I can’t let this weekend go without mentioning how lovely the city looked this morning, especially for all my (perhaps) homesick overseas readers. With the combination of the wisps of fog floating around the downtown towers with blue sky behind, the effect was eerily beautiful.
As I was driving into the city across the Georgia viaduct this morning, the glass Accenture tower looked as though it had golden rays emanating from it, as the sun refracted through the fog. Behind it, the opalescent dots on the Shangri-La tower glowed red in the mist. I have to say, I love looking at that building.
I haven’t always been that crazy about some of architect Jim Cheng’s earlier work with all the cross-hatching and panels. But I love looking at the Shangri-La, with its clean lines and milky glass that’s different from the usual car-showroom kind of glass on many condos. And especially those large iridescent dots at the intersection points of the windows, shimmering with a mix of pale green and lavender and gold.
And then, later in the day, as I was coming across the Alex Fraser Bridge from Surrey back to Vancouver, the towers along the ridgeline of Burnaby and the cluster at the New Westminster end were ghostly silhouettes, with the mountains behind them.
I get frustrated with our city sometimes and the way we’ve trashed it with bad developments and junky buildings and lack of imagination. But today, I was reminded of how beautiful it can be.