@Everyman #50

Thank you for correcting me on that fact. However, the City has the power to block the signage through the application of the by law and I would still expect the same decision whether they are acting as Landlord or as Council.

Regrettable as it is, the naming horse has already left the barn. It appears that rich people and companies like their names all over stuff, and not just in the private sector.
At least in the public domain, Pattison or the Diamonds giving money in exchange for their name of the building contributes to the public weal. While we were forced to say GM Place and now Rogers Arena, that money simply went into the Aquilini’s designer jeans.
It seems a plaque acknowledging a generous contribution has gone the way of the dodo bird. Tant pis!

Roger, 10, makes an important point. The idea of a ‘cultural precinct’ like a stand alone gallery of ‘fine’ art is not valid in this day or for the future. Just focusing on the ‘gallery’ is a mistake. Any gallery, if in this general area, needs to find it’s fit. I doubt very much that starcitects from the moon will be interested in achieving that as others have noted.

The scope of this exercise needs to be expanded. The first order of business is to do an urban design plan for this area to, among other things, bring it together. The CBC addition and condo tower have helped, but the area has much more potential for a rich mix of uses. Focusing on a stand alone gallery building is simply more of the same.

Everyman’s #19 suggestion of the Post Office has considerable merit. It could also house the VSO’s concert hall, street level shops and condos on the upper floor and roof. The Feds also would find it psychologically easier to kick in the property at $0 or a reduced price than to add to the national debt with a $xxx,000,000 gift. Unfortunately I seem to recall recently seeing that it has been sold.

The offensive idea of not allowing locals to compete further confirms the no longer valid idea of ‘preciousness’ in the art world. We have some of the best architects in the world right here. Why can’t they be in the running?

@waltyss #56

But you seem to be prepared to give Trudeau a pass. Ideology or are you just envious of those who have worked harder than you and accomplished more.

Its to bad nobody chose to read the interview at the link I gave at #18 where you will see the arrogance and how self involved these so called starchitects are.They could care less about what the great unwashed think or can afford as long as they can create under their name some monstrosity that puts another feather in their cap.Talk about stroking you’re own ego.And I’m talking about architects and politicians alike.
n Advance’

SPIEGEL: Do you have a solution that would enable architects, citizens and politicians to find their way out of this mess?

Gerkan: Developing and expressing solutions is one thing. Putting them into practice in a political landscape that’s tied to a four-year cycle is another. Politicians depend on making a name for themselves with major projects during their terms in office.

Ingenhoven: The solution is to plan more intensively in advance.

Gerkan: That sounds like a panacea, but it isn’t one. The pure truth doesn’t get you far in this business. The opera house in Sydney would never have been approved if they had known how much it would cost from the start. It only works with fake documents.

SPIEGEL: With a lie at the very beginning?

I found the attitudes very disturbing in this interview…….but hey…. I’m not all progressive and all so I guess I just don’t get it??

Bill@60. I fail to see what corner I painted myself into when I say I won’t rise to your bait because it is off topic.
And gman @69, you don’t have to go very far to find building costs outrunning original estimates. Just look at our own new convention centre which came in about twice the original estimate under the tutelage of that darling of the right, Gordon Campbell. No startitechs or progressives in sight.
Personally I would like to see more buildings by startitects and more public art (á la Chicago) in Vancouver’s architectural wasteland.
While Bill McCreery believes that we have some of the best architects in the world here in Vancouver, the evidence of that is not found in our building landscape. Maybe as someone has noted, they are designing buildings elsewhere. The problem may not be architects but owners who simply want more glass curtain wall and will not pay for public art.
In any event, as I have said elsewhere, I do not think the new art gallery will be built because we do not have the necessary depth of private donors who will contribute. Well, they might if we agree to call it the Pattison-Diamond-Audain-Rennie-Wilson-Lee-West Coast ReductionArt Gallery.
I would also love it if someone investigated the claim that local architects were told not to apply on their own and if so, what the reasons were. It’s been put forward as a fact and as we all know, all too often on this blog what is put forward as fact, isn’t.

Bill – good commentary on the Van Dusen entry renovation.

I am not convinced that renovations were not required, but there is something a bit underwhelming once you enter the new pavilion.

The walk from the parking lot to the entryway is also uninspiring, all you want to do is hurry through it. They missed the opportunity to build desire and anticipation. Or – the botanical wonder and pleasure awaits only those who have paid the admission.

Gman and a Dave, in total agreement. I read the link and was totally shocked by the admission that they couldn’t possibly predict what a project would cost, even within reason. I thought they were supposed to be experts, and when questioned they completely played the fool. Disgusting.

@Bill McCreery 62-I’m sure somebody sold the placement of the new pavilion away from the parking lot as “green”. Anything that inconveniences car owners, no matter how petty, gets brownie points with this administration.

I’ve always been opposed to this move since the current location is the most desirable in the entire city. It’s a pity that they can’t expand in to other portions of Robson Square instead.

If they do manage to get the money for the building, I hope that they include a great deal of space for stores and restaurants because I doubt whether the gallery alone is going to be able to attract people to what is basically a barren plot with almost no retail surrounding it.

As for not having local architects, I think that one benefit might be that a non-local will not have been kowtowed by the usual whiners who hate anything that might compete with the ‘natural beauty’….as if a building is going to compete with a mountain in the first place. Then at least we might get a building that will stands out from all of the scared, timid architecture that we’ve been saddled with for so many decades.

But, as others have said, I doubt whether this will be built at all considering the economy isn’t nearly as good as we were lead to believe. Tax-generated revenue will be hard to come by for quite some time.

If I may suggest rather than handing over public contracts to self aggrandizing international starchitects who have the hubris to openly admit they in collusion with politicians put out completely fraudulent numbers in order to get the ball rolling,what is better known as getting your foot in the door,we have other options.The first is to wake the f.,.k up to the real world and the second is anytime a public building is proposed it first goes,at no cost,too our Universities and Collages as a competition and the public votes for the fully pre-funded winner.
Creativity has nothing to do with a tweed jacket,ascot and color rimmed glasses.I would rather have our own creative youth benefit from these projects than posers and politicians.

With the exception of Roger and Bill M., it’s easy to see no one above has any project management or construction experience. There are a lot of armchair architects here who have never set foot in a design office.

It can be a very tough gig. Every project ever has cost concerns. Prices of materials and labour can change by the month within a three-year design and construction schedule. A private developer or public agency’s priorites can change. The client representative can change, and along with it a personal management philosophy (fair negotiator vs micro manager vs slasher). Separate architects can be used for the conceptualization / design development and construction drawings, and therein a project’s overall continuity, design intent and drawing / specification quality can be shot to hell.

I was invloved in a $50 million project where an architect recommended keeping high energy conservation standards and had charts proving a very dramatic savings in energy costs over the 40-year life of the building. The client’s project manager decised to call for cuts to the contruction costs by diminishing the passive conservation elements to make his office look good.

You get what you pay for. And in the case of VAG, the public sector will be paying for heating and cooling the interior spaces for decades beyond the initial construction. Slightly higher capital costs for solariums and geoexchange heating & cooling, can indeed save very significant amounts in the ongoing operating costs over the long term. Just ask the Engineering Dept why they are slowly changing streetlights over to LEDs at a higher capital cost.

Any of these factors (and much more) can result in a wholesale redesign, and renegotiating one’s fee after the last set was eaten by firm staff grinding away on now-superseded drawings with expensive computer hardware and the latest program upgrades can be as onerous as writing a proposal in an overly competitive market. And most professionals spend a helluva lot of time writing proposals, of which maybe one in 8 are awarded to their firm. It’s become an industry whereas it used to be a profession.

A “starchitect” (now there’s an overused non-word for you) can let the managing partner worry about such daily headaches, but this is the bread and butter that keeps the firm going. The threat of bancruptcy or underpaid staff walking out will bring most egos down to earth.

The very best firms, including the ego(s) — and let’s admit that talent often comes with an ego attached — at the top, have very good management practices. The best architects lead firms with superb internal management and can and should meet all the client’s program requirements, bring the project in early and below budget and still win awards, which are a measuring tool of progress.

There are several cost control mechanisms that can be used, which include multiple layers of estimating based on the most recent unit and labour prices prior to tendering, but that is no guarantee. If the bids still come in high, then the tender can be cancelled. When this happens it isn’t necessarily the fault of the architect, especially if s/he practiced due diligence on cost control. A redesign and retender are in order. Likewise, if one or two bids are abnormally low, that can be as much of a red flag as bids that are too high. Many contractors make their fortune in change orders, that is, changes to the design after the tender is awarded. No contractor will ever credit you a dollar for a dollar in these cases, and their CO markup ratios are higher than retail over wholesale in department stores.

The critics always focus on an easy target for every little thing: the architect. Very little attention is given to the client’s and contractor’s role in a project. A client can impose many requirements or change their minds late in the process without realizing that every hour working on the drawings is billed. A contractor who purposely underbids to be awarded the project by powerful beancounters who do not understand project management, then dings you with cost overruns, will likely be paid handsomely while the architect gets the blame.

Then there is the unexpected. The world’s largest granite boulder field below the surface, Border Services holding up vital components in customs for weeks, political interference, etc, can unduly affect a project.

Let’s not blame all architects for the failures of urban projects. I personally hope for the best for VAG because it will be around for a long, long time.

With all due respects, MB, I think most people recognize that there is risk involved in developing ANY product in any industry, so please don’t pretend this is some mystical concept only architects can grasp. In my industry, there is always an “over-runs not to exceed 10%” clause included in production contracts. Unless the project scope significantly changes, there is a high likelihood you’d be turfed for exceeding that 10% maximum, or at least get penalized heavily and start losing money on the project.

In contrast, every single one of the Liberal’s boondoggles listed was at least 35% over budget, with some coming in at a whopping 100+% over. And while PPP’s were sold to us as virtually risk-free by a government that claims to run the province like a business, in fact ALL the risk was placed on the taxpayer, with apparently no indemnification or penalty in place to protect against over-runs (let alone the outright lies and fake documents the architects in the Spiegel interview admit to). What businessman would be so reckless? Pretty simple: one whose own money wasn’t at stake.

Either the firms involved in these projects are staffed by complete morons, or they are staffed by people who know exactly how to play the “let’s get rich off the public purse” game (nudge-nudge, wink-wink). The Spiegel interview makes it crystal clear which is the case.

We are talking over 7 billion dollars just in over-runs in the past 5 years across these BC Liberal projects. I could understand one or two of the projects encountering issues like you described, but when it happens with virtually every single project, and the costs balloon so outrageously, its pretty hard to not to believe that something else is going on. In Germany, such obvious larceny of public funds caused riots, election defeats, tarnished reputations, unrelenting negative press, and a parliamentary inquiry. What happened here? None of the above.

The only related inquiry that has happened here was associated with the Leaky Condo fiasco, which wiped out thousands of Vancouverites’ life savings and caused years of legal battles, long drawn out reconstructions, and heavy stress on people’s lives. Just once, I’d like to hear a simple apology from an architect or builder for this mess, rather than another litany of excuses and blame shifting like the one you have graced us with.

MB you are so full of bullshit,you revert to the typical Alinsky tactic of playing the man not the ball then you go on a long winded rant of bullshit excuses.The problem that you have is that we are talking about taxpayer funded projects not private and if you’re anything like you boast to be then you’re simply a liar.You know damn well what this is about but you want to muddy the waters with your BS and make assumptions about others knowledge of this industry,well you’re dead wrong in you’re assumptions,Ive spent my whole life cleaning up after assholes like you.I find it laughable how you and your ilk are so full of yourselves when all you do is draw such simple things like buildings,try building a refinery or chemical plant or pulp mill.If I gave my granddaughter a box of crayons she could do the same thing as these lying clowns produce.I know very well how this game is played and what you have written makes me sick because you know perfectly well what its about..Thanks MB for showing everyone what kind of person you really are.

gman, crawl back under your rock. You soil this site with your filth every time you post.

I don’t hear any discussion at all among the people I know about the art gallery, and none about the “need” for a new building. I think the people in charge have to do a lot more to engage the community before they’ll get the massive amount of money they want. I remember the promises made when they wanted to take over the old courthouse. We don’t seem to be noticed on the world stage. The major exhibitions don’t come here, and we don’t seem to do much with what we have. Anytime I go to a large U.S. city I see a much more active civic arts scene. Here, it all seems to take place outside of the VAG. Maybe the time for a large public gallery in Vancouver has come and gone.

Bill @79
The ball is in play, and that makes the Larwill Park site the potential home of a new VAG. The subdivision of the block is the framework of the urban design that will follow. This subdivision should be made on the basis of a masterplan for the entire block. A diagonal division will work well for the gallery with a tower on the corner of Beatty and Georgia.
This tower can go as high as is required by the project pro-forma. The design challenge requires establishing cultural relevancy for this institution suggesting that a bold move with-in the local context is required. This is how nowhere becomes somewhere. Artists need this project more than anyone else and if it can be realized in this way then we should be finding ways to make that happen and not making arguments about why it can’t happen.

MB 83
Its unfortunate that you are unable to address the subject for very long.
Its unfortunate that you try and mislead with long winded posts that have nothing to do with the evidence that comes directly from the mouths of these self promoting starchitects.
Its unfortunate that you use your title ( if you are an architect ) for a political purpose.
Its unfortunate that you would defend the admissions that were made by your peers that effect taxpayers around the globe.
Its unfortunate that you chose the side of the scam artists rather than your fellow citizens.
Its unfortunate that you cant have an honest conversation if the facts disagree with the party line.
PS: I await your long list of privately funded buildings that have gone over budget by 1…2….or 300%..If that was true we would all be living in tents.
PS#2: Don’t lose faith in your cause as long as you have Witless on your side,way to go.
PS#3: I fully expect you to hold you’re buddy Witless to the same standards you want to hold me too.After all he is the one who a long time ago took the fun out of these discussions.
PS#4: I make no apology’s for my response as I am the one who speaks honestly.

Post #76 reminded me that Ms. Bula has on at least one occasion previously threatened to ban gman from this site.
Now, Ms. Bula. as do many of us, recognizes that we have an obligation to accommodate those suffering from a mental disability to the point of undue hardship. My only question to Ms. Bula is: “in the case of gman, haven’t we reached that point?”