 
Vancouverism: Westcoast Architecture + City-Building
24 June - 20 July, 6:30pm - 8pm
Canada House
Trafalgar Square
Pall Mall East
London, SW1Y 5BJ
 
  
Architectural and city-building innovations in Canada’s Pacific portal over the past half century have turned that city into a verb, with architects and planners in the United States and the Middle East now speaking of “Vancouverizing” their own metropolises. From Vancouver into the idea of “Vancouverism”: the best in high-rise, high-amenity, high-sustainability and high-design urban living is the focus of an unprecedented exhibition of the same name at Canada House, on Trafalgar Square’s west side, curated by architects + critics Trevor Boddy and Dennis Sharp.
Vancouverism begins over half a century ago with a single instance of prescient paper architecture—Arthur Erickson’s visionary “Project 56” sketch—a massive range of housing sweeping up from English Bay to challenge the height of snow-capped mountains behind. A decade later, Erickson’s MacMillan Bloedel Building may be the best Brutalist office tower anywhere, and in the mid-70s, his Robson Square won global laudits as a downtown set-piece combing lush gardens, government offices, space-framed law courts and an Edwardian courthouse turned art gallery, all set over three entire city blocks.
Two Robson Square project architects have since gone on to re-make the city in their own right, and are also featured in the London exhibition. Bing Thom is re-invigorating Vancouver’s multi-ethnic suburbs with fine public spaces, innovative architecture, and unexpected combinations of ever more intensive uses of land in “Surrey Central City” and “Aberdeen Centre.”
Ex-Erickson staffer James K.M. Cheng’s “Residences on Georgia” and now “Spectrum: Four Condo Towers over Costco Store,” are amongst the finest architectural resolutions of Vancouver’s characteristic housing typology of thin-towers-on-continuous-townhouse-bases. The last of the four firms featured in the Canada House exhibition are engineers Fast + Epp. They have collaborated with all of these firms, but are increasingly recognized in their own right as global leaders in applications of sustainably-harvest BC engineered wood, notably their massive all-wooden roof for the 2010 Winter Olympics Speed Skating Oval.
Using drawings, models, photographs, videos and a stunning temporary demonstration construction of stacked serpentines in sustainably-harvested British Columbia timber, “Vancouverism: Westcoast Architecture and City-Building” shows how one of North America’s most unusual and creative young cities has transformed, now shaping housing and public spaces world-wide.
Green, global, and generous of spirit, Vancouver may be the city of the future.
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