zoltan Kiss - RWalsh

The Origins of Vancouverism: Physical, Cultural and Technical Contexts and the Evolution of a Local Urban Vernacular

1. Public Parks Network: Street Trees, Pedestrian Waterfront Paths (1912)
2. Slender, Separated Residential Towers (1956)
3. Rowhouse Enclaves (1975)
4. Protected Public Views (1977)
5. Grand Outdoor Public Rooms (1983)

Several elements that did not make the list, but which were considered:
Below Grade Parking
Lack of Crosstown Freeways
Concrete High Rise Construction Technology: new geometries, faster builds.
Presales fund towers before construction

Photograph: Robert Walsh, Architecture: James Cheng's Marinaside Crescent, Vancouver BC.

By the end of the 1940's, the land on both shores of False Creek had become a toxic, abandoned post industrial wasteland. In 1973 local writer Warnock Kennedy lamented "Vancouver is a City that shames its setting."

After a period of ominous decline, the City rebounds, transforming the West End District (1956-1973) and finally the False Creek Basin (1990-2020).

From 2004 to 2011 the Economist magazine ranks Vancouver as "the world's most livable city." (The city still has problems).

My research grapples with three interrelated questions:
1. How did this declining post-industrial City reverse what had seemed to be an inescapable process of industrial decline?
2. How did the new urban development regime, now known as Vancouverism come into being?
3. What lessons can be derived from the case of Vancouver and Vancouverism that are relevant in other cities?

Map produced by Harland Bartholomew in 1929: light industry in green; heavy industry in red.

Based on a single blurry image from a larger drawing exhibited and published many times, the legend of Project 56 began in 1980. Perhaps best described as a misunderstood prank by t Arthur Erickson this project was designed for different actual site, in a different municipality at a later date: 1965. A pair of typographic errors from 1975 that went unnoticed by Arthur Erickson until 1980 presented an opportunity to redater the project to 1956, and relocate it to the West End District of Vancouver.

Erickson had an unexpected reason for this ruse: by 1980 he was working on a scheme to revitalize the rest of the Downtown, including False Creek; he had decided that including new high rises was crucial, even though they have fallen out of favor in Vancouver. He never seriously proposed actually developing his 1965 design and his changing accounts of this phony proposal always ended with a disclaimer intended to demonstrate that he knew this was a bad idea. He wanted people to see that matters could be worse than the forest of high rises that he had helped build that had transformed the West End District.

Erickson's Master Plan, designed and produced with Fisher/Friedman, was published in 1983 and actually became an important step in rehabilitating the City, but local journalists rejected this design and instead tried to contrive a basis for imagining that the so called Project 56 was the Origin of Vancouverism. And now Project 56 now is widely touted as inspiring Vancouverism, despite no legitimate basis for supporting this view.

Composite image: the 100 Story version of Project 56 placed amongst the West End Towers of Vancouver for comparison.in 1972: Robert Walsh.

Another common myth about Vancouverism is the claim that these towers are the result of the compact egress strategy used in these buildings, and especially their inclusion of scissors stairs, something which is not allowed in many American code jurisdictions.

While this sounded good in theory, I wanted first to verify or refute this claim before accepting it.

Being an architect, with experience interpreting codes and designing buildings has advantages in research. I examined ten scissor stair plans for recent towers in Vancouver and redesigned there circulation systems to conform with American codes, then analyzed each pair of plans.

The results of the analysis were mixed and yet also surprising. In four of the cases the American code based plans (using the IBC code), the Vancouver version was less efficient,while in five of the canadian examples, the vancouver plans fared better, and on was a tie. perhaps more significantly, the differences in all cases were minor. what made the compact core structures less efficient was the need for extra corridor floor space to get around the length of the scissors stairs.

Interpretation: this proved a healthy reminder that correlation does not equal causation. Towers in Canadian Cities use Scissors stairs not for efficiency or cost saving, but because this is there tradition. Canada prioritizes rapid egress in its codes, while American codes prioritize separation of egress stairs to improve chances that one stairway will not become smoke filled.
Image: Strata plan of 1200 Alberni St, designed by architect James Cheng. Revised interior scheme and analysis by Robert Walsh.

Vancouver enjoys magnificent ocean and Mountain View’s. Also having the best climate and the worst weather in all of Canada, with moderate temperatures and frequent drizzle and fog. the sun is visible only one day in five, further increases the desire of residents to enjoy the views, at least when they are not shrouded in clouds. Building a city of glass towers makes sense here.

The Planning Department response has been a three dimensional system of view cones protecting mountain views at public park spaces. I have added the colors in the image to convey a sense of how these protected view corridors crisscross the already developed urban fabric. Areas shaded light grey are places where the views do not impact the permitted height of new buildings.

Image: City of Vancouver Zoning regulation Illustration of View Cones. Colors added by Robert Walsh to improve clarity.

When renowned landscape architect Thomas Mawson set up a branch of his firm in Vancouver in 1912, the local Parks Board was already a powerful political entity. Mawson presented a series of lectures,which were well received and as a result gained a design commission for the Coal Harbor problem, now known locally as the lost lagoon. Although his 1911 book "The Civic Art" devotes eleven large pages to selection and care and proper usage of street trees, I have not yet found definitive proof that it was his influence that persuaded the Parks Board to adopt a street tree regime apparently identical to those recommended by Mawson in his book. In brief, Mawson outlines a process that begins with the establishment of a large municipal tree nursery where groups of the same species of tree, of the same age are to be cultivated. the trees themselves are to be periodically dug up, rotated, and then replanted; the purpose of this is to encourage them to grow a more compact root system, and to train them to adapt to different eventual orientations when finally planted at their chosen final planting location.

According to Mawson, the reason to cultivate trees in groups of the same species and age is that this results in a beautiful overarching canopy of leaves. Today, the continuing efforts of the Parks Board maintains just such a system of street trees; both sides of a street featurethe same species, and yet these will also vary from one street to the next. Thestreet trees help the row-houses, pedestrian amenities and towers all to comfortably coexist; the towers are well spaced, allowing the light to reach the trees while trees keep the streets scaled to pedestrian experience.

Photograph by Robert Walsh

In 1952, British City Planner Gerald Sutton Brown (GSB) was hired as Vancouver's new Planning Director; by 1954 he had proposed a comprehensive zoning plan for the city. When the new zoning regime was finally implemented by the City in 1956, sparking a high rise boom that transformed the west End. From 1956 to 1973 a rapidly evolving game played out between the City Planners on one side and the developers on the other, during which each side worked to transform the city, but in pursuit of sometimes divergent aims. Developers sought to maximize profits by following the rules established by the zoning department, and this included finding unintended loopholes that sometimes benefitted the developers but which sparked opposition by the local residents. GSB and his planners meanwhile wanted to increase the density of people residing in the district and support the continued redevelopment of the district. he cared about the character of the communities there, even as he also remained committed to honoring the rules he and his subordinates had established. This did not prevent him from updating the rules when a loophole was found by a developer, but rules took time to change. In some cases rules had unanticipated negative effects that seem not to have become apparent until after the latest building permits had been issued.

The Image at the left shows the controversial Ocean Towers Project under construction, in 1956. The development team had proposed a structure that fit the rules while arguably defying the intention of these rules by hording the front row views of English Bay, instead of allowing land a row or two back to share the view. GSB was reported in a local paper to have opposed the project and the City Council records show that the project was discussed six times before finally being approved. Unable to stop this project, GSB introduced yet another planning rule that successfully prevented similarly imposing designs from being allowed.

My analysis appears to have sparked something of a reevaluation of the character of Gerald Sutton Brown and his role as a public servant. The local common understanding in Vancouver had long held, apparently that GSB was corrupt and as proof of this, people often cited the existence of Ocean Towers as evidence. My analysis revealed a more contentious and complex story in which the planning director was blamed for the construction of a tower he actually had tried to prevent. One advantage of my position as an independent analyst is that this has meant that I had not grown up immersed in the colorful but often inaccurate folklore, making it perhaps easier to arrive at an impartial assessment.

In the process of scrutinizing the transformation of Vancouver, I have repeatedly encountered efforts to condense credit and contrive an account that is simple and easy to describe, yet the more I learn about Vancouver, the clearer it has become that one of the key factors in shaping Vancouver has been the presence of a thriving diverse culture of architecture that seems especially good at both developing local talent and attracting outside talent. The result is a complex tapestry, reflecting contributions by design firms, developers, planners, investors and outspoken citizens, all of whom struggled to devise ways to improve their city. one crucially important, if underappreciated groups to have opened up new ways of redeveloping Vancouver was the team established by Paul Merrick called the False Creek Study Group (FCSG).

Topics explored by the FCSG included radical proposals such as damming False Creek to create a large freshwater lake, introducing stepped terrace housing, including larger preserved outdoor public recreation spaces in higher density development and the introduction of row house Enclaves. These and other principles were implemented and evaluated in the redevelopment of the South Shore of the False creek, in four phases, resulting in a rapid evolution of architectural forms and the local pattern language.

The FCSG is a lesser known and relatively unexamined part of the development of Vancouverism; it nevertheless represents the crucial turning point in the development of this urban redevelopment process during which the Planners and Architects began collaborating on finding solutions that were developed in response to local needs and conditions, instead of following trends imported from the USA, the UK or Asia.

While the Planning department of Vancouver had ended the highrise boom that had transformed the West End district, Arthur Erickson maintained the view that the entire downtown peninsula could and should support the addition of even more residential and commercial towers. the city planners had repeatedly attempted to find a viable lower density solution for the North Shore of False Creek, even though they had already found that this strategy could only succeed on the South Shore of False Creek if it was heavily subsidized, with contributions coming from local, provincial and national governments. Allegedly, it was in response to a public rejection of yet another chaotic lower density plan that Arthur Erickson was hired to develop his vision of extending the pattern of well spaced residential and commercial towers, but with a caveat that he proceed in conjunction with the american architecture firm Fisher / Friedman, a firm note worthy for designing high quality low rise apartment communities in both urban and waterfront settings.

The result of this effort was a highly developed scale model and masterplan that would eventually serve as the essential, but seldom discussed masterplan that would become the basis for redeveloping the North Shore of False creek and the birth of Vancouverism.

Exploring the reasons this important, indeed pivotal master plan has been essentially forgotten is the result of a confluence of several peculiar circumstances that in brief included a controversy over the selection Of Erickson to design the Canadian Consulate building in Washington DC, the tragic unexpected death of the top executive behind the effort to redevelop the North Shore of False Creek, and continuing opposition to new tower construction in Vancouver.

In 1972, the City of Vancouver was divided over issues directly linked to redevelopment goals. on the one had Gerald Sutton Brown clung to the agenda previously articulated by Harland Bartholomew during his revised plans and reports from 1944-1948 for Vancouver, which included redeveloping a reduced false creek to reintroduce industrial production to the city, a position that alienated the powerful local business community, who kept demanding a new agenda for the abandoned unsightly waterfront, specifically calling for a new master plan to enable residential redevelopment, which GSB rejected. Meanwhile, Also in the Bartholomew plans was a recommendation for the construction of crosstown parkways improving both public and private access to the downtown core. The proposed freeway plans generated opposition from the neighborhoods it would have crossed, and efforts to simultaneously combine the new freeway with a massive plan to redevelop the eastern neighborhoods through the construction of residential slab towers provoked protests and entrenched opposition, linking freeways and highrises. the result of these concerns provoked a sudden change of control of the City government, when the TEAM party won the Mayors election and eight of the ten seats on the City Council.

In 1973, less than a month after their election, the first action of the new TEAM government was the termination of Gerald Sutton Brown. the team government also imposed a revised density regulation on the West End which stopped the approval of new High-rise projects for 12 years. Team focused attention redeveloping the south shore of False Creek, which implemented a redevelopment scheme based upon Ron Walkey's locally responsive pattern language work of the FCSG. this was enabled by subsidies from the city,the Province and the Canadian Federal Government. but when this design/ planning strategy was attempted for the larger North Shore False Creek industrial language, without the benefit of numerous subsidies, it proved unworkable from a development finance perspective, especially. Fortunately, Arthur Erickson had been contemplating a new direction, based upon what he viewed as the successful redevelopment of the West End. Meanwhile, two local architects Richard Henriquez, and also Paul Merrick, organizer of the FCSG, each overcame the highrise Hiatus by finding loopholes in the anti highrise agenda in 1983. Although TEAM was gone, Ray Spaxman remained planning director for the time being.

The effort to redevelop the north shore of False Creek took 20 years to eventually break ground and start construction.
The vast landscape changed hands twice before HongKong based Developer Li Kai Shing was finally able to acquire the site. However to conclude the purchase and start development, resulting in a peculiar set of circumstances. Li Kai Shing had set up a company, Concord Pacific, which became the developer of this project. when he began negotiating the Province of British Columbia had acquired the land, and their decisions took precedence over those of the city government, as long as the Province still owned the land. To complete the sale, the Province required Concord Pacific to submit a plan that received the approval of the Province for the sale to conclude.

Rick Hulbert developed his imaginative design scheme and it won enthusiastic support. However once the Provincial Government concluded the sale, the power shifted, and the developers faced the need to secure approval from the City Planning Department and the City Council, who rejected the scheme and took over a year to reach this conclusion. according to Rick Hulbert the design was close to being approved but some how some of the authorizing parties came to the strange conclusion that the design proposed by Hulbert represented a public danger? Specifically, by reconfiguring False Creek as an interwoven system of islands and lagoons, the fear was that this vastly increased the length of the resulting waterfront, which is true; this also would add value to the real estate. the objection raised by the City was that this increased the risk of a child drowning in False Creek. Around this time, a tragic accident involving a child and a bicycle on the seawall path at Stanley Park perhaps gave this concern additional weight. Whether deserved or not, these concerns were significant enough to send the team of designers back to the drawing board.

This brief summary omits detailed analysis and discussion of several scandals and changes of ownership that eventually resulted in the sale of the vast wasteland along the north shore of False Creek to Li Kai Shing, a developer originally based in Hong Kong. A quick review of some basic facts is however useful.After Erickson's plan ceased to be discussed, the transfer of the former industrial cite required a development master plan acceptable to the then current owners, the Province of British Columbia, essentially. Architect Rick Hulbert was hired for this purpose, who proposed a magnificent new masterplan that was both original and appealing. the sale went through. prior to the sale the province had the power to implement this ambitious vision of a transformed residential district, but when the sale was completed, the power to approve or reject the master plan transferred to the local government of Vancouver, which rejected the plan of Rick Hulbert. Had the provincial government agree to a long term lease to Li Kai Shing, instead of the sale, Vancouver would look very different today. These machinations played out over several years. Li Kai Shing had the foresight to hire Vancouver based architect Stanley Kwak to form a new design team to develop the "new" masterplan that would eventually be used at False Creek. The critique offered by the City of the Hulbert master plan strongly hinted that the Government preferred the previous Erickson Fisher/Friedman plan, but without openly stating this. Meanwhile, Stanley Kwok had helped the Erickson Fisher Friedman Plan develop and by leaving the development authority that had sponsored this to join Li Kai Shing, Kwok succeeded in reintroducing many of the features that were originally proposed Erickson and Fisher/Friedman in 1983, including: spaced residential towers that become taller further from the waterfront, waterfront walkways and the use of low rise infill to define walkable urban streets, well developed recreation spaces, street trees and continuity of the urban street pattern. Recognizing Rick Hulbert for his exceptional design talent, Stanley Kwak invited him to join the team, resulting in the Beach Cresent show in model form at the right.

Future Research: developing a general process model for generating successful, locally appropriate and unique urban architectures.

There are precedents for studying cities that have attained a local identity through particular local characteristics; the typological models of design explored by Aldo Rossi, the experiential models of urban structure explored in the British Townscape Campaign, and the analysis of public space developed by Jan Gehl all afford productive vantage points for analyzing urban form. Somewhat paradoxically the line of research developing via Space Syntax, also continues to reveal new insights through a refined distillation of specific abstracted networks of relationship. however, if the challenge is to help each community to become most comfortably and uniquely itself, then a subtle shift in perspective can be helpful. Instead of viewing buildings and cities as the imperfect built approximation of abstracted ideals, by letting go of the need to find a one size fits all, perhaps it is time to see cities as existing in a perpetual state of evolution and adaptation, animated by a need to be the best version of itself possible today, right now?

Vancouverism is currently being exported to cities elsewhere in Canada and in foreign countries with results ranging from enthusiastic success, to failures costing hundreds of millions of dollars. This strongly indicates that Vancouversim does not work everywhere, despite enthusiastic claims to the contrary. Form alone just is not enough. Vancouverism may be right for Vancouver, while other cities may do better for themselves by exploring the development of their own unique architectural vernaculars.

At this juncture available data appears to suggest that new models of research, practice and education may help our field to respond to emerging issues more effectively by developing methods that heighten our understanding of local conditions, both in defining the challenges to be met and the opportunities to be reached in any project. Instead of believing in a generalizable Vancouver model, we as designers and educators might consider how to articulate a relevant context specific processes of design exploration and development that would produce successful unique local solutions? this community centered approach would reward designer builders who mastered the needs of their home city while pursuing viable worthwhile solutions. Technologists like Mario Carpa predict that the mass production of identical components, a key to the success of the 20th century productivity is on the way out; digital design and robotic production methods will make custom fit one of a kind buildings and goods the new normal. My question then is how do we get better at identifying the important aspects that make a place authentic, enjoyable and unique? when this comes to the built environment human experience may still be essential if we want to live in unique settings attuned to local cultures, climate, geography and histories. Design for humans by humans supported by digital mechanisms would tend to leverage local understanding and local participation, especially if the goal is to celebrate the positive and unique characteristics that make a place unique. This is beginning to sound like an argument for a different model of architectural and urban design engagement grounded in the local, starkly contrasting the ideal of the might star architect jetting around the globe? That seems okay, and there probably will remain a need for starchitects as well; the difference is that if we reconsider the big picture, then we can still allow for the occasional bit of drama, irony or whimsy in our landmarks, while at the same time devising unique vibrant local fabrics that contribute to bringing cities to life as well. If this is possible, then we are going to need more architects.

My students at UC Berkeley using mockups to fine-tune a bench design

Student sketching examples from History of Environmental Design: Prehistory to 1750.

Note in this class the goal is to have students encounter and scrutinize the subject matter more closely, to look more deeply via sketching and discussion, typically during the final 20-30 minutes of the assigned 75 minutes of scheduled class time.

I remain interested and engaged with emerging tech in our field, including AI use in design. All designs shown below were produced by an AI: DALL-E in response to discussion and verbal prompts by Robert Walsh.

Four projects with Christopher Alexander and his associates:

Note: the individual shown in the first photograph is Randy Schmidt, Engineer and Office Manager for Pattern Language.com

Robert Walsh Architect, Developer and Construction Administration
Light Gauge Steel framing 55% recycled Steel
Sited on a wedge shaped, steeply sloping parcel in Oakland CA.
Garage carved into base of site, garden terrace above.
Excellent views of San Francisco Bay and nearby scenery.

The project below was part of an ongoing exploration of building processes and geometry. The project began with an observation that would frame construction continues to be used throughout the united states for a variety of reasons, including the degree to which this methodology readily accommodates irregularities during construction, while modern construction tends to be expensive, at least in part due to a far tighter degree of tolerance, thereby driving up the cost. what if digital fabrication/parametric modelling incorporated an enhanced ability to accomodate imperfections and irregularity? Thus far the results appear promising.