t here are things in life that sometimes approach you from behind and hit with such a force that you are brought to a place clearly unanticipated. During a six-year tour with Bing Thom Architects, a large Vancouver firm, I moved from an untested intern to a project architect on award win- ning projects. The trajectory of my career seemed to be clearly marked. The extra work necessary to design a modern house for my family in the off-hours seemed both manageable and a necessary development of my design sensibilities. The project quickly pulled me into a complicated eight-month process that fought for the place of modernism in a historic neighbourhood. The plan : the purchase of a dilapidated post-1940 house of no significant heritage on an overgrown site would provide a blank slate on which to build a house that could improve the neighbourhood. While continuing with the firm and using the consultants I had learned to work with on large institutional projects, I moved with a naïve confi- dence — I could easily bring this project to fruition. I met with City of Vancouver planners to discuss the project and was quickly faced with an ominous number of warnings culminating with the suggestion that I sell the property and find an area of the city where this type of design would be better suited and meet less resistance. I was ill-prepared in my architectural training to address such a thought. I possess a bullish nature and, undeterred by the warnings, I went to the neighbourhood advisory panel clutching my drawings, model and skilled consulting team expecting to make short work in convincing the panel of the merits of the project. The first meeting adjourned with a number of the panel members feeling that this design had no place in Shaughnessy. Although the city’s primary concern was that I meet the official development plan requirements, in principle they would be unable to allow me to continue with the project without majority consensus of the committee.
Plan 2 : I needed to build a process to convey the importance of this project.
I focussed on the design guidelines for the neighbourhood. While it was clear in my mind that I had addressed the issues in inventive ways, dis- tilling the spirit of the intentions and recombining them with a contemporary voice, it was equally clear that many on the committee viewed the guidelines as a roadmap for appropriate styles. Others, including a majority of the AIBC architects and all of the city planners present, remained in support and in waiting. I needed clarification on the original drive behind the guidelines to reach a consensus. The author of the original guideline document was not only still alive but also receiving visitors. Many Sunday mornings were spent in the living room of the gentle Abraham Rogatnick discussing what those intentions were and how they could be manifest in a project. Rogatnick, a UBC professor emeritus, had studied under Walter Gropius at Harvard. He all but gave up on Shaughnessy when he learned that his guidelines had been used to lock in a single style for the neighbourhood, however he wrote a letter of support and guidance that reminded the panel that prin- ciples define a neighbourhood not a style 1 . 1908 Wolfe, Vancouver BC Clinton Cuddington a house in resistant circumstances Armed with this, I successfully manoeuvered through the panel promising to use the existing materials of the neighbourhood in a contemporary way — it was the goal of the project to enhance the character and diversity of the area though a commitment to quality and uniqueness in design, honest use of materials, preservation of the landscape principles and exploration of green building principles on single-family homes. This process could not have been better constructed for the shift from large scale architectural work to the world of residential development. Although I had the cautious support of the city planning department, it was the initial roadblocks that forced me to cast aside the combative, ad- versarial constructs of my formal training and to involve others. From a place foreign to my professional experience I have entered this forum not as a slick architect looking to push through an idea but as a open voice asserting the importance of marking this moment in the history of a place. This shift was also directed by the building climate in Vancouver. With such a labour shortage the realm of residential design has been impacted in the most negative way. As contractors navigate to the bigger projects there is little left for the general contractor to pick from and still maintain competitive pricing and availability. At the first sight of a fight the sub is quick to vanish. The success of this project is largely due to family back- ing, my newly learned, interactive disposition as an architect and the luck of finding an extraordinary contractor who finds the current ‘take it or leave it’ attitude of some subs deplorable. The contractor runs against this current and has pushed to create a well executed project for the love of good modern architecture. This has proven to be a vital ingredient to surviving this process on a tight budget. I have now left the large firm to oversee construction as a sole proprietor architect. This was not the way I had originally planned it but it is turn- ing out well. c 1 “Y ou [the advisory panel] should not have any qualms about introducing a rectilinear “modernist” design in the context of Shaughnessy. In my experience with the history of Shaughnessy, a variety of “styles” (I prefer the word designs) has always been characteristic of the area. The acceptable designs are harmonious, well-studied ones which add to the variety and richness of Shaughnessy”.
Clinton Cuddington has a Bachelor of Environ- mental Studies (Manitoba 1992) and an MArch (UBC 1997). He has worked for Bing Thom Archi- tects, Busby Perkins + Will and now has a solo practice. csc@telus.net
21
on | site 16
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator