General rating of the project

  • Great

    Votes: 8 7.2%

  • Very Good

    Votes: 15 13.5%

  • Good

    Votes: 39 35.1%

  • So So

    Votes: 13 11.7%

  • Not Very Good

    Votes: 16 14.4%

  • Terrible

    Votes: 20 18.0%
  • Total voters
    111
cowGaryBerta said:
Scrolling down and thought those sea cans were a new podium rendering... had a *brief* moment of hope

Top 3 reasons the podium is bad urban design and how it could have been mitigated... go!
Click to expand...
Things the developer could do:
  1. Go a bit more classic Vancouverism: point tower with podium that gives the impression it's a normal standalone building that people would actually want to live in. Use better materials, more permeable, less soon-to-be-empty retail, more greenery and townhomes etc.
  2. Reduce auto-orientation of all access ramps and alleys, reducing the number of points and the width of all of them, A 2020 downtown condo building shouldn't brag in it's renderings a full semi-trailer (!) can access it's interior car port.....
  3. Your whole business case rests on attracting residents to live urban. Act like it, show some spine and design like it's an urban place not a weird highway accessible mega tower complex.

Things the city could do:
  1. Allow the developer to do their list above.
  2. Remove all parking requirements in the inner city, for this building and all future ones.
  3. Reduce 9th Avenue by between 1 and 3 lanes to give to the pedestrian realm and plant some street trees.
 
CBBarnett said:
Things the developer could do:
  1. Go a bit more classic Vancouverism: point tower with podium that gives the impression it's a normal standalone building that people would actually want to live in. Use better materials, more permeable, less soon-to-be-empty retail, more greenery and townhomes etc.
  2. Reduce auto-orientation of all access ramps and alleys, reducing the number of points and the width of all of them, A 2020 downtown condo building shouldn't brag in it's renderings a full semi-trailer (!) can access it's interior car port.....
  3. Your whole business case rests on attracting residents to live urban. Act like it, show some spine and design like it's an urban place not a weird highway accessible mega tower complex.

Things the city could do:
  1. Allow the developer to do their list above.
  2. Remove all parking requirements in the inner city, for this building and all future ones.
  3. Reduce 9th Avenue by between 1 and 3 lanes to give to the pedestrian realm and plant some street trees.
Click to expand...
Agreed with the points above. Lots of better examples exist on Pacific Avenue that are older (early to mid 2000s) which is a busy and wide road for Downtown Vancouver standards. As CB mentioned above, they did nothing to address the street and focussed on the autocourt in the centre. It is such an inherently anti-urban form. The materials and design of the podium along 9th Avenue does not resemble an attractive building or traditional form of building (which they do with the mid-rise at Park Central, for example). It uses very cheap materials that span the entire block length and create a large, cheap and monolithic base.

It would do better if the podium was more disconnected from the tower in a design sense and resembled a more traditional building scale and used warm and permanent feeling materials. They should have broken up the podium to feel like two, three or more distinctive buildings, even with using another colour of brick like they are doing at Curtis Block. Make it feel fine-grained even though it is a full-block development.

Here is a screenshot of an early 2000s building that is ho hum, but shows a better rhythm for a full block development on Pacific Ave in Vancouver.
1588093723450.png

Buildings resemble traditional building forms with a tower above. Breaks exist between the buildings often with townhouses at-grade. It serves to break up long spanning blocks from feeling long and monotonous. Needs material breaks and articulation and fenestration to break up a huge long mass of beige spandrel panel at West Village Towers. Also guaranteed the public realm in front will have little to no planting and will be of poor quality.


And here is the rendering for Curtis Block's podium along 12th which breaks up a full block development in a good way.
1588095559572.png
 

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cowGaryBerta said:
Scrolling down and thought those sea cans were a new podium rendering... had a *brief* moment of hope

Top 3 reasons the podium is bad urban design and how it could have been mitigated... go!
Click to expand...
Here are my reasons, at least a couple anyway, and sort of tied into each other:
-My biggest beef is that the podium is too flat on the 9th ave side. I never tend to like large flat walls of any type.
-Too much of one type of material, and combined with the large flat wall amplifies it even more.

I think the best way to mitigate it is what has been mentioned above...have the podium broken up, so it has a feel of separate buildings. Ultimately the best streetscapes IMHO are the ones made up of smaller individual buildings. It's not easy to do with a large multi tower project that takes up the whole block, but the Curtis Block podium looks like it could be a good example when finished. To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of any podiums on multi towers projects in Calgary. Some aren't terrible and are better than others, but none are great.

Easier said than done of course, but if I had a magic wand, I would have all blocks divided into at least 4 parcels or more, so inner city blocks were made up more of individual buildings.
 
I really don't like any podium that is designed to fill space. I do like the look of the Curtis Block podium. I don't think it achieves the look of individual buildings at all. I really hope I'm wrong once it's completed. There's too many podiums in the neighbourhood.
 
Dear Lord what a shit show! Absolutely horrendous! Cidex is shitting all over this city! I have a feeling the crown will be the final nail in the coffin.
 
The nightmare has only begun. Imagine what it’s gonna be like with that black spandrel on the crown. Then double it ☠️
 
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