Spring Arrivals: Convention Centre
It’s good. Very, very good. As a convention centre, it might even be great, operationally. As architecture, though, it isn’t.
It’s certainly not iconic - the presumed test for design these days – and it won’t compete with the sails on the existing structure. But then, why should it? The new Vancouver Convention Centre is essentially a huge box skilfully integrated into the city – and that’s what makes it so good.
From Coal Harbour it reads as a set of angled planes and prows, like a marina of cruisers bobbing in the wake of a passing freighter. And if that’s too cute, settle for the effect of the landscaping. The gentle rise of Coal Harbour Green is carried up to Burrard Street, without a single blank wall in sight.
And that’s extraordinary if you compare this mass to other similarly-sized facilities. When you’re building a million square feet of display space, ballrooms and meeting places, blank walls are hard to avoid. Unlike most convention centres, too, this one has to work at three or four different levels, stacked on top of each other. And it pulls it off.
Of course, there’s the view.
This will give convention planners some tough competition: their programming will have to be sufficiently enticing to keep the delegates in their blank-walled rooms. But the centre goes further when it reflects the city back:
And allows the city in:
The stacking effect also creates dynamism within the vast interior spaces:
And the wood-lined foyers add warmth and texture:
On the outside, the green roof makes a sincere commitment to sustainability, in size alone:
The angled walkways suggest the lay-out of Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park (compare here). In fact, a lot more art would be in order, both inside and out.
There’s no doubt the extension of the seawall will be a great success – but will the plaza between the two main elements of the complex work as well?
It looks as though it’s designed for to accommodate crowds, but it doesn’t have the sense of enclosure that a great public space needs. Still, another place to hang out, so long as they serve good coffee.
Naturally I have to say something about the way the centre has accommodated cycling, and there’s no doubt it has made an effort:
In fact, maybe too much so. The very wide cycling lane runs between two pedestrian sidewalks which feel slightly squeezed as a result, and will probably result in people walking down the bike lane.
But I have no doubt the lane will be well used, particularly when the final link of the downtown loop connects Coal Harbour with False Creek and provides a direct connection to Stanley Park. And any criticism I might have I set aside when I saw this:
As near as I can tell, it’s a bike lay-by, just as cars would have when dropping off passengers. It connects the cyclists with Burrard Street, and offers them handy parking at the posts in the centre. I’ve never seen anything like it – and suggests that the designers took cycling seriously.
Is the centre worth just under a billion dollars? Unless this place bombs in the current economic climate, I doubt that will be a serious question in the future. The spin-off effects should be substantial, and from the point of view of urbanism, it maintains Vancouver’s reputation as a place which produces, if not great architecture, then very good urban design.
And in my book, that counts a lot.
Re: cycling path
Considering that it is primarily a recreational route, I don’t expect there to be any more conflicts than the Stanley Park seawall or False Creek North seawall.
I read somewhere that there is more public art (and signage) to be installed, after the Olympics are done with the Centre. ?
Personally, I’m not concerned about whether a building is iconic – Canada place certainly fits that bill, yet the new centre is beautiful, environmentally strong and integrated into the urban landscape, and in my opinion far more enjoyable to be in and around than Canada Place.
I’d say it’s a world class building, it’s just the cost spiraled ridiculously out of control. That part I certainly don’t like.
Great post. I went down to check it out on Saturday, and again on Sunday with the family. Throughout construction, I was very skeptical that I would find any beauty at all in the thing.. it was just a huge, black, angular monstrosity. Now that it’s (nearly) finished, and I’ve spent a number of hours wandering through, and around the building, I can say I’ve fallen in love.
Your photos and brief descriptions really communicate many of its great moments. Regarding Thurlow Plaza, I think I enjoy the openness of it/the lack of full ‘enclosure’. Vancouver has many not-quite-grand-enough public spaces (as I’m sure you’ll agree) that feel very cluttered, and this one features a fantastic 360 degree view to boot.
My criticisms: Not enough opportunities for seating. The seats that are present around the building and plaza are nearly all the same style of row bench… not many other options (even the stairs prevent comfortable seating opportunities because they’re so shallow and deep) I took some fast food down Saturday night, and found 1 spot that seemed comfortable enough, but it will likely have railings installed on it in the coming weeks. That said, I recognize the fact that when businesses move in they’ll probably bring chair-seating with them, and perhaps more will arrive with the public art after the olympics
My main other criticism concerns the bike path. I agree, it is quite wide, but I saw more than a few people trip on the ‘invisible’ lip separating it from the northern-most walking path on the north side of the building. Example: a girl with what seemed like a twisted ankle was being attended to, when one of the attendants went to get more help, and I watched him stumble on the same lip/step/dip/edge on his way past. It seemed like part of the drainage management, though I’m sure there must have been a safer solution.
Oh yeah. And it was expensive… but it’s finished now, so we might as well enjoy it
Stunning photos, Gord.
I have yet to visit the new facility, but your post has really captured the magic of this project… one that takes what is otherwise basic infrastructure (a convention centre, of all things) and gives back to the city a vibrant public space.
It’s safe to say that even for this project’s boosters, expectations have been surpassed in a major way.
WRT the cycling path, with the majority of patrons at the Convention Cnetre being out-of-towners, I would expect more conflicts (i.e. unfamiliarity with our allocation of space for the path and our version of signage for the cycling path).
Just like on the Concord Lands, the cycling/pedestrian path signage requires the reader to interpret it the way it is intended – that is – it assumes that the reader “reads in” that having one sign on one side of the post and the other sign on the other side of the post – actually means something (as opposed to simply being asthetically balanced). While this may be more obvious in areas where there are two delineated paths separated by a grass strip, it is less clear in more congested areas (such as the Coal Harbour seawall near Carderos).
I would favour reverting to the old system of painting symbols on the pavement to mark the pedestrian path and the bike path.
Forgot to say, but please keep the Spring Arrivals series going, I quite enjoy seeing all the new stuff and there is lots of it right now.
I expect the reason why the made the bike path so wide was for emergency or service vehicle access. Last weekend there were lots of people walking 3 or 4 abreast in the bike path.
Pedestrians seem to prefer the smooth surfaces of the bike path as opposed to the pavers that urban designers seem to insist on putting on the pedestrian paths. They almost always use concrete pavers which do not age well and look really crappy after a few years.
Further west along Coal Harbour, someone actually took little pieces of yellow tape and wrote bike on them. In spite of the fact that the writing was very small, it actually seemed to help.
What would help is bike logos on the surface, they don’t have to be large, there just has to be a lot of them. As well, a yellow centre line would help keep everyone on the correct side of the path.
Speaking of the posts. I suspect that they were not intended to be used as bike parking. If they were, they used the wrong paint as it is already chipping and getting scratched off. The bikes parked to posts in front of doors and in the bike connection at Cordova also tend to block access.
That said, I’m glad they were there one way or the other. There were tons of bikes parked on them and there were only two other bike racks there which would have held around 10 bikes.
Completely agree on the bike logo on the pavement – especially with people gawking at the views – who is concentrating on signage? You have to make it “in your face” visible.
It looks like the convention centre was designed to look great at night. I found the building and even the wood inside to be rather dull and boring during the day but in the dark, it is a much different story. The wood walls shine through the glass at night with a warm glow that is quite awesome.
For the last year I have worked across the street from the new convention centre and have thoroughly enjoyed seeing it transform from construction site into building.
Considering its sheer size, more than one million square feet, the building feels remarkably compact from the street. The sloping roof line offers glipses of the green roof, which is far and away the largest of its kind in Canada and the largest non-industrial green roof in North America. What I had not realized until I went through the building during the open house is just how much of it is below street level. The cavernous exhibition hall is entirely below grade and sits on the “real” ground level of Waterfront Road, which runs beneath the Canada Place Way viaduct.
In addition to the expansive green roof the Centre’s sustainability credentials are numerous. These include include LEED Gold certification, and all of the energy and water efficiency, indoor air quality, stormwater management, and construction waste managment that LEED accreditation includes. The building regulates much of its temperature using an ocean-source geo-exhange system to inject unwanted building heat into Burrard Inlet in summer or syphon away its warmth during the cold winter months. The building meets most, if not all, of its potable water needs using desalinated seawater and captured rainwater, both of which are purified and later reused for non-potable and irrigation purposes.
The hallways and ballroom are bathed in sunlight and feature panoramic views of the city, Stanley Park, the port, Burrard Inlet, the City of North Vancouver, and the verdant Coastal Mountain range. The interiors feature countless board feet of British Columbia wood in a spectacular expression of local materiality.
The Seawall is already a roaring success. The last piece will come together when the new marine aerodrome is built in the coming months and the last section of seawall is built and connected. I do not think that the plaza will become a meaningful, automatic gathering place for citizens but I do have high hopes for when it will be used for programmed events.
The unexpected public space for me is the wide section of seawall between the old convention centre and the new one. It has already been used for a protest and it hasn’t even been open for a week.
It’s a fine looking building, a great addition to Vancouver (I hope), but those who predicted business and financial trouble for this facility may end up being right as long as this recession holds. Which, depending on who you listen to, may be more than just one or two years.
On the cost issue, I think it’s worth remembering that former Premier Glen Clark wanted to build this facility in the mid-1990s, when construction was slow and materials prices were low, not having been impacted at that point by the boom in China. But the Federal Regional Minister, David Anderson, refused to go ahead, stating in his customarily cheesy political way that he couldn’t, in good conscience, do a cost share on a major project with Glen Clark and the spend thrift NDP and their union allies! Harrumpf!
It was really just part of Anderson’s political strategy to endear himself to the BC business community, in spite of his opposition to offshore oil and the fact that he wasn’t bringing home to BC any major federal bacon, unlike any other Regional Minister in the Chretien Cabinet.
Instead, Anderson waited until there was a like-minded and like-labeled Govt in Victoria before coming to a funding agreement. Shortly after the 2001 election, his Quebec counterpart Stephane Dion came to Kelowna to tell the Chamber of Commerce there that official Ottawa was just urinating itself down both pant legs at the same time, they were just so happy to see new Premier Gordon M. Campbell taking over from that nasty East End union organizer, Glen Clark (No mention of Ujjal Dosanjh, who was by then had already been in the Liberal recruitment files for at least five years.) Dion’s attitude put in words what Anderson and other B.C. Liberals were thinking.
The delightful irony is that Anderson and company even screwed Gordon Campbell. Anderson’s Feds signed an agreement that limited their 50% share to a fixed dollar amount; all cost overruns would end up in the provincial government’s court. And by deliberately delaying the project into the new century and a new B.C. Liberal era, when a world wide boom led by big construction projects in China would jack up materials prices, Anderson had ensured that the project would be built during years when construction prices were rising rapidly and initial construction budgets were being surpassed by wide margins.
The not so delightful irony is the Anderson also screwed his home province, being so eager to play the party political game that he was willing to sacrifice the interests of his home province, to the tune of a few hundred extra millions in construction costs that could have been avoided by an earlier agreement to go ahead.
Yesterday I attended a meeting at the Convention Centre. I was impressed, but somewhat overwhelmed by its scale, a bit reminiscent of something Albert Speer might have designed for his principal client.