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Playing with design in Vancouver: New visions from Formshift

April 15th, 2009 · 31 Comments

Just what Vancouver needs: A new kind of industrial building that stacks pre-fab floors into a zigzag tower on top of a podium whose leaf-like roof is a garden. Or how about this: A new kind of laneway housing where small, two-storey, pre-fab rectangular cubes face onto back lanes that are filled with gardens, a […]

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Larry Beasley weighs in on view corridors’ debate

April 2nd, 2009 · 21 Comments

For those of you who have missed it, there’s an incredibly lively and wide-ranging debate about view corridors that’s been going on here under my earlier post. Former city planning director Larry Beasley posted his views on views this morning. Here they are: Frankly, the essence of our city is at stake. One of the […]

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Vancouver’s famous view corridors up for debate this year

March 30th, 2009 · 48 Comments

Vancouver’s famous view corridors have prompted more anguished howls from architects than almost anything else I can think of over the years. Now, the city is looking at re-examining them. (And, as the sharp-eyed people at skyscraper.com have noted, the posting for people to run the public consultation went up on city website Friday. You […]

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Vancouver’s long-time planning voice silenced

December 29th, 2008 · 4 Comments

Several people have sent messages last night and this morning about the death on Saturday of Peter Oberlander, who founded the planning school at the University of B.C., became Canada’s first deputy minister for a new ministry of state for urban affairs in the 1970s, and was involved in planning both of the major housing […]

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Developers and the city negotiate office-residential mix near BC Place

October 7th, 2008 · 6 Comments

It’s faded out of the news now, but the downtown district around BC Place and GM Place is still going through intense talks as the four property owners and city staff talk about what that new neighbourhood is going to look like. If you’ll recall, it burst into the headlines in the spring, when Premier […]

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