[caption id="attachment_8176" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Photograph by Martin Tessler. Image courtesy of Perkins + Will Vancouver."][/caption] [Editor's note: We are pleased to give Spacing Vancouver reader's a deeper look into Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) at the University of British Columbia - one of the most ambitious sustainable buildings built in the Lower Mainland to-date. The first part of this two-part series, written by long-time Spacing Vancouver contributor Sean Ruthen, was originally published in the March 2012 issue of Canadian Architect. The Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) is a new state-of-the-art green building located at the University of British Columbia. This a 5,700-square-metre office building and lecture theatre is remarkable at a number of levels—for just as much as what you don’t see as what you do. Clearly, the photovoltaic arrays, geothermal heat exchanger and heat recovery unit shared with a neighbouring university building are all readily visible, as is as the green roof, the design elements promoting natural ventilation and daylighting, a wood Parallam structure sequestering 600 net tonnes of carbon, rainwater harvesting, on-site solid waste treatment and a living wall on the building’s west façade. What you don’t see however is the 10 years it took to realize the project, during which time the public opinion on climate change evolved from ignorance, to awareness, to ambivalence.

“The Embodied Image: Imagination and Imagery in Architecture completes my study on the role of the senses, embodiment, and imagination in architectural and artistic perception, thought, and making. This interest emerged 15 years ago in my critique of the hegemony of vision and the neglected architectural potential of the other senses, entitled The Eyes of the Skin. This investigation was expanded in The Thinking Hand to a study on the significance of the eye-hand-mind connection, regrettably undervalued in the pedagogical and professional practices of the computer age.” - Juhani Pallasmaa, from the Introduction Author: Juhani Pallasmaa (Wiley & Sons Publishers, 2011) This past week an event occurred which hardly caused most to raise an eyebrow, but in the literary world resounded like a sonic boom— the announcement that Encyclopedia Britannica would no longer be running their print edition for the first time in their 250 year history. I make this observation ironically while writing a book review to be published online, but for me—in particular—hearing about the closing of the printing presses of the Mother Ship of Encyclopedias appears as nothing short of the start of a new Dark Age. Such is also the subject of philosopher-architect Juhani Pallasmaa’s latest book, The Embodied Image, in which he laments the dulling down of our imaginations—both collective and individual—in an age where the image is being increasingly commodified.

"The Burns Block is named for its original owner and builder, Patrick Burns of P. Burns & Company, who had it built in 1909 as the headquarters for his meatpacking business. An Irish-Canadian, Burns was a rancher, meat packer and operator of a chain of butcher shops in western Canada. Burns Meats went on to become one of the largest meat packing businesses in the world. He founded the Calgary Stampede and later in life, was appointed to the Canadian Senate." - from the back of the postcard on the building's history available at Bitter. Several years ago, having just accepted the commission to design the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing, the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas announced in one of his publications that he was ’going East’.  It was one of the largest commissions ever undertaken by his office OMA, and the realization of an XL building from his popular tome S,M,L,XL. More than the building though, it was also an announcement that China was about to embark on a massive city building age, that architects of the West should heed the call or be left behind, and that we were all about to become globalized whether we were ready or not. But perhaps what Rem also meant was that we should 'go East' not just on an international scale, but on a local one as well. The ‘east side’ has always had negative connotations in urban environments throughout North America, not just Vancouver. To ‘go east’ then could mean to look at one's own inner city issues à la Jane Jacobs and attend to the urban decay that has been allowed to happen through ignorance and neglect. By extension, this also has intimate connections to the process of  gentrification and, in Vancouver, these issues find their physical manifestation in the Downtown Eastside (DTES).

                            "There needs to be a strategic rethinking of how we design buildings in order to maximize the value of the materials and embodied energy contained within them. New buildings must be designed with durability, adaptability, and disassembly in mind." - from Chapter 7, 'Constructive Environmentalism' Author: Jim Taggart - Abacus Editions (2011) With the current discussions about the Kyoto Protocol and climate change on the rise, Jim Taggart's new book Toward a Culture of Wood Architecture comes at the turning of the tide. As an urgent and critical document on how increased wood use could mitigate climate change, this thorough and thought-provoking book could not have arrived a moment too soon. Chocked full of poignant observations on the use of wood as a building material throughout history along with supporting case studies, documented through stunning photography and lively graphics, the book is also a monograph of some of Canada's most formidable architects and structural engineers who have explored the potential of wood as both a traditional material that is a part of Canada's identity and a modern innovative medium rivaling its concrete and steel counterparts.

With the Vancouver Mayoral Election heating up, one of the city's major campaign issues has become affordable housing. Vision Vancouver is indeed declaring it this election's central issue.  With Vancouver having the nation's highest real estate prices housing affordability has taken centre stage.  "Affordable housing" is a phrase we will hear uttered regularly for what remains of the election, and I recommend asking your political party how they define it, and therefore a measure of success in achieving it.  Specifically interesting is Vision Vancouver's inclusion of market rental housing under its umbrella of 'affordable housing'.  With no form of rent control in place, landlords are free to charge a price as high as renters will pay.  With no limits I set out to answer what is the potential for affordability?

Edited by Daniel S. Friedman (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011) "Tom Kundig’s architecture possesses the relaxed and unpretentious air of American pragmatist vernacular (from farmhouses and barns to anonymous industrial spaces), layered with traces of Miesian structural classicism, the ideal of flowing space and the fusion of outdoors and indoors. This architecture is rigorously organized and aesthetically refined and elegant, but at the same time tough, rough, and matter-of-fact. Kundig’s steel is warm and invites touch, in contrast to the cold steel of today’s high-tech rationalism.” – Juhani Pallasmaa, from the Introduction As a follow up to the 2006 monograph Tom Kundig: Houses, Princeton Architectural Press gives us another monograph on the award winning architect, whose body of work continues to push the envelope of the otherwise mundane typology that is the single family residence. With a short and lyrical introduction by Juhani Pallasmaa, book-ended by Daniel S. Friedman’s more in depth project-by-project essay, the seventeen houses beautifully photographed for Houses 2 represent the Seattle-based architect’s continuing fascination with the paradigm of the single family home.

[caption id="attachment_3265" align="alignleft" width="600" caption="   Source photos are from the Spacing Vancouver Flickr pool."][/caption] If this article is the first you've heard of the Council for Canadian Urbanism, you're not alone. Its board is a veritable who's who of the field, however, boasting centuries of experience in the public and private sectors - Vancouver's Director of City Planning, Brent Toderian, serves as President and Toronto's Director of Urban Design, Robert Freedman, is Chair. Its relatively low profile is a conscious choice as it builds up its organizational capacity before broadening its base; last weekend's meeting in Vancouver was only its third annual gathering, and the agenda revolved around finalizing a draft charter and setting up working committees. The group is, at this point, essentially invite-only, though they happily opened their doors to Spacing Media. Several keynotes and a variety of panel sessions started off the conference like many others. Among the highlights were Gordon Price's scathing analysis of the suburban predicament - motordom, it seems, is now his preferred term - and Pamela Blais' critique of the misdirected financial incentives that created that result - perverse cities, or pervurbia for short, in her parlance. The weekends' main attraction for Spacing was, however, the insider's view of this nascent alliance of urbanist giants.

   Author: BIG Bjarke Ingels Group - Evergreen (2009) Part architectural monograph, part manga comic book,  Yes is More – An Archicomic on Architectural Evolution is a tour de force exposition of BIG, a new (and busy) Copenhagen firm which can already boast an astonishing body of work over its youthful six years of existence. With the book’s visual narrative borrowed from his former employer, Rem Koolhaas, and his seminal S, M, L, XL, BIG’s 36 year-old founder Bjarke Ingels (who already has his own wiki-entry) has distilled not just the design philosophies of modernism and post-modernism here - he also purports a new design philosophy of his own, one which he calls pragmatic utopianism. With his rhetoric that ‘yes is more’ echoing Mies’ ‘less is more,’ the book features 400 pages of cleverly illustrated vignettes, showing in detail the design parties of dozens of their projects, while an interview with Bjarke himself and a feature on the book’s exhibition in Copenhagen closes the manifesto out.

Written by Michael Sorkin (Verso, 2011) Thirty years and ten books later, architect and critic Michael Sorkin has given us All Over the Map: Writing on Buildings and Cities, an aptly named collection of 76 essays, whose contents oscillate between current architectural happenings and the rebuilding efforts at Ground Zero. As a NY native from Greenwich Village, Sorkin’s architecture office was mere blocks from the WTC site, and the book opens with raw expressions of his psychological well-being and the effects that the event surely must have had on him. In the book’s introduction, where he is at his most acerbic best, he apologizes for the number of essays solely on 9/11 and the WTC site.  He admits that he struggled to edit them out and at 393 pages, the book is voluminous. However, he wisely chose to keep the bulk in, allowing one to plainly see the entirety of the unruly process of rebuilding Ground Zero, from the relationship between all the players –the Port Authority and the LMDC (Lower Manhattan Development Corporation) and a group called New York New Visions – to its present state, now mere weeks away from the ten year anniversary of the tragedy.

[caption id="attachment_2470" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Students of the 2011 ENDS402 - Settlements class at the University of British Columbia's School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture.  From left to right, back row: Andrew Wilson, Ashkan Nazemi, Jasmeen Bains, Sara Kristiansen, Cameron Hardinge-Rooney, Gerard Cadger, Mark Ross, Amelia Sissons, John Bautista, Sean Ruthen (local architect). Front row: Lorraine Tong, Shawn Kay, Robyn Murray, Erik Bean, Max Hsu, Stefan Levasseur, Sandy Kim, Jason Pfeifer, Minnie Chan."][/caption]     It is customary for different groups to be involved in development projects that will greatly affect the existing urban fabric of a city or a neighbourhood. Architects, planners, developers, residents, and environmentalists - just to name a few - are your usual mix of team members. Each having their own interpretation of what a vibrant and livable place should be. Though all of them share the same fundamental goal of making a “better city”, it is not easy to reach a consensus, let alone arrive at a solution.  Interpretations vary as they peer through their own subjective lenses. In the case of Marpole and its search for a neighbourhood centre, the usual players are present. The planning process has been steady and slow-paced but rigorous - taking into consideration factors like the Cambie Corridor plan, building heights, transit use and waste mitigation. Enter the students from the Environmental Design (ENDS) Program in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia.