Queen Elizabeth Park and Conservatory

Queen Elizabeth Park is a 130 acre municipal park located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on Little Mountain (elevation approximately 500 feet above sea level). Its surface was scarred at the turn of the twentieth century when it was quarried for its rock, which served to build Vancouver’s first roadways. The top of the ‘mountain’ has been capped with a restaurant, a popular site for special events and for dining with a view. Our visit was not quite so auspicious in that we caught a grey, drizzly day with fog obscuring much of the view.

We were more than happy to take advantage of lunch in the bar, which had both indoor and indoor-outdoor seating areas

And we could tell from the immediate views that the park would be lovely in the spring when things were in flower.

In 1930, the park’s floral future was established when the BC Tulip Association suggested the notion of transforming the quarries into sunken gardens. (This concept has been carried out in dramatic fashion at Butchart Gardens just outside Victoria, BC, which may have been an inspiration). By the end of that decade, the site had been turned over to the Vancouver Park Board for park and recreation purposes, and was dedicated as such by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth on their visit to Vancouver in 1939. From that time, Park staff incrementally transformed the overgrown hillsides into Canada’s first civic arboretum. The popular quarry gardens were designed by Park Board Deputy Superintendent Bill Livingstone and were unveiled in the early 1960s. Prentice Bloedel’s gift of $1.25 million funded the open reservoirs and built the country’s first geodesic conservatory and a sculpture, Henry Moore’s Knife Edge Two Piece 1962–65.

The Bloedel Floral Conservatory opened on December 6, 1969.  The triodetic dome frame was manufactured entirely in Ottawa and shipped 3,000 miles across the country to Queen Elizabeth Park. Once it arrived, the structural framework was erected in just 10 days. The entire dome and plaza took 18 months to complete.

This dome was built at about the same time as the ones that Buckminster Fuller was designing for the Montreal World’s fair. By comparison, it’s not as spatially challenging and sits rather heavily close to the ground.

It also doesn’t engage in the decorative geometric possibilities of the earlier 19th century arboretums, such as the ones in my blog posts from London and Glasgow. But given its time frame, it still creates the dramatic visitor experience of silhouetted leaf forms and contrasting light and shadow that we’ve come to antipate in these spaces.

The enclosed tropical garden houses 500 exotic plants and flowers

and it does show off something I had not previously seen in my arboretum visiting – more than a hundred free-flying tropical birds.

They’re too well fed and acclimated to be anything but tame of course, but on a grey day their colors and songs added a sparkle that other arboretums could often use.

Vancouver Public Library

Vancouver Public Library is the public library system for the city of Vancouver, British Columbia and includes 22 locations. It is the third-largest public library system in Canada. During the late 19^th century, the American industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie was giving money to cities and towns to build libraries. In 1901, the City of Vancouver approached Carnegie about donating money for a new library and he provided $50,000 to build the library if Vancouver would provide free land and $5,000 annually to support its operation. The first building was designed by Vancouver architect George Grant in the Romanesque Renaissance style, was eventually replaced with a modernist building on Burrard and then moved in 1995, to its current location on Library Square. The City held a design competition and chose the design by Moshe Safdie and DA Architects – the most radical and yet the public favorite. (Wikipedia photo below)

The program included a 21 story office as part of a deal with the federal government to obtain the land and fund the project. Library Square occupies a full city block in Downtown Vancouver. Centered on the block, the library is a nine-story rectangular box containing book stacks and services, surrounded by a free-standing, elliptical, colonnaded “thick wall”.

The rectangular ‘box’ contains most of the working functions of the library in an orderly cruciform circulation pattern with a bit of a plain though not unpleasant character.

This ‘wall’ features reading and study areas that are accessed by bridges spanning skylit light wells.

The carrels themselves attract users partly by their separation from the busier parts of the building and partly by their adjacency to the large windows.

The library’s internal glass facade overlooks an enclosed concourse formed by a second elliptical wall that defines the east side of the site. This glass-roofed concourse serves as an entry foyer to the library and the more lively pedestrian activities at ground level.

A dynamic cut in the main floor offers access to the floor below

And in a nod to technology, books are moved by carrousel and belts, just as your luggage is at the airport.

Robson Square – Vancouver Law Courts

The Law Courts building is part of the landmark Robson Square complex in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It was designed by renowned Canadian architect Arthur Erickson. The Law Courts building occupies the southern block of the three city block complex, provincial government offices the middle block, and the Vancouver Art Gallery (previous post) the northern block. The building is used exclusively by the two higher courts of the Province of British Columbia: the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal.

We approached from the Art Gallery side, passing under Robson, next to the skating rink with its programmed LED light show.

The provincial offices have been partially hidden with landscaping and park space so one of the architectural challenges was to take the public circulation up and over this center area so as to reach the main atrium level of the law courts building.

Erickson accomplished this with what are now popularly known as ‘stramps’, a clever combination of stairs and ramps that build in a relatively gentle switchback ramp system to the more direct but steeper stairs. Below you can get a sense of the amount of grade change that had to be accommodated from the skating rink level to the park above.

The passage through the park contains some casual spaces (that honestly felt somewhat out of character for a courthouse) The landscape design was undertaken in Erickson’s office by landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander. Incorporating trees and landscaping onto a building was a new concept for Vancouver at the time.

Some of the more direct spaces felt pretty severe by contrast –

These, however, accomplished the functional task of bridging over the street below that flows under the office building to the law courts in the background.

The building is a 7-storey structure housing 35 courtrooms and is 138 ft in height. (The original scheme, for a tall tower, had been rejected earlier; so Erickson developed this horizontal approach that he likened to a tall building laying on its side.)

It is largely covered by a roof of green-tinted glass over a space-frame structure covering approximately 50,000 square feet, more than one acre, of occupied space. The entry and public circulation spaces are open to this roof, forming a large skylit indoor public atrium. In this wide-angle view you can get a sense of the full length of the building.

A statue of Themis greets you in this large space; but the actual greeting occurs in a small sign-in office off to one side.

One odd aspect to the experience is that the building seemed almost empty. By looking carefully we could tell that there were courtrooms in session; but that’s not self-evident from the atrium. Nor is it possible to tell whether other functions are included as well.

For architects, there’s lots of geometry at work; and it can be appreciated symmetrically (above) and diagonally (below)

There’s no question that this architecture establishes a formal presence for a significant court structure. It’s hard to see, though, where the gritty human functions that often accrue to the trial experience would take place in this very abstract space.