This city life

Robson Square’s Secret Garden

Over the past few years, Robson Square has experienced a rebirth. Ever since it was renovated after the 2010 Winter Olympics, the area below and in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery on Robson Street - considered Vancouver’s only central public square - has become home to outdoor skating and hockey, food trucks and creative public seating during the summer.

These spaces are great for people watching and socializing with friends, but where do you go when you want to get away from the bustle of downtown?

I was looking for a quiet place to sit at lunchtime in the sunshine yesterday and realized that I have not ventured up the stairs to the Robson Square gardens in years. When I lived in the suburbs as a teen, my parents used to take us downtown at Christmas time and we would walk around the gardens and look at all the lights. Even though I work a block away from Robson Square, I hadn’t been up there since.

Most people forget the gardens are even there and if you aren’t from here, you would never know they exist. Arthur Erickson’s modernist design of Robson Square as a series of steps - some going down to a skating rink and some going up to the gardens which connect to the city’s law courts - has been criticized for going against common public space theory. That is, if you want people to get together in a public space, keep it at ground level (Rockefeller Centre in New York City is the only successful exception).

As a result, this beautiful space is rarely visited by anyone except lawyers (since the law courts connect to it). But, it is worth the visit any day, especially since there are so few places to find a quiet oasis downtown. There is even a patch of grass where you can sun yourself on one of those rare Vancouver days. Take advantage.

One Step Forward, One Step Back

Oh Vancouver, sometimes you give and sometimes you take away.

Moving Forward

This week, I was excited to hear that part of my vision for a more vibrant, Bryant Park-style ambiance at the North Plaza of the Vancouver Art Gallery is coming true with plans to bring food carts en masse to this underused public space. Details here:

Presented by the Street Food Vancouver Society and the Downtown Vancouver

January 24, 25, 26, 11am - 3pm

Vancouver Art Gallery, North Plaza: The much anticipated Street Food City is here. For three days during the Dine Out Vancouver Festival on the north plaza of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Street Food City is your opportunity to sample from a collection of Vancouver’s Street Food carts all in one convenient location! Gather and feast on delicious food prepared by these vendors. 

Seriously. I plead with the Street Food Vancouver Society and the City of Vancouver - lets get some big ol’ picnic tables out there and make it permanent - at least for the summer?

I have high hopes for this. Last summer’s Picnurbia installation in Robson Square proved that if you build it, they will come.

The Vancouver Art Gallery North Plaza: no chairs….not much of anything really.  

Imagine if the North Plaza of the Art Gallery looked like this: Streets! Trees! People eating!

Moving Backward

In other less good news, Vancouver decided to uphold it’s Prohibition era drinking laws that don’t allow drinking while - gasp - watching movies. The Rio Theatre - an excellent venue that hosted live shows and movies - was threatened with having its liquor license revoked if it continues to show movies. According to a Province editorial:

The Rio has been forced to quit showing films because of a sweeping rule barring movie houses from serving liquor. The intent was to keep booze away from kids, but surely that could be accomplished without such a sweeping, blunt regulation.

Yes. It’s time the BC Liquor Board stopped treating citizens like alcoholics on the verge of a massive bender if heaven forbid, we are allowed to drink at the movies, or buy a bottle of wine at the grocery store for that matter. There isn’t really much the City of Vancouver can do about this issue, since it’s provincial jurisdiction. Maybe one day we can be like our equally, but sometimes cooler sister city, Portland. It has a great movie theatre called The Living Room where you can kick back in cozy chairs with a glass of wine and an indy flick. I’ve been there and it beats drinking at home in front of the TV.

Portland’s Living Room theater lobby (above) and cozy seating

Creativity and City Life

The distinguishing characteristic of the creative class is that its members engage in work whose function is to “create meaningful new forms.” The super- creative core of this new class includes scientists and engineers, university professors, poets and novelists, artists, entertainers, actors, designers, and architects, as well as the “thought leadership” of modern society: nonfiction writers, editors, cultural figures, think-tank researchers, analysts, and other opinion-makers.” 

Initially, I wanted to write a post about creativity in general and how fulfilling and necessary it is on a personal level. However, more research is showing that it makes for great cities too. Richard Florida’s bestselling book, The Rise of the Creative Class, asserts that the key to successful cities and economic growth lies in the ability to attract this creative class and to translate that underlying advantage into creative economic outcomes (in the form of new ideas, new high-tech businesses and regional growth).  

Although Richard Florida refers to the creative class as people who are employed in a career that involves “creating meaningful new forms” or “thought leadership”, I would argue that it is more than this. Elementary school teachers can be great musicians, plumbers can be art patrons and public servants working in public relations can take up blogging (that’s me we’re talking about!).

Photo: Tomas Svab, Vancouver Art Gallery

I think a great city is one where people express themselves creatively – whether they are paid to do so or not - and support the arts (going to galleries, concerts, theatre, etc.).  This is much more important to city life than being surrounded by a bunch of “creative”  think-tank researchers and university professors who might drive home every night and watch the latest episode of American Idol (like that ever happens, but you get the point). My point is that it is important to pursue creativity and appreciate art, no matter what your career is.

What happens when creativity is not pursued?

I went through a period where I was feeling uninspired at work. I had been so focused on external goals like my career, getting promoted, getting a house, finishing my Masters degree, etc. , that I had stopped discovering new music, learning new things and writing – something I’ve always loved. Gradually over the last few years, I’ve started improving my French and playing guitar again and writing on my blog to share my ideas and interests in city life. I’ve also found social networking sites like Twitter and Tumblr have exposed me to other people’s ideas and inspirations, which is even more motivating. 

Having all of these outlets to express myself creatively has made me more productive at work and motivated me to get out there and appreciate other people’s creative expressions by going to concerts, art shows, public lectures, etc.

Ultimately, people feed off of each other’s creativity and that makes for great cities.

The Cheaper Show in Vancouver this year. Photo credit wurkingartist

Having a Picnurbia in Robson Square

Robson Square finally reopened to the public a few weeks ago (following a year of renovations). In a short window of time before the Square is split in two by the reopening of the 800 block of Robson Street to traffic, Vancouverites are finally getting a chance to enjoy this public space through a design project called Picnurbia.  Picnurbia is an undulating beach landscape encouraging people to have a seat, gather and relax without going to Vancouver’s more common public spaces - the seawall and beaches.

It is part of the City’s summer-long VIVA Vancouver project, to transform street spaces into people places and provide extra space to walk, bike, dance, skate, sit, hang out with friends and meet neighbours. Picnurbia was created by Loose Affiliates, a design collective of architects who were awesome enough to answer my questions. Here are their thoughts on Robson Square and Vancouver’s public spaces.

Photo of Picnurbia by Krista Jahnke c/o Loose Affiliates

How did you come up with the idea for Picnurbia?

Originally, we proposed an undulating croquet and picnic landscape to the City of Vancouver’s Viva Vancouver Competition.

Earlier, when we had contemplated what design idea to propose, we had discussed how much we enjoyed picnicking last summer in Montreal’s parks with our friends.  We thought we’d miss that this summer so we decided to propose an idea for a croquet-picnic-spot. The design went through a lot of revisions and changes after this original proposal. The focus shifted from croquet to picnicking, and the site changed. Originally Picnurbia was proposed for the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, but after a tense neighbourhood meeting where members of a local strata voiced their opposition to their street being closed for part of the summer it was obvious that we needed to find a new site. The City proposed placing Picnurbia on Robson, as the construction was finishing, and the street would be remaining closed until Labour Day. It’s exciting to see Picnurbia now on Robson Square.

Do you feel that Robson Square and the front of the Art Gallery are well-designed public spaces? What would you do to improve them?

We think that Robson Square is an amazing spot in the city. There’s a lot of problems with the design of this square. But there’s also many design features that are working. One of the major problems is the Street itself. Having a busy street with through traffic cuts the whole plaza in half. No one wants to hang out on a square and watch cars. People want to watch people. Second the connections from the Street to the underground are not inviting. I don’t want to go down there from Robson. The glass domes are nicely renovated, but they block the view down into the lower level or across to the art gallery or courthouse. These glass domes aren’t really needed as the space underneath is artificially lit in the daytime. We would like to see the city engage with an architect to do a redesign of this space in the future - but implement a design that preserves aspects of the square. 

Picnurbia is an excellent opportunity to test how something else can happen on Robson Square. People experienced during the Olympics the potential of Robson Square, but I think many people chalked that up to it being a special time in the city, and everything felt like it had more potential. But now, with Picnurbia up, and so many people using the installation, it becomes clear that there is potential on this site every day, not just when something special is happening.

Picnurbia acts as a destination between two very busy shopping districts in the city. We have watched many, many tired tourists and shoppers sit down on it. It is perfectly located to tap the flow of pedestrians moving between Granville and Robson. It is important to give those groups a space to take a break, especially in the summer. Picnurbia is rather an experiment than the solution, we know that. But we are convinced that it’s a step in the right direction.
 

Photo of Picnurbia by Krista Jahnke c/o Loose Affiliates

How did the Loose Affiliates come together?

Katy, Olena and Alana are recent graduates of UBC’s Masters of Architecture program, and Philipp met them as a visiting student. He completed his degree at ABK Stuttgart last year. We came together after Phillip lost his job and answered the call for a public space competition. We share an interest in design and share the feeling that Vancouver has incredible amounts of unrealized potential in its public spaces. And we also all like colour. We are not fans of beige everything.

What other projects would you like to work on in Vancouver (or elsewhere)?

We believe that colour has a positive impact on the urban environment, especially in Vancouver thanks to the overcast conditions that regularly occur. On top of that we see that Vancouver is dominated by only two of them: safe and safer. There is the blueish-greyish-green colour (‘City of Glass’) and, of course, beige. The colour of the yellow/orange picnic waves of Picnurbia have proven to be fun, vibrant, and inviting to people of all ages and backgrounds.  

Soon we hope to see what a series of rainbow logs on the beaches of Vancouver can do in terms of way finding (“Come meet me by the pink log!”) and celebrating the anomaly that is Vancouver’s urban beaches using a temporary, biodegradable paint. The natural pigments would fade over time, returning the beach to its original state.

 

Photo c/o Loose Affiliates

What do you think makes a good public space?

Right now we are testing the notion that an unfamiliar but inviting picnic landscape situated in the center of Vancouver might make for an enticing public space. There are many different combinations the world over that make for comfortable, inviting, and ultimately popular public spaces at a myriad of scales.

Some common key ingredients are the possibility to rest (for free!) and enjoy good views, of people, the city and a well-arranged square-setting. The option of protection from the elements and of good food or drink close by in a busy pedestrian-friendly and vehicle-free environment.

Why can’t the Vancouver Art Gallery Plaza be like Bryant Park?

A few days ago, I was returning from my lunch break to my office in Downtown Vancouver and I passed through the front plaza of the Vancouver Art Gallery. 

Maybe it was the warm weather, but it seemed ridiculous that this large, central, sunny public space in Vancouver was practically empty. And, the only place people could sit was on the few measly rows of steps outside the Gallery. Surrounding these steps are interconnecting concrete paths, bark mulch and a noisy fountain that seems like more of an irritant that a pleasing piece of public art (it’s pretty noisy, right?). 

Just Passing Through: The Art Gallery Plaza (photo courtesy of The Georgia Straight)

When I got back to my office, I put out a tweet out into the universe: 

Walked through the Vancouver Art Gallery ‘lawn’ today. Such a huge public space in the sun and barely anywhere to sit! What’s the deal? 

To my surprise, the Vancouver Art Gallery  (@VanArtGallery) responded: 

Thanks for your question about the plaza. Working on getting you some info. 

Numerous urban enthusiasts, impassioned public space advocates and Vancouverites in general have bemoaned the lack of one large, central public plaza in Downtown Vancouver. In fact, most of our gathering places are seawalls, urban parks and shopping streets. Recently, Spacing Magazine launched in Vancouver and announced the top public spaces in Canada. Here are the Vancouver ones that made the list:

1. Seawall
2. Granville Island
3. Stanley Park
4. Vancouver Art Gallery Stairs
5. Pioneer Place/Pigeon Park
6. Commercial Drive
7. English Bay First Beach
8. Victory Square
9. Kitsilano Beach Park
10. Robson Square

As I mentioned, most of these public places are parks, seawalls, and commercial streets - except for the Art Gallery Steps and Robson Square, which are basically connected to the Art Gallery’s front plaza and could all be considered one big public space. Together, these places comprise the only central public plaza in Vancouver.

Could this public plaza be better? Absolutely.

Earlier this month, I wrote about Robson Square and the improvements being made there, including potentially closing the 800 block of Robson Street (which cuts through Robson Square) to cars and buses.

Now on the other side of Robson Square, we have the Art Gallery Plaza looking pretty dismal these days.

BUT, the more I think about it, could this space not be as vibrant as Bryant Park in New York City? Sure, it is not as big. But the Art Gallery Plaza is similar to the steps of the New York Library. Except the New York Library steps are surrounded by a lush green park with trees surrounding its perimeter and lots of SEATS.

Bryant Park: what could be better than seats and trees?

So, that is all I am asking for really with the Art Gallery Plaza: a tree lined perimeter, some grass and seats. 

What do you think? 

I’ll let you know when I hear back from the Art Gallery.