The Rising of Vancouver House

In August of 2013 a development permit had gone up on Pacific Avenue regarding the intended development of Vancouver House. I started documenting the neighborhood. I had a front seat on a radical change process.

By September of 2015 all the buildings had been removed, the businesses relocated, & the site was ready for excavation.

These workers understood the historic moment at hand.

So here is the building & the site growing in time-lapsed images.

Most are taken from the north end of the building, the pointy end.

The first is just before the Big Pour. The excavation was complete, going 7 floors down.

The day of the Big Pour (500 cement trucks to empty into the ground in one day): March 19, 2016.

...later...

Built: 7 floors of parking spaces & getting up to street grade.

Floor by floor it grows.

Above you can see the slanted roof of one of 4 triangular buildings is shaping up. The tower is going up behind it.

...& then more of the exterior goes on..

& you can see the north pointy end of the building flattening out as well.

The BIG picture! [That's an inside joke.] Bjarke Ingels is the architect and his firm is Bjarke Ingels Group: BIG

These aren't totally in time order, but this is where things stand more or less right now. The other triangular sites are in various stages of excavation.

The specialized trades are here too: surveyors, quality control man for concrete, the hearing testers keeping tabs on workers, the ProTech surveys who document the whole process & the Putzmeister, who pushes stuff around [I think].

The workers, ah, my romance with the workers.

The short story of the Vancouver House banner:

The house shape, made for one of my pieces in the Telling Stories in 2015 show at the Chinese Cultural Center.  After the show, I hung it on  the south side site banner on Beach Avenue...& a few weeks later I saw it again, for the last time. It was moved into the dumpster.

Then this little sticker appeared....on the banner.

It always cracks me up a bit that this huge project is called "Vancouver House". 

I mean really, a house? Hardly!

This summer: the last large street home I've seen.

The building gets the last word.

I'm not yet sure if I like it, but I have enormous respect for the complexity & enormity of the project.

That's it for now.

BC Coast: Desolation Sound & Princess Louisa Inlet

The rocks, the water, the mountains, & clouds-- sublime!

We saw petroglyph.  I wouldn't have noticed it without the help of our guide.

Pretty amazing!!

The mountains reminded me of Asian paintings with many layers of greys.

Some clouds were to die for.

I was very surprised at how few birds I saw.

Surf scooters below.

Sundry gulls only at the beginning of our outing...

A 'pet' eagle that was called out by our captain. He had chicken in the boat's freezer for this eagle. The eagle knew the boat!!  The chicken is in its talons.

Then there was a small flotilla of red-headed mergansers. I call them the woodpeckers of the sea!  They can be hard to see.

                                One of the waterfalls was called Chatterbox Falls. 

Nearby was a sumptuous rain-forrest tree.

The rocks came in wonderful shapes & colors....

...& some were oystered...

 ....water yumminess....

& a favorite tree....I loved the exposed roots.

That's it for now.

flections/reflections

George & I went up the coast of BC to Lund.
We took two ferries to get there. Lund is at the end/beginning of highway 101. The next day we took a boat up to Desolation Sound.

George Vancouver named it back in the 1700s. But since then people discovered that there are patches of the sound that are warm enough for pleasurable swimming. This is a favorite place for sailors nowadays. 

There are thousands of islands along that inland waterway &  more passages & inlets. There's even a group called the Ragged Islands. Looking at a map it seems a most apt name. Lots of glacial activity formed all this.
In one narrow passage where we stopped for lunch, I was beset with reflections. It was both magical & a bit dizzying, disorienting. Suddenly the colors seem intense.  

I think this last one is my favorite. Maybe because it's so bestial!

That's it for now.