Frankly, and I’d like to see more folk art on fabric dedicated to the city, so I’m throwing down a challenge.

Anyone who submits a handmade DIY fabric inspired work of art to Illustrated Vancouver by JUNE 30th, 2012 is entered to WIN this vintage silk pillowcase! Note you don’t need to surrender your handmade craft to win – just send a picture of the artwork. Whether it’s knit, needlepoint, crochet, cross stitch, or fabric collage, all are eligible as long as there is some sort of depiction of the city of Vancouver. There are no age limits for either entrant or entries. I have elected DiYVR ambassador Kim Werker and VIAwesome president and editor-in-chief Bob Kronbauer to act as the official judges (provided we have more than one entry!). Shortlisted works will be featured here on VIAwesome, and the grand prize winner gets to take the pillowcase home!

Closeup of City Hall resembles a scene from a comic book; I can totally imagine Tintin blazing onto the scene!

Back to the pillowcase itself, I’m having a hard time accurately dating this piece, but I have a hunch or two.

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

As we make our way towards the end of 2011 I’m finding myself thinking back about all of the anniversaries and birthdays that took place and which we shared with you here on our blog over the past 12 months. BC Parks turning 100 years old, our city turning 125, MacLures Cabs turning 100, the Canucks turning 40, EXPO 86 and the 25 year lookback party that we threw at Science World in celebration, Rick Hansen’s 25th Anniversary Relay and CBC celebrating their 75th year as Canada’s public broadcaster.

Wow. That’s a lot of candles on a lot of cakes.

Also celebrating an anniversary in 2011 are the Pan Pacific Vancouver and Canada Place which were constructed in 1986 and opened for EXPO 86. To mark the end of this year I’m sharing with you this incredibly 80′s-feeling-and-looking-and-sounding documentary concerning the building of them.

Video sourced from Rishad Daroowala’s Room With a View blog.

Illustrations by Bob McIlhargey and Lori Brown, pre-Expo 86.

Concept renderings of the Expo 86 site speculating on redevelopment of the land before Expo had even been built. As I mentioned previously on Illustrated Vancouver, architectural illustrator Bob McIlhargey, along with his wife and associate Lori Brown were largely responsible for much of the concept rendering work commissioned for Expo 86 from 1982-86.

I’m told by Lori this was one of two enormous “8 foot long” isometric drawings all drawn by hand, the other drawing featuring the entire Expo grounds. They were drawn prior to the site being purchased by Li Ka-shing and taken over by Concord Pacific.

Since Bob passed away in 1998, Lori Brown has continued working in architectural illustration, using both traditional and computer assisted tools; she has also taught illustration at Kwantlen University. Bob’s lifetime body of work deserves much more attention than one or two posts could achieve; I hope to show more of this work in the future.

The Capilano Weather Beacon, before the Capilano Brewery was purchased and became property of Molson. This handy card seen below explains how to forecast the weather based on a series of colour codes and illuminated trends. The Canada Life building in Toronto has a similar weather beacon which according to Wikipedia, was the first of its kind to appear in Canada (installed on August 9, 1951) and was built at a cost of CAD$25,000. The Capilano Weather Beacon was a large neon sign which was installed in the spring of 1953 when the Sicks’ Capilano Brewery facility in Vancouver was built. The VPL has a great series of cake cutting photos from April 28, 1953, with a scale model of the building alongside a cake in the shape of the building. These negatives have not yet been scanned and prints are not yet available, so we may see those at a later point in time.

A promotional advertising card from Sicks’ Capilano Brewery, probably circulated until 1958 when the brewery was purchased by Molson.

The “6″ perched atop the weather beacon represented the six Western Canadian breweries once operated by Sicks’ Breweries Ltd. I dug into the Google News archive to retrieve this announcement in the Calgary Herald from August 5, 1944, which outlines who those six breweries were: Sicks’ Breweries (Alberta) Limited, Sicks’ Capilano Brewery Limited, Sicks’ Edmonton Brewery Limited, Sicks’ Lethbridge Brewery Limited, Sicks’ Prince Albert Brewery Limited, and Sicks’ …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

Last weekend I had the pleasure of taking the Vancouver125 Public Art and Murals bike tour, celebrating mural artworks created for Vancouver’s 125th anniversary and through the Great Beginnings program. Richard Tetrault was present to give an in-depth look at the enormous mural on Hastings Street, Through the Eye of the Raven, and I was able to feature preliminary renderings last week at IllustratedVancouver.ca.

I now have an audio excerpt from the tour posted here, where Richard goes into great depth describing the epic mural on the side of the Orwell Hotel (click for video from vancouvermurals.ca). On the tour, I also learned that Richard was taught by Orville Fisher, a significant Vancouver artist and muralist featured previously on Illustrated Vancouver.

We ended the bicycle tour at the new community mural River of Crows (the McLean Drive Mural Project) which was completed on July 19, 2011 (click for River of Crows video by W2TV). On the tour, we learned that the City of Vancouver is developing a new website to showcase the murals at vancouvermurals.ca (currently forwarding to the development site, muralsvancouver.ca). I believe this is a profoundly important initiative, as the study of mural art often is often not given the attention and respect it deserves.

A case in point: I recently read an essay about street art in San Francisco in the book Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-1978. Specifically, the essay covers the Mujeres Muralistas, a group of Chicana/Latina artists in the Mission District that pioneered large-scale, woman-painted outdoor murals. Many of their murals have been lost to history as a result of poor stewardship, redevelopment, vandalism, and the outdoor elements, all of which are constant threats to the temporal medium of the art form.

Murals may come and go, but photography can help to preserve their memory. Aided by an online image search, I recently came across one such lost mural of Vancouver I’d like to spotlight here.

Photograph by Luis Curran, at the end of Chilco Street between Alberni and W. Georgia Streets.

This idyllic view of Stanley Park was painted on the side of the Chapel at Stanley Park, at the end of Chilco Street between Alberni and W. Georgia Streets. This text description accompanied Luis Curran’s photograph, believed to be taken on November 6, 2005:

This mural was originally commissioned by the architect to answer the complaints of those who thought views of Stanley Park would be destroyed by his building on the corner. A new building has since been built right next to it so, inevitably, the mural is now lost!

I actually don’t even recall seeing this mural in person, as 2005 was the first full year I spent in the city. Clearly, I should have been spending more time photographing in and around Stanley Park!

Photographer unknown, from the website of RE/MAX Crest Realty (Westside)

This second image shows a nearly empty city block, except for the chapel with its five storey mural perched on the edge of Stanley Park. I’m guessing the date of this photograph is circa 2001? Since I don’t know who the artist of the mural was, or even who the architect of the chapel was for that matter, I welcome feedback in the comments. With your help, perhaps we can fill in some of the details of this lost city mural.

UPDATE! Thanks to a comment from our readers, the artist has been identified as Dana Irving, and the mural was titled Stanley Lodge. About the mural, Dana writes:

I did the painting in 1995. At the time, the architect – Ernest Collins was doing a lot of homes and buildings for prominent clients here in Vancouver. I quite often painted for these clients, Stanley Ho being one of them. The mural was something of an afterthought as the building was getting bad press for blocking the beloved view into Stanley Park and Lost Lagoon. Stanley Ho thought painting a picture with the essence of the missing view might help. It was known from the beginning that future development might impede the view of it. The mural lasted about 10 years…It was an exciting project at the time and the payment was equally exciting so it’s all good. A friend of mine put it this way…it’s now in a time capsule.

Big thanks go to Mike for the comment below, and Dana for filling in additional source details about the work! Much appreciated by all those who appreciate murals of the city!

UPDATE #2! I’ve just received a rare gallery of photos of the chapel and vicinity just before the reconstruction of the Stanley Park S curve, thanks to Vancouverite David Fletcher, who also happens to be featured on Illustrated Vancouver. He took these photos on February 23, 2003. See the photos after the jump…
…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

You may have heard recently that the City of Vancouver launched an ideas competition to brainstorm future possibilities for the Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts and the False Creek flats, named re:CONNECT.

The competition is divided into three categories. The first, Connecting the Core (“THE BIG SCALE”), seeks high-level ideas to make the most of the Eastern Core (including the False Creek Flats), focusing on sustainability and Vancouver’s green economy. The second, Visualizing the Viaducts, looks for ways to rethink the viaducts, whether that means tearing them down, keeping them as they area, or finding a new use (you may recall some of the recently renewed debates about what to do with the viaducts. For more background, check out this audio tour we told you about in March.) The third category, The Wildcard, is for those who have ideas so big they just can’t fit into the other two categories.

Now I know some of you know exactly what you’d like to see happen to the viaducts and False Creek Flats, so here’s your chance! The best part? Submitting an entry is FREE!

Photo: Modified Enzyme

There are two streams to the competition. One, with an entry fee of $65, is geared towards professionals working in the industry and offers cash prizes (a total of $10,000). The other stream is completely free to enter and while it won’t add some padding to your wallet, it will give you a pile of publicity and urbanist street cred.

re:CONNECT comes on the heels of a number of recent, well-publicized design competitions in Vancouver.

In 2008, the Vancouver Public Space Network, noting the lack of a central focal point for civic life in the city, asked us to locate Vancouver’s grand gathering place with Where’s the Square?. Out of 54 entries, 3 were selected as the winners (jury selection and 2 people’s choice), but I’ll bet you everyone who entered felt a bit more excited/optimistic about the future of public space in Vancouver, whether or not they went home with a prize.

Photo: Where’s the Square People’s Choice #1, Hapa Collaborative

While Where’s the Square? was still open for entries in early 2009, FormShift asked us to rethink the approach to urban planning in the city, with a particular focus on sustainability and Vancouver’s new EcoDensity Charter (adopted in 2008). Architects, designers, planners, and ordinary citizens submitted 84 different ideas, hoping to get a shot at some of the $12,000 in prize money. Each of the winning entries was …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>