Ian and I were discussing a few months back about how talented Londoners have become at naming their iconic architecture. The Gherkin, The Can of Ham, The Walkie-Scorchy, The Cheese Grater, The Armadillo: all of these buildings can be found in London. Ian and I theorize that the funny names have two factors resulting in their origin.
First, these buildings share the commonality of being considered iconic. London has a recognizable skyline, and the character of the individual buildings allow each to be more likely of receiving a silly name. The homogeneity of our see-through city and the envelopment of any character buildings by larger condos has resulted in a city with a low potential for silliness.
Second, the dry British sense of humour has bred a community which simultaneously satirizes and cherishes London’s icons. Our Canadian sense of humour, although equally adept at self-mockery, does not seem to carry the self-confidence to openly criticize our towers.
What would it take for Vancouver to get an icon with a silly name? Does the City first have to give architects the freedom to introduce such forms into our city? Do local architects have to become more convincing? Several speculative towers look like they have the potential for long-lasting, unbecoming namesakes. Do these projects suggest an architectural renaissance in our city or a post-modern disaster?
Concept Rendering for The Origami Tower – 555 West Cordova Street
Concept Rendering for The Inukshuk (Vancouver Art Gallery) – Larwill Park
Last, and most curious for me, do the readers of Price Tags believe we already have buildings in Vancouver with silly names, and if so, which are they? The toilet bowl comes to mind, however it does not continue to exist.
Well, I call BC Place Stadium the “Fondue Pot”
Buildings are usually named for a pejorative reason. If they are loved, the real name suffices – Crystal Palace, Taj Mahal, Empire State Building, the Louvre, Marine Building. Not having too many unlovable clunkers in our city is okay either me.
Argh – with me.
The old BC Place used to be called the Chinese name for “pineapple bun”:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6a/PineappleBun2.jpg/250px-PineappleBun2.jpg
Some call TD Tower “The Tower of Doom”.
Rogers Arena, when it was GM Place, was “The Garage”.
The Telus Building at Boundary Rd. is “The Boot”
The TD tower at Pacific Centre is “the tower of darkness”.
The Mac-Blo building on Georgia is called the “waffle” thanks to its flat rectangular shape and evenly spaced square recessed windows.
The old Eatons/Sears building had several unflattering names. “Marshmallow” was commonly used.
Science World is the “disco ball” or “golf ball”.
The first one was labeled “The Icepick” before it was canned for too closely resembling an icepick…
If we take a risk and allow a building which ends up looking silly, who cares? What are we scared of? That another city will laugh at us? We take ourselves so seriously, and constantly talk about being “world class” because we are so transparently insecure.
We should allow architects creative license to build whatever they want, rather than collectivizing and anesthetizing the design process. I mean, have you seen Vancouver’s skyline? It’s so darn conservative – it betrays that sneaking fear of risk deep in the Vancouver psyche. That earnest, pearl-clutching Canadian humorlessness. And it explains why Seattle has Starbucks, Boeing, Amazon, and Microsoft while Vancouver has… Lu Lu Lemon?
So long the Canadians fear the opinions of others, so long will they be a little people, a silly people. Consensus be damned! #buildtheicepick
License to build whatever they want? You can have that world, but please don’t foist it on the rest of society.
What’s the downside? If an odd building emerges, it’ll become a symbol and source of amusement.
And for an extra bonus, more housing supply will emerge as developers cram more 100 sqft micro-lofts into fun twisty and/or bulbous structures. Then my rent will go down, and I might afford to move closer to work.
Alas, the world-renowned aesthetic of stodgy uniformity may be lost. I won’t miss it.
The old stadium was “The Marshmallow in Bondage” and the new design is called “The Crown Roast”.
The Wall Tower is “The Bic Lighter building”.
The new art gallery could be called “Vancouver Art Gallery In New Area” but that might be too naughty for Canadians.
About 20 years ago, there were three new and quite ugly buildings very near each other on the West Side. Amazingly, they all had the same name: Leaky Condo, Leaky Condo, Leaky Condo.
The more I think about 555 West Cordova, the more it grows on me in the way it minimizes it’s footprint to maximize the public space.
If you wander down to the present parking lot on the site, you’ll see people hanging out there, using it as a public space despite it’s present condition thanks to it’s convenient location and excellent views. . Maximizing the availability of that plaza, which unlike Granville Square is at street-level, is a solid goal that the original design supported.
Then we can also give it a funny name
I’m with Brendan on this one … my beef with the tower is that it becomes blah 1/4 of the way up after the interesting base … if it kept up the faceting it might remain interesting the whole way up.
“A doctor can bury his mistakes; an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines; and the Public is left only to make up funny building names” – with apologies to Frank Lloyd Wright
————————
From my perch in London UK, I posted a PT article in December contracting a successful iconic London development (Foster’s Gherkin – a RIBA Sterling Prize winner) with a “less successful” building known to all as the Walkie Scorchie (Rafael Viñoly’s 20 Fenchurch St.) – the winner of the satirical 2015 Carbuncle Cup!
* https://pricetags.wordpress.com/2015/12/14/iconic-lessons-from-london/
The English DO take great delight in ‘taking the piss’ out of each other, and ostentatious buildings are favourite targets for the public! Where else but London would you find an annual award that lampoons the worst building of the year to make it all the way through design, City Review, Peer Review, financing, construction and occupancy?
* http://www.bdonline.co.uk/buildings/carbuncle-cup
Even better it seems to find a building that manages to do that and also attacks the neighbourhood and its inhabitants with highly focused solar beams! It certainly does sell papers and makes for television spectacle:
You might find answers to the reasons for the English predilection for architectural satire in a couple fine books:
The first is “Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour” by UK Anthropologist Kate Fox. She’s fantastic and teaches at Oxford. I spent an hour on the phone with her a while ago talking about how I might design “liminal social space” into UK buildings to overcome with what she humourously calls the British ‘Dis-ease’. She also has some observations on how the Brits “humble-down” justified praise (keeping your Oscar in the Loo, for example) and how they send up and lampoon pretenders whose boasts exceed their delivery.
The second book is “At Home: A Short History of Private Life” by Bill Bryson who writes widely on life on this small island. Through him and others I’ve come to understand that the first “World Expo” held in 1851 in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London, United Kingdom never really turned off, spinning out iconic ideas and iconic buildings in this world city ever since. Bryson is particularly interested in Architectural Follies as well.
But back to the issue at hand …
What is different in our recent modern history is the SCALE of development, which makes these satirical nicknames and deserved Carbuncle awards particularly tragic. It makes me wonder how all this post hoc criticism is ultimately useful – when all we can do is slap our own funny names on buildings that erode the quality of our city. A bad nickname says: “it’s all over but the crying”!
For me, it highlights how important it is to have a robust design community and an equally robust design review processes.
In my experience – working as a Vancouver Developer and previously as a City Planner – Vancouver has historically been on the leading edge with its design review system – taming modernist high rises when other cities were still repeating the mistakes of the 1960s.
Beginning at the Scoping and Enquiry Counter, through the City’s Urban Design reviews, Public Notification, Planning and Engineering Reviews, all the way up to (what was then) the “Director” of Planning and ultimately Political review through City Council – Vancouver’s process is very well thought out. Many of the other cities I’ve worked in pale in comparison.
A modest proposal: rather than ridicule and re-name the poor buildings that did get built, perhaps it would be more interesting to celebrate every year inferior designs that did NOT get past the planning stage, as well as those proposals that were rescued by better design solutions.
“So without further adieu … the 2015 ‘Perhaps Somewhere Else’ Award goes to ….
and the most impressive Turnaround Award goes to ….”
From my perch in London UK, I posted a PT article in December CONTRASTING a successful iconic London development …
[wish we could edit these comments!]
Michael – some great ideas there.
In a related way, during Ray Spaxman’s tenure as DOP the planning dept published a “before and after” booklet showing how earlier submissions were changed during the design review and approvals process. At least for the examples shown, there is no question that substantial improvements were made, resulting in better performing and lasting contributions to the city. At that time (1980s), Vancouver was one of the very few Metro municipalities to have an advisory design panel. Amazingly, some still don’t have one, nor design-trained staff.
Also, the San Diego Architectural Foundation for many decades has held an “Orchids & Onions” award, celebrating the good and naming the bad contributions to design during the previous year. Perhaps this would be a very good model to emulate.
Author
I recalled after writing the article that in my teens we would refer to the red cranes at the port as “the dinosaurs” for their abstract similarity to the brachiosaurus from Jurassic Park.