The Salient Group

Insertion Points – Gair Williamson Architects
cdnarchitect.com
Tevor Boddy
August 2009

A view of Williamson's own suite in the Paris Block. Photo Credit: Ed White

A small architecture firm is well-known for nimbly grafting and inserting new architectural elements into the existing urban fabric of Vancouver.

Clients turn architects from dreamers into schemers. Williamson has had a close and positive relationship with Salient Development, which is headed by the successful Robert Fung (son of the former Toronto Waterfront Commissioner of the same name), often sharing office space with the firm. Salient took more advantage of the transfer of development rights (TDR) policy than any other Vancouver developer, and now finds itself controlling nearly half the unplaced density benefits nearly a year into a city council embargo on their sale (the issue for City Hall is the mounting store of potential building density without sufficient sites to “land” it on specific locations in a developing-out downtown).

Williamson is responsible for one of the best applications of these Vancouver heritage mechanisms in his adaptive reuse and rooftop addition for Salient to the Bowman Block, part of a line of early 20th-century warehouses on Beatty Street south of West Georgia Street. Williamson’s design cut back the window-side floor plates of timber-beamed and wooden mill floors to open up two-storey lofts, with bedrooms set back to increase the sense of space, while revealing original elements of the 1906 structure–for example, the former beam seats are retained as a marker of the building’s past.

Similarly, designer and developer resisted invisibly bricking-over the line where the subtracted floor plate was excised, intending it to be left visible. In some of these loft condos, the location of the former floor plate is marked with a very contemporary steel I-beam, which also helps with seismic stiffening of the masonry shell building.

Read the full story at cdnarchitect.com

Indie style finds home in Gastown’s fashion district
Straight.com
September 3. 2009
Patty Jones

The working hand loom at the new Gentille Alouette (left); and an Ora bag from Nouvelle Nouvelle.

In Gastown’s thriving fashion district, upstart boutiques and ateliers are offering something different by design.

Indie fashion is happening, right this very minute, in Gastown. In the window of the new Dickensian-chic boutique Gentille Alouette at 227 Carrall Street, Vancouver Community College fashion grad Ben Newcombe is constructing a dress on the retro-green sewing machine. “When there’s nobody else here, I pop this up onto the table,” says owner, textile artist, and designer Eliza Lau, pointing to a kick-ass–looking hand loom tucked under it.

“Hell or high water, I was going to open my own place,” Lau tells the Straight in her atelier. Lau was a stylist and special-effects costumer in her former life. She once wove “alien animal pelts” for Stargate: Atlantis. But her textile-arts roots were nudging her. “I envisioned representing local designers, providing a workspace. I wanted people to see the art and incredible skill of dressmaking,” she says. The Gastown scene is decidedly all about that DIY ethic.

“To me, Gastown represents returning to grassroots. There’s that lovely historic feeling,” says Lau. “The shop owners are a community, everybody wants everybody to succeed.” She adds, “And I think that fashionistas are discovering Gastown is a real fashion nook.”

Anyone following the bloody quill on Gentille Alouette’s sign—homage to both that nasty children’s song and nearby Blood Alley—into the boutique can nab stunning dresses ($270 to $489) and floaty felt and silk collars ($140 to $260) by Genevieve Graham, former Obakki designer and Project Runway Canada runner-up. Also on the racks are Lau’s own repurposed-leather dresses ($148 to $375) and cavegirl-sexy lei scarves ($148 to $229), woven from recycled fur, alpaca, and other exotic scraps. “My aesthetic is very deconstructed,” she says. She brandishes a work-in-progress wenchy bustled skirt, “a Vivienne Westwood ragamuffin thing”.

It’s another planet on Water Street. Moose and beavers abound in disturbing plush. Furniture emporiums and currency exchanges have accelerated breeding programs. There’s maple syrup on tap. No, wait—that’s beer. Here, T-shirts ask questions: “Does this shirt make me look Canadian?” Eh? But there is the Water Street style vanguard: Obakki (44 Water Street), Fluevog (65 Water), Alife (350 Water), One of a Few (354 Water), and Two of a Few (356 Water).

Read the Full Story at Straight.com

The Woodward’s Experiment
Vancouver Magazine
September 1, 2009
Michael Harris

The Woodward's redevelopment is a massive social experiment bringing people together, regardless of income Image Credit: Christina Lanteigne

Who says East is East, West is West, and never the twain shall meet?

From his book-crammed office on the sixth floor of the Dominion Building on Hastings, Jim Green has monitored the reinvention of Woodward’s. If Woodward’s is anyone’s baby, it’s his. Beginning in 1985 (five years before the store was shuttered), Green led the community lobby for its transformation into a complex that would draw all elements of the city into one mixed-use mecca. His opening came in 2003 as the province, which owned the land, was trying to get a reticent COPE city council to sign off on the Olympic bid. When Gordon Campbell asked how he could get council’s support for the 2010 Games, Green, a COPE kingpin, gave a list. One element: “I need Woodward’s.” The deal they struck: the City bought the whole block for $5.5 million. (It was valued at four times that.) And somewhere in there, the Olympics got a new tag: “The inclusive Olympics.” Green believes the urban experiment that followed will be mimicked in other cities. “I’ve studied this for a long time,” he says, “and there’s nothing like this anywhere in the world.”

At the fractious joint between the Downtown Eastside and the posh towers to its west, architect Gregory Henriquez has designed a new kind of urban hub. In its conjoined towers are one million square feet of market and non-market homes, government and nonprofit offices, a contemporary art school for SFU, a grocery store and other retailers, and a childcare facility. On one city block, this microcosm of the city wreathes a central courtyard that has the potential of a train station. “The whole city should be mixed-use,” Henriquez says. “Anything less is a tragic mistake. Human lives are not meant to exist in compartments.”

Read the full story at Vanmag.com