draping Vancouver condo towers scaffolding water leaks residential types Vancouver
urban typology | accidents by joey giaimo
The perpetual buzz of building activity in downtown Vancouver — 46 residential complexes currently under construction — is contributing to the accumulation of a single building type. The exalted condominium tower on a podium has resulted in thousands of hastily injected living units in the downtown core. Planners have long recognised the shortcomings of this typological saturation, yet have had to accept the consequent exhaustion of downtown lots. Besides a questionable density of inhabitants, with each concrete pour the end product is clear: another podium, another tower, another quasi-public space. Difference is presented in tweaks and gimmicks rather than forceful pushes towards less predictable, more challenging direc- tions. Fleeting Occurrences Every new hole in the ground, the inevitable erection of the crane and its associated surface activities interrupt, disrupt and reorganise public space. In Vancouver the choreography of city building is well rehearsed, as are the concessions made by those who walk, pace and wander through it. Downtown flâneurs have prudently unleashed those turtles that haven’t already been crushed by the ten- ton trucks which jerk and chug from one site to the next. There is always room for optimism — these transient disruptions provide an alternate way to negotiate city surfaces and form. But a different kind of construction activity is also taking place, one linked with two words, leaky and condo , always spoken under Vancouver’s breath, and one that, catalysed not by construction fever but by its failure, inadvertantly re-represents or even de-represents architecture in the cityscape.
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