The team of designers, forward thinkers and innovative business people that brought Vancouver the famed pink and yellow alleyway between Seymour and Granville Street are now returning for more – and looking to prompt the city to do the same.
“Want the rules changed? Change the rules,” says Mark Busse, director of TILT Curiosity Labs. “You don’t like the way development happens in this city? Put your hand up.”
It’s that progressively disruptive and innovative approach that led Busse and his team to create Alley-Oop – the aforementioned alleyway that was revitalized with colour, basketball hoops and furniture into a beloved public space in the fall of 2016.
“For me, it was really transformative to see how the laneways themselves could morph into something totally different,” says Charles Gauthier, president and CEO of the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association, which collaborated with HCMA on the project.
Now, their latest joint effort looks to activate Ackery’s Alley – a historic laneway adjacent to the Orpheum Theatre famous for the who’s who that have passed through it. Playing off its red-carpet affiliations, the alley makeover will feature red paint, gold paneling and reflective metals, bringing the opulence and extravagance of nearby entertainment venues out into the public space.
Entitled FIELD, a further portion of the project (helmed by international artist Alex Beim) is scheduled to include a permanent, interactive public art installation that utilizes light- and sound-field sensors that detect the presence of a person, changing colours and emitting sounds in reaction to their movement.
The interactive portion, says Busse, taps into the human instinct to play and explore.
“It’s going to be different from Alley-Oop,” says Gauthier. “The light and interactive piece is going to be a go-to destination piece.”
Gauthier’s aspiration for the space is that it will galvanize other developers in the city to reconsider their approach to public and private infrastructure.
In an effort to make the space a truly public gathering place, the Ackery team has taken their fundraising efforts to the crowdsourcing portal Kickstarter – a source of globally activated and funding measures, where a project with measurable reach is backed through a democratically creative funding process. So far, the team has raised over $31,000. They hope to reach their stretch goal of $55,000 with the help of the community and launch the space by the fall.
“I’m disappointed,” says Busse, of the rate of activation by locals so far. “Maybe 50 of them have thrown a buck in this thing.
“This has been historically a risk averse place,” he adds, of the city’s conservative tendencies towards innovation. “We need to prove to public and policy makers that this is OK.”
The HCMA team says their frustration stems from of the city’s colonial way of thinking – a tendency toward abiding by the rules simply because it is policy.
“What our city is known for is looking out to the mountains and not into the urban space,” says Steve DiPasquale, HCMA designer on the Ackery's Alley project. “What we’re showing people [with these projects] is that the city space is theirs for the making.”
For more information visit https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1577998740/field-in-ackerys-alley
