Welcome to the latest instalment of 'How We Host', our column devoted to all things entertaining from those who know a thing or two about having a good time. Next to dissect the fine art of entertaining is actor, model, author and activist, Pamela Anderson.

In a career that’s spanned fame and activism, Pamela Anderson has ventured from a humble upbringing to the forefront of Hollywood stardom. For a new generation, however, Anderson is probably best known for her stunning bare-faced beauty looks. For women of all ages, the liberation of seeing the 1990s bombshell go make-up free, especially in the over-saturated era of Facetune and filler, felt like a breath of fresh air.

Her life at home is just as down to earth. These days, Anderson lives a quiet life on her seven-acre coastal property on Vancouver Island, where she grounds herself with gardening. 'I read to my plants – I talk to them, sing, and they talk back,’ she says. ‘My Finnish grandfather always told me that the trees spoke to him.’

Still, Anderson has been busy in recent years. In 2024 she released a plant-based recipe book I love You and the TV show Cooking With Love. She’s also released a new furniture collection, ‘The Sentimentalist’, with Olive Ateliers. Inspired by her memories of staying at her grandmother’s home along the Salish Sea and her love of the outdoors (‘I must be outdoors in every season, to touch the earth with my feet and hands,’ she says), the collection comprises 40 indoor-outdoor pieces, ranging from a lounger to a dog bed, crafted from natural rattan and solid teak.

We caught up with Anderson to hear how she makes guests (and her dogs) feel right at home, from chicory dandelion coffee on the dock, to a picnic of minty pea-potato pierogis.

How Pamela Anderson hosts

Wallpaper*: Are you a relaxed host and pull it all together at the last minute, or is there careful planning?

Pamela Anderson: It depends. I’m more spontaneous these days, and it’s a challenge when last-minute guests come, but a visiting cake and tea are easy to throw together. I love my three-tier tea platter. I am, and have always been, a big planner when it comes to parties. I’m known for wilder ones from when I was younger. I’ve even created circuses in the forest; if you were there, you know.

W*: Can you cook?
PA: I like to think I can, but cooking is never-ending. It’s an experiment. I love to learn. I love to use what is in my garden and go from there. Simplicity is actually better, I find.

W*: What was the first dish you perfected to feed a group of friends or family?
PA: I don’t think I have perfected anything, but my lentil soup is a crowd favourite, and it always comes out a little different. I crave it.

W*: Drinks on arrival – what’s on offer?
PA: I like to offer water. Sparkling is nice. Fewer people seem to drink these days, at least that I know of, though I have wine and champagne on hand. Rosé with ice cubes, also known as ‘a swimming pool’, is a poolside favorite and reminds me of the south of France.

W*: What’s your go-to menu, from starters to afters, whether homemade or bought in?
PA: All homemade, of course. My family loves my fresh sourdough. It’s a pleasant starter served with olive oil and sea salt. A fresh heirloom tomato salad from the garden, roasted cauliflower or cabbage are big favourites, and berries for dessert. All from the garden, ideally. I love to can my vegetables and pickle, so my pantry is full. In wintertime, we can still eat from our bounty.

I write things out by hand and plan in my journal. It can be a great source of inspiration. I doodle and write poems. I created a journal with [my beauty brand] Sonsie to share with others and to spark inner thoughts and ideas. A menu can be born of a walk in nature, or a look on my dog’s face. I make dinners for my dogs, too. For breakfast, they get homemade doggie granola with superfoods and probiotics.

W*: What’s on your dinner party playlist?
PA: Jazz is nice and doesn’t overpower conversation: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Stan Getz, Nina Simone.

W*: Who’s your dream dinner party guest?
PA: My kids and my dogs. I miss them. We all travel so much, and when we are all home together, at any one of our homes, it’s precious. We meet for dinners in restaurants all over the world, but a home-cooked meal together, with everyone participating (the boys are good cooks), connects the dots.

W*: Dish the dirt: what should a host never do?
PA: Never have bad lighting. Ambiance is important, and who wants to sit under a spotlight? Candles or natural light are best.

W*: What should a guest never do?
PA: I’ve noticed in my social scene that staying too long is the no-no, but leaving too soon isn’t cool either. You want to be engaged, interested, and polite. And don’t forget to bring something like flowers, wine, or sparkling water. It could even be wildflowers picked on the way.

W*: What’s the secret to a successful evening?
PA: Great conversation, good food and music. Good people leave lasting impressions and create memories. Human connection and romance are needed in the world. Friendship, too. We are all in this together, and the more we meet and encourage each other, the less alone we feel.

A new all-day café has sprung up in Vancouver’s downtown, with a space inspired by North American nostalgia. Behind the interiors is Vancouver-based McKinley Studios, who took inspiration from the 1990s – baseball clubhouses, early record shops, and varsity iconography – for the 2,800 square-foot space. McKinley Studios worked collaboratively on the interior design with owner Jess Reno, who previously founded the award-winning Nemesis Coffee (ranked the top coffee shop in Canada by the World’s 100 Best Coffee Shops 2026 list).

Bam Bam, Vancouver

‘As soon as you walk in, there’s an emphasis on immediately feeling the social aspect and a buzz of activity,’ says architect Walker McKinley, the founder and CEO of McKinley Studios. ‘You’re greeted by the team, the music is front and centre, and the experience unfolds naturally from there.’ Walking in, waxed stainless steel counters stretch across the space, with a curved cherry veneer bar. Built-in speakers pay homage to founder Reno’s love of music, as well as the record shop nostalgia inspiration. On the countertop, an enticing array of donuts and pastries sit on stainless steel pedestals, all baked in-house.

Anchored by warm woods and steel, the rest of the interiors comprise distinct yet interconnected spaces that balance nostalgic references with a futurist sensibility, underlining the design with a freshness and dynamism. ‘Jess and the team wanted to build an experiential world,’ says McKinley. ‘Our approach was to create a series of episodic spaces across the interior, each focused on different moments.’

A retro-futuristic metallic sofa and armchair are a compelling centrepiece, while a vibrant green communal banquette table is accented by an orb-like chandelier from Vancouver lighting studio A-N-D (the brand’s Pebble sconces also feature near the entrance). A dedicated retail space with powder blue lacquer shelving displays the Bam Bam’s debut apparel collection, which draws inspiration from vintage varsity apparel and features their bulldog iconography. Throughout, paintings from Filipp Jenikae reference early hip hop artists and street photography.

The menu at Bam Bam is playfully nostalgic. Classic coffees are served alongside speciality drinks like a cherry pie matcha, an apple pie latte, and diner-inspired cream sodas. A rotating assortment of pastries is on offer, such as a strawberry shiso doughnut or a honey sea salt roll, alongside a menu that features crispy fried chicken sandwiches. A selection of cocktails, such as a strawberry shiso negroni or hot honey margarita, extends the enticing nostalgia into the evenings.

Bam Bam is located at 160 W Georgia St, Vancouver, BC V6B 4P4, Canada

Canadian architect Arthur Erickson left behind a legacy of celebrated modernist buildings across his homeland – and beyond. One of his iconic works, the Waterfall Building, is now experiencing a new chapter. Originally designed in 1996 with Nick Milkovich Architects, the triangular concrete structure has been thoughtfully restored and reimagined by Vancouver- and London-based Sml Studio. Today, it’s home to Ellipsis, a café and cocktail bar that brings new life to the architectural landmark.

Ellipsis, Vancouver

Working collaboratively with Tetherstone Construction, Sml Studio sought to return the structure to its intended character by restoring the original interiors when possible and avoiding making any modifications. To echo Erickson’s architectural language, Sml studio also incorporated geometric elements through the furnishings, lighting and millwork. The structure’s new function as a café and cocktail bar also pays homage to the building’s original intent as a community-focused space.

Guests enter through a triangular concrete entrance within the building’s courtyard, demarcated by a curtain of water. The interiors are anchored by twin metallic bars, which were positioned to avoid touching the walls to preserve the integrity of the design. To balance the palette of concrete, steel, and glass, velvet amber seating adds a deep warmth and texture.

‘The material palette plays with transparency and light refraction,’ explain the Sml team, ‘inspired by James Turrell’s use of light as a material and Larry Bell’s explorations of layering and transparency.’ During the day, bright light streams through the glass. In the evening, a collaboration with Halo light maker Mandalaki projects a sunset glow onto the wall, adding warmth. ‘Since the location is tucked away from the main street, the Halo light is designed to draw people in from the courtyard,’ say the designers. Above the bar, pendant lights from Vancouver-based A-N-D provide soft illumination.

The all-day menu includes espresso-based coffees, as well as a playful selection of original cocktails named after questions intended to start conversations. Take the nostalgia-inspired Are We There Yet, which pairs Scotch with peanut butter cream and a strawberry jam cordial, or the What Keeps You Up at Night that features vodka alongside cocoa, espresso and a toasted rice pillow.

A range of small plates and larger dishes is on offer, from brunch in the morning to snacks to shared plates as the day progresses. In the evening ,as the light dims, guests dine on plates like crispy toasts topped with liver moose and boozy cherries, or marinated tomatoes with shiso leaf. Large plates are a perfect pairing to Ellipsis’ inventive cocktails, from a tender pappardelle with chanterelles and corn to a standout smoked duck breast served alongside plum sauce.

Ellipsis is located at 1540 W 2nd Ave #205, Vancouver, BC V6J 1H2, Canada.

With 2025 just around the corner, it’s time to make the important decision of where to celebrate the new year in style. Follow the instincts of Wallpaper* readers with this round-up of the most-read bar reviews of the past year. These hot spots around the world span from a minimalist London drinking den to an utterly decadent Las Vegas lounge and a subterranean New York negroni bar. Let cocktail hour begin…

The best bars to make for in 2025

Ama Bar in Vancouver, Canada

To reach Ama, a new Japanese-inspired cocktail and raw bar in Vancouver, one must first locate it. Bathed in orange light, its subtle signage can be hard to spot, but once found, guests are ushered through a discreet orange metal door, up a large staircase and into a space that could easily be a set backdrop for Blade Runner 2049. Designed by Canadian studio &Daughters, with branding by Glasfurd & Walker, the moodily-lit interiors are dominated by polished black granite surfaces, backlit shelves and textured plastered walls with semi-transparent golden mirrors, while the menu offers up inventive cocktails infused with Japanese flavours, such as jasmine and yuzu, as well as melt-in-the-mouth, predominantly raw seafood dishes.

Ama is located at 3980 Fraser St, Vancouver, BC V5V 4E4, Canada, @ama.rawbar

Bauhaus Warehaus in London, UK

Remy Savage is undoubtedly the mixologist of the moment, and his conceptual bar, A Bar with Shapes for a Name – represented by a yellow triangle, red square, and blue circle – is a Bauhaus-inspired triumph of functionalism and minimalism. Situated on Kingsland Road, between Shoreditch and Dalston, Shapes has swiftly become one of east London’s most buzzworthy destinations. This year, Savage expanded his vision with Bauhaus Warehaus, a sister venue also on Kingsland Road. Despite being a production facility, Warehaus is an inspiring place to drink and unwind, nestled among the shelves of bottles, colour-coordinated crates and stainless steel surfaces.

Bauhaus Warehaus is located at 538 Kingsland Rd, London E8 4AH, @bauhaus_warehaus

Thinking of dining out? See our reviews of the best new London restaurants.

Comblé Bar in Shizuoka, Japan

Comblé Bar, in Shizuoka (a few hours west of Tokyo on Japan’s Pacific Ocean coast), is considered one of the last publicly accessible spaces designed by the late Shiro Kuramata in Japan. Located on the first floor of an unassuming building, the bar features the designer’s hallmark style, blending geometry and sweeping curves with floating elements, a bold colour palette, and striking materials like acrylic, glass, and terrazzo. Opened in 1988, just three years before Kuramata’s passing, it was part of a series of projects he undertook in Shizuoka, a region known for its green tea and traditional crafts. A growing number of fans are making a pilgrimage to experience the space first-hand.

Comblé Bar is located at Seizen Bldg. 2F 2-7 Gofukucho, Aoi Ward, Shizuoka City, @comble.bar

El Minutito in Mexico City, Mexico

Mexico City café-bar El Minutito, designed by architect Lucas Cantú, was envisioned as a sanctuary for the enjoyment of life’s simple pleasures. Mirrors are strategically placed to reflect and expand the space, while wood infuses it with a warm, cosy atmosphere. At the central, custom-designed bar where a bespoke clock elegantly ticks away the minutes, paying homage to the café’s name (‘in a minute’ in Spanish) – guests can savour pastries, pan dulce and Mexican hot chocolate during the day. And, as evening falls, botanas (snacks) are served on dainty plates, while moreish cocktails mark the beginning of the evening as the music picks up pace.

El Minutito is located at Londres 28, Juárez, Cuauhtémoc, 06600 Mexico City, Mexico, @el.minutito

The Pinky Ring in Las Vegas, USA

Global design studio Yabu Pushelberg and Bruno Mars joined forces this year to unveil The Pinky Ring, a cocktail lounge and live music venue at the heart of Las Vegas’ Bellagio Resort and Casino, full of decadence and 1970s flair. From the plush velvets paired with marble tabletops to the no-phones policy, every detail evokes opulent nostalgia. Curved furnishings flow through the space, while a mirrored passageway showcasing Mars’ Grammy collection leads guests into the secluded 5,000 sq ft debonair retreat. Signature cocktails include the Mars Mocha (chocolate rum, Cognac, espresso, banana, and toasted sesame froth) or the Hooligan (tequila, Cointreau, agave nectar, lime, and jalapeño with a Tajín rim). Puns most likely intended.

The Pinky Ring is located within the Bellagio Hotel and Casino, 3600 S Las Vegas Blvd, Las Vegas, NV 89109, United States, bellagio.mgmresorts.com

Sotto in New York, USA

Tucked beneath Lupetto, a chic wood-fired Italian steakhouse in Manhattan’s Flatiron District, lies Sotto – a sleek negroni bar. Infused with the rich aromas of woody vermouth and burnt orange, Sotto’s low-lit, pink-and-gold-toned interiors set an irresistibly sultry mood. Its subterranean setting creates an immersive escape from the hustle above. Studio Parts and Labour accented the interiors with the old-world history of the location; bespoke highlights include a velvet-framed chandelier adorned with a squared grove of hand-dyed tassels and a special Hollywood-style banquette created in a quirky nook. The drink menu celebrates craft amari, featuring sparkling, white, rosé, and red wines, alongside bold and complex cocktails like the signature Lupetto Negroni.

Sotto is located within Lupetto at 1123 Broadway, New York, NY 10010, United States, @lupettonyc

In Vancouver, a city well-known for grey skies, Elio Volpe is a welcoming infusion of warmth and brightness. The newly opened restaurant is intended to be a carefree sibling to the Michelin-recommended Osteria Savio Volpe, with a menu that merges a coastal Italian ethos with ingredients from the Pacific Northwest. With the name ‘Elio’ having its roots in the Greek word for sun, the entirety of the dining experience evokes the feel of a warm southern Italian breeze.

Elio Volpe, Vancouver

Located in a former mechanic’s shop, the interiors of Elio Volpe infuse a southern Italian sensibility into the industrial space. Designed by Vancouver-based Ste. Marie Studio, the restaurant leans into a subdued, nostalgic colour palette inspired by the Kodachrome photography of Luigi Ghirri, adding warmth to the airy interiors. There’s a continuous interplay between the industrial, structural components, such as the factory-style windows and vaulted truss ceiling, with a relaxed, coastal spirit.

‘We wanted to pair the industrial roots with a more laid-back, beachside feel,’ explains Ste. Marie’s principal and designer Craig Stanghetta, who also co-owns Elio Volpe. ‘The big move we started with was including curvilinear forms, inspired by architect Luigi Moretti’s sculptural Villa La Saracena, covered with a coastal Mediterranean heavy plaster – it feels almost like a wave rolling into the sharp edges of the industrial space.’

Beyond this reference to Moretti’s iconic structure, further nods to Italy are seen through accents of Breccia Sicilia stone and original imagery of southern Italy from photographer Armin Tehrani. The furnishings are largely custom-designed to give a hand-crafted feel, from tables inlaid with tiles that are hand-painted with aquatic designs to soft sage booths with piped detailing.

The sense of warmth and lightness extends into the menu, which follows the ethos of Italian cuisine – emphasising simplicity, honesty and seasonality – while bringing in local produce and seafood. Take the calabreselli – a homemade thick-cut, long pasta – in a creamy vodka sauce with Dungeness crab and pangrattato, or the light and crispy pizza verde topped with burrata and local cherry tomatoes. A central, expansive bar invites guests to linger over one of the herbaceous and citrussy cocktails.

Find Elio Volpe at 540 W 17th Ave, Vancouver, BC V5Z 1T4, Canada, eliovolpe.com

The reopening last month of Arthur Erickson’s 1976 Museum of Anthropology on what would have been the prolific architect’s 100th birthday, calls to mind a Japanese tradition.

As a meditation on the idea of impermanence, the Shikinen Sengu divine palace within the 2000-year-old Ise-Jingu Shinto shrine is demolished every 20 years and then rebuilt to the same dimensions but on an alternate site within the precinct. In a similar vein, Erickson’s modernist monument and Canada’s largest teaching museum has been reincarnated – after an 18-month closure for a $40 million seismic upgrade – with new aesthetic and architectural life.

Tour the refreshed Museum of Anthropology at UBC, Vancouver

This was both an architectural and curatorial resurrection. New seismic safety standards meant that Erickson’s iconic Great Hall had to be effectively destroyed and rebuilt.

The building’s choreography mirrors the whole process. Now as one walks through the dark canal of the east-facing entranceway that extends into the soaring Great Hall embracing the Western horizon, there is a palpable sense of rebirth.

But leading a tour of the building, long-time Erickson associate Nick Milkovich who worked on the original building and was tasked with its reconstruction said: 'If I did my job well, you won’t notice any difference.' Indeed, the changes are seamless and subtle, but significant.

The new architectural and curatorial vision – one that has added to the permanent exhibition 50 new artefacts and signage that contextualises the objects on display in terms of cultural genocide and contemporary discourse in the field and beyond – are of a piece with the original. The Great Hall was demolished and rebuilt with a precast columns and beam structure sitting on a cast-in-place concrete slab, thickened under the columns, all of which rests on isolators within the crawl space.

The old tempered glass, which would have shattered instantly in an earthquake, has been replaced by stronger, laminated sheets with UV protection. Plates of glass are cantilevered from the concrete columns and are fixed to a steel rod suspended from the channel beam, allowing them to move in concert with the movement of the structure. Now, 'they can dance with the building,' says Milkovich. The new configuration of glass, woven together by steel, lends a sense of architecture as textile art.

Now there is an even clearer sense of the building’s connection to the land – and, if one goes deeper, a clearer view of the settler/patron’s place within the museum. With its cleaner, brighter transparency and new concrete columns, there is a greater articulation of Erickson’s original intent.

The Museum of Anthropology – part Shinto shrine, part cathedral, part longhouse – is a temple to learning. Its design hopes to transcend the colonial context of the museum, moving from the darkened entranceway through to the great hall, a place birthing light. Views of water and mountains beckon us into a future of reconciliation.

moa.ubc.ca

Sensual, nostalgic and a little disorienting – that’s precisely what stepping into Ama, a newly opened cocktail lounge and raw bar in Vancouver, feels like. Nestled within a two-storey 1970s walk-up, the 52-seat eatery by partners and brothers Yianni and Petro Kerasiotis and Takuya Motohash remains concealed from the street until its sign illuminates. Guests are then ushered through a discreet coral-red cage door and a large staircase which ascends into the main space, distinctively suffused with a retro-futuristic orange glow akin to Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049.

Ama Bar, where reality and fantasy collide

Darcy Hanna and Emma Sims, co-founders of studio &Daughters, had a clear vision from the start as Ama’s design team: they sought to design a space where ‘guests could have a transformative experience’, which, therefore, guided all creative decisions. The Canadian duo began by sealing off two windows to eliminate natural light and draw all focus to a substantial U-shaped bar at the room’s centre, where the chef now prepares sushi and is visible to and from the guests. ‘This interplay of observing and being observed is accentuated by semi-translucent mirrors lining the exterior walls, creating a great sense of intimacy,’ recount Hanna and Sims.

The bar top is clad in polished black granite and its surface is concealed in a reflective material that catches the surrounding light, which induces a sense of gentle psychedelia. Flanking the bar ends are two imposing pillars that frame backlit shelves displaying sake bottles and spirits. Warm textured plastered walls also feature nuanced semi-transparent golden mirrors. Rectilinear cutouts, volumes and voids enhance spatial symmetry. At the same time, a bulkhead along the perimeter walls unifies the space increasing natural flow, integrating banquette seating, a coat check, a wine wall with a decanter station, the back bar and a waiting bench.

Contributing to the magical atmosphere is the overarching restaurant concept. Ama, meaning ‘sea women’ in Japanese, honours the traditional female divers who have been harvesting seafood and pearls for centuries in Japan. Hanna and Sims reveal that the concept for the main dining area preceded the naming: ‘Graphic design studio Glasfurd & Walker truly interpreted the essence of the room, as well as the food and beverage offerings, all which eventually inspired the overall concept of Ama. And, in many ways, the luminous quality of the space seeks to evoke the precious pearls the divers seek.’

Upon being presented with the naming, branding and conceptual direction, Hanna and Sims decided to revisit the entry and stairwell design to incorporate elements that directly celebrated the divers. ‘We accomplished this by enveloping the entire stairwell in a deep cold dark blue tone. Additionally, a custom optic light installation hanging from above mimics the bioluminescence of undersea creatures and the movement of bubbles. At the top of the stairs, a lightbox acts as a beacon bearing a glowing image of a diver washed in blue.’ From the cocktail menu, created by Troy Resch, to its elegant and mouth-watering dishes, Ama truly showcases the flavours of Japan in an otherwordly setting where reality and fantasy blur.

Ama Bar is located at 3980 Fraser Street, Vancouver

@ama.rawbar

A version of this article appears in the May 2024 Milan Preview Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

The fate of a West Coast modernist architecture classic, Downs House II, hangs in the balance, as the structure perches on a cliffside overlooking West Vancouver’s Garrow Bay.

The second home of the late, great Vancouver architect Barry Downs, it is now up for sale but unlike many of his other residential designs, is not protected by West Vancouver’s heritage register. In a competitive real estate market, this means the house at 6664 Marine Drive – only 1,400 sq ft on a 22,000 sq ft lot – is in imminent danger of demolition.

Downs House II: a Vancouver modernist gem

In a rare move, the realtor who listed the 1979-built Downs home at $4,598,000 has issued an urgent plea for an archiphile with a preservationist bent to buy it.

'The survival rate of homes like these is very bleak,' says Trent Rodney, co-founder at West Coast Modern. 'Unless we are able to find a buyer who appreciates the architectural significance of this home more than the redevelopment value of the land, it is doomed to join the long list of west coast modern homes that have been lost to history.'

According to Rodney, an average of two West Coast modern homes are torn down every year. In his estimation, only 256 of the 1,100 homes built during the height of West Coast midcentury modernism remain standing today.

Indeed, the ghost of Arthur Mudry’s 1965 Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired Beaton House, demolished in 2018, lurks nearby as a tragic reminder of what can happen when indifference and price-per-square-footage market value collide. Ditto for the Graham House – a residential masterpiece designed by Downs’ contemporary Arthur Erickson in 1962 – which was demolished not far from here in 2007.

But there’s still time to save the Downs House II – a place that as its architect did – exudes modesty and a strong sense of place. The small footprint home on a half-acre waterfront lot, surrounded by trees and designed as a series of carefully orchestrated cross-axes that draw in mesmeric views of Howe Sound, embraces rather than upstages its stunning natural environment. The highlight of the two-bedroom home is a sunken living room that appears to slip seamlessly into the sea. 

As Downs, who passed away in 2022, wrote in 1980 (Wood World Mag, Vol 8, 1980): 'Our primary aim was to design a house subservient to and in harmony with its magnificent setting. A bold site often requires bold forms, but in this case the building mass was fractured and stepped to conform with the rock benches and slopes. Our needs are pretty modest, and I somehow wanted the house to have a modest quality rather than compete with or dominate its site.'

In many ways Downs used this house as a testing ground for his designs that form part of Vancouver’s civic architecture – from Canada Place to Yaletown. The preservation of his home will serve as a test of the city’s architectural mettle. 

westcoastmodern.ca

Liminal House comes by its name honestly. Cascading over the sea wall between the city and the harbour, between dense metropolis and wilderness, land and sand, it occupies a spectacular threshold, and not just physically. The couple who live here were at a juncture in their working and family lives when they hired designers Lisa Bovell and Matt McLeod of Vancouver practice McLeod Bovell (also behind the spectacular Eaves House in West Vancouver). ‘Their lives are like waves on the ebb – they are retreating professionally and personally at a moment when their children are turning into teens,’ says Bovell. ‘This house is a threshold moment for them as well.’ As a result, every element of their collaboration responds to that in-between state.

To understand the pivoted arrangement of concrete volumes, and their relationship to the contrasting oak interior, it helps to understand the untamed landscape of West Vancouver, where violent waves drag 10m logs onto the shore and a black bear might wander into your garden. ‘That shoreline changes on a daily basis,’ says Bovell. ‘To some degree, we’re simulating that motion within the house. It becomes a moment at the shoreline between the water and land.’ The environment, she says, has a way of seeping into the final product – not unlike the Dungeness crabs that creep along the beach. ‘It’s the shell and the belly,’ says McLeod. ‘The tough shell conceals a soft liner.’ 

Liminal House: built for the 'extravagant natural world’ of British Columbia

McLeod and Bovell have built a successful practice in the ‘extravagant natural world’ of British Columbia, in Canada’s far-west. Kicking off the Liminal build four years ago as a team of eight, they are now 16. Yet few of their projects are as evocative of their ‘moment’ as this house, both immersed in the earth and suspended above it. To achieve the 8m cantilever for the upper floor, workers dug into the soaring cliff face, planting 5m concrete fin walls joined by an immense concrete beam. Even within its narrow, urban-sized plot, this upper storey offers long, oblique infinity views through the landscape, while providing a protective shell for the main-floor terrace. ‘The house never blocks the experience from front to back or up and down,’ says McLeod. ‘There’s always a flow.’

Yet the structure doesn’t surrender completely to the ocean panorama, nor the stretch of skyline in the distance, nor the mountains and glaciers beyond that. ‘The view is really magnificent and it’s important to the house,’ says McLeod. ‘But other » experiences have to happen, too.’ Between the dramatic switchbacks, the multi-storey light wells and the sculptural steel-framed oak stairwell, the home constantly calls attention to itself. It is wonderfully meta.

Soft landscaping offers more distraction. It crops up wherever the building makes contact with solid ground, to take the edge off the board-formed concrete and black-coated aluminium. A barge and crane were enlisted to furnish the 200 sq m roof garden with tall pines and native grasses. The main bedroom and ensuite have the best vantage point from which to take it all in, with full-height glass panels that slide all the way.

Downstairs, the main floor is a funhouse of views and reflections, from the entrance at street level to the southern façade with its folding banks of glass, suddenly hovering over land that has dropped away. Between them are two landscaped courtyards shrouded in glass, turning the core into, says McLeod, ‘a bit of a jellyfish – you see the guts’. Those courtyards are instrumental for drawing light into the depths of the interior.

‘After years of working with these courtyards, we’ve found a good deal of light can make its way down,’ says McLeod. ‘There’s a great experience at subterranean level, even so far away from the source of light.’ It’s not for nothing. Hosting a sauna, wet bar and ‘showroom’ for the owners’ collection of rare sports cars, the lowest level gets plenty of traffic, yet shafts of light dance around the oak millwork and the sintered stone flooring. 

For all the brawn and hefty angularity of its exterior form, Liminal House is amazingly animated. Glimpses of the terrace, swimming pool and harbour ricochet around the living spaces, creating their own sense of motion. ‘In that endless refraction of light and sight, you’re always seeing two or three things at once,’ says McLeod. ‘It’s a slight disorientation. Your eye is constantly moving back and forth and trying to focus.’

To be clear: this extra-sensory experience is a good thing. McLeod clarifies. ‘Where there’s a bit of disorientation, a doubt about where you are, those are rich experiences,’ he says. ‘The brain is always trying to normalise something, to make sense of it. To us, that’s the death of something interesting.’ 

mcleodbovell.com 

This article appears in the November 2023 Art Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Were Omer Arbel’s latest house a film, the rather sci-fi scenario might go something like this: architect finds archaeological remains in farmer’s field and builds contemporary structure around them. Inspired by his studies in Rome, where ancient ruins live amid modern buildings, the Vancouver-based artist and designer presents his first house in a decade as a piece of ‘found architecture’.

Carrying over a theme from the adjacent 23.2 house (his designs are numbered in order of creation), which showcased reclaimed, century-old Douglas Fir beams, Arbel sections off bits of this house (75.9) with rectangular glazing, both revealing their materiality and situating them as quasi-archaeological displays.

Omer Arbel’s 75.9: a new house in rural Vancouver

Located on a large acreage in a rural area south of Vancouver, 75.9 is 9,000 sq ft of living space locked in a mutual embrace with the landscape. Its volumes alternate between curvilinear concrete and rectilinear wood in a way that feels both contemporary and timeless, grounded yet extraterrestrial.

Arbel’s rare architectural offering reads like one of his magical objects for Bocci (his Vancouver- and Berlin-based design and manufacturing company) crafted from his unique design alchemy writ large. His philosophy is to let materials express themselves organically, rather than control them and, to this end, he has created lighting fixtures, jewellery and even candles born of both spontaneous and calculated experiments in his studio. 75.9 is his first architectural great leap forward, bringing the principles embodied in his experiments with materials to a residence (he’s designed buildings before, but never pushing boundaries to this level).

Says Arbel from his studio in Vancouver’s industrial waterfront district, ‘To bring that ethos to architecture has been a huge challenge in terms of scale, as well as the regulatory layers of engineers and builders.’ Arbel says his goal has been ‘to acknowledge concrete’s plasticity and its fluid nature’ by rejecting the conventional use of it in rectilinear forms, a process he finds ‘wasteful’ as it involves using wooden formwork that is usually discarded. With 75.9, he explains, ‘we’ve done that by draping a huge sock over a series of plywood ribs. The sag of the hydrostatic pressure of the concrete is what gives it its form.’

Working with engineers Fast + Epp, Chris Wright from Build Wright Construction, and project lead Mark Dennis, Arbel and his team came up with a new method of slow, continuous pour and a special concrete mix allowing it to continuously cure throughout the duration of the pour, avoiding horizontal cold joints. Micro perforations in the weave of the fabric release air from the surface of the concrete as it cures.

Beyond the science involved, the end result is a striking sculptural form with a richly textured woven finish, rendering concrete almost unrecognisable. The forms also act as planters for trees that add to the topography of the rooflines above, as mediators between earth and sky.

Arbel says he was inspired to create the fluted ‘reverse trumpet forms’ of the four structures that he designed the house around when he witnessed a fresco being restored in an antique shop. They also bear a resemblance to the canopies of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, and even to those of Arthur Erickson’s Filberg House. Whatever their inspiration, the four concrete canopies that Arbel calls ‘lily pads’ provide both drama and structural intrigue.

As one enters the house from the east side, the first canopy, flanked by abundant greenery, announces entry. The second is lowered to offer intimacy to the dining area, while the third towers over the living area to create a cathedral-like space. A stairwell with cylindrical cedar cladding leads to a mezzanine area where one can contemplate a different view of the canopy as well as the surroundings outside.

The fourth has a slightly misshapen, elephantine form but offers an unexpected cosiness to the main bathroom. This was the first of Arbel’s experiments in form, which he built before he had his client’s full commitment to commission the house.

Happily, it worked. Due to a high water table, it wasn’t possible to dig deep into the site. Instead, Arbel used the landscape as a building material, wrapping it around the house. The windows of a bedroom are met at sill level by a carpet of grass. A raised slope offers an earthy transition from ground plane to roof, as well as an upper walkway to a private office for the owner. 

Curvilinear concrete structures wrap the bedrooms like thick draperies in a surprisingly domestic way, while rectilinear cedar-clad boxes punctuated by glazing articulate the upper structure. There is a sense of textile art here, and an architectural weave. But like Arbel’s recent exhibition/intervention at the V&A in London (in September 2022), the 75.9 house renders craftsmanship into performance art.

A potent blend of alchemy and craft, theatre and cinematographic design, ancient site and contemporary home, 75.9 bodes well for Arbel’s next architectural performance: a home for himself and his family on Vancouver’s waterfront, slated for completion in four years’ time. One can only imagine what new experiments in form will herald its arrival.

omerarbel.com 

Alberni's distinctive outline is sure to make it a new icon for the West End neighbourhood of Vancouver. But its striking curves, created by Japanese architecture master Kengo Kuma, are not merely a creative's expressive gesture or an aesthetic decision. The 43-storey residential tower draws heavily on its locale, the two 'scoops' carved out from its slim, long volume, inspired by the context. The new geometries allow for better vistas and connections to the street and surroundings, both for Alberni’s inhabitants and its neighbours. 

Alberni by Kengo Kuma

Created by local, design-led property developer Westbank, headed by Ian Gillespie, Alberni has just been completed. The residential scheme shows off flowing lines that are combined with timber details and larger installations. It's a choice that links back to its architect's long-standing relationship with the material. This, along with the extensive moss garden on the ground level, brings nature into what is a substantial development. This continues in the swimming pool area just above the entrance. 'In keeping with Japanese spatial traditions, the emphasis is on the atmosphere rather than the object,' the project's authors write. 

'Westbank and Ian Gillespie have always pushed us to explore adventurous ideas with each new collaboration, and have been supportive in our effort to connect our works to the surrounding environment – natural and urban. We are very proud of our work at Alberni, not only the design but also the execution. Key design gestures and details are expressed with clarity. This is our ninth project with Westbank already, but our first high-rise residential work in Vancouver, as well as in North America, and this sets a high bar for us – as an expression of quality construction, engagement with city fabric, and architectural and living concept,' says Kuma. 

Intricate woodwork details can be found throughout, matching in refinement the carefully orchestrated amenities on site, which include a Kengo Kuma-designed Fazioli piano, the moss garden and swimming pool, and a contemporary Japanese restaurant concept, 'inspired by the Japanese culinary art form of Kaiseki the project team experienced in Tokyo'.

westbankcorp.com 

kkaa.co.jp 

When Ole Scheeren unveiled his concept for the architecture of Fifteen Fifteen, one of Vancouver's newest luxury residential projects, back in 2018, the design presented a striking, Jenga-like high rise, confidently making its mark within the skyline of the Canadian city. Fast forward to today, and the those behind the scheme – it is spearheaded by the international studio and Bosa Properties, in partnership with Kingswood Properties – have just revealed the building’s interiors, including its spatious penthouses and residents’ amenity spaces.

Fifteen Fifteen is Ole Scheeren’s first North American residential building. The tower, set in Vancouver's Coal Harbour neighbourhood, includes 42 storeys and 202 residences, spanning from studios to three-bedroom homes; four penthouses; and 18 cantilevered ‘Observatories’ (the apartments set in the building's dramatic, glass-wrapped cantilevered volumes). The last are aimed not only at breaking up the vertical volume into a more highly articulated exterior façade, but also offer an unconventional and intriguing unit typology for the scheme. 

Scheeren and Bosa Properties, whose portfolio includes works by renowned architecture practices such as Gensler and Heatherwick Studio, also put an emphasis on their commitment to sustainability, ensuring that this design features environmentally friendly elements too.

These include carefully chosen materials and advanced filtration systems that deliver purified air and water throughout. The goal is for the scheme to eventually achieve a LEED Gold international sustainability certification.

Striking architectural design and sustainable credentials are matched by an array of contemporary services. The development’s lush amenities list includes a 24-hour valet and concierge service, a fitness and yoga room, and the Sky Lounge, a private club-like space for the residents that occupies the 29th and 30th floors, offering not only striking views of Vancouver’s surrounding nature, but also eye-catching architectural features, such as an undulating ceiling and a view of the building's pronounced, exposed metal structure. 

Pre-sales at Fifteen Fifteen begin this October, while groundbreaking is scheduled for 2022, aiming for the first residents to move in by 2027.

INFORMATION
buro-os.com

Sitting at the top of Bjarke Ingels Group's Vancouver House on Canada’s West Coast, this exquisite penthouse has been designed to raw, pared-down perfection by locally based architecture firm Leckie Studio. The minimalist home, commissioned for a private client with a penchant for art and travel, balances the tightrope between warm, domestic space and finely crafted contemporary interior, suitable for the display of the owner's personal collections. 

The two-storey unit contains a two-bedroom home. The internal design focuses on the client's daily routines, working around views and light. ‘Through an iterative design process, the studio and client arrived at a highly bespoke, biophilic design that is attuned to the passage of time,' explain the architects at Leckie Studio. 

The first level's communal and entertaining areas are enhanced by warm and sleek dark woods (mostly American black walnut) and tactile surfaces. Modular, multi-directional furniture makes for a flexible interior that can adapt to various scenarios, views and times of the day. Modern, blackened-steel accents underline the rich, organic atmosphere. 

The second level contains bedrooms, including the master suite. It can be accessed via a sculptural staircase that's geometric and semi-open, and features a copper-laced, Bocci lighting installation. The installation’s hand-selected glass elements in pink, orange, umber, green, and blue shimmer through the adjacent glass patio enclosure. This vertical garden element runs through both levels, bringing into the home a ‘microcosm of the Pacific Northwest rainforest', say the architects.

Large openings, creating expansive views of English Bay and the North Shore Mountains, are carefully framed through the interior design, in a composition ‘that looked inward as much as it did outward', explain the architects. The generous roof deck, meanwhile, offers a variery of al fresco areas for entertaining guests and relaxing.

INFORMATION

leckiestudio.com
big.dk

A Vancouver-based firm known primarily for its residential projects, Battersby Howat has designed a variety of homes in both inner-city neighbourhoods and remote West Coast islands. Now the practice, led by principles David Battersby and Heather Howat, has designed a new house in North Vancouver’s idyllic Edgemont Village, in which open-plan urban living meets rural tranquillity in a unique mountainside retreat overlooking a forested ravine.

Created as a quiet refuge for a busy entrepreneur, Jamie Christianson, the home is at once cutting-edge cool and serene, a modernist ode to the surrounding wilderness. In keeping with Battersby Howat’s holistic approach, the firm is responsible for the architecture, interior and landscape design.

The house is set on a cul-de-sac full of post-war ranchers and midcentury modernist classics and fits in surprisingly well, in spite of its striking geometry and contemporary design. The 4,200 sq ft home reads low and lean, as the main floor is set down into the site, which slopes westward towards the ravine, and brings the massing of the house into a graceful descent. The form of the house is shaped by the unusual triangulated lot, which has an intriguing history.

When Christianson was looking for the right plot for his dream house, mainly on Vancouver’s desirable, yet somewhat standoffish, West Side, he came to see an old Edgemont Village rancher where a friend had done some renovations. ‘I was looking for something challenging that would force the architecture, rather than something easy,’ he says. He found it in an oddly shaped lot two doors down from the rancher. It had been subdivided from the neighbouring property and used to be the site of that house’s swimming pool. As it turns out, the house had once been owned by the parents of Margaret Trudeau and a young Margaret had swum the pool’s lengths.

The neighbourhood of Edgemont Village, a family-orientated community, also appealed to Christianson for its friendly character. ‘People talk to each other on the street here,’ he notes. And unlike many West Side neighbourhoods, there are virtually no empty houses. ‘Builders didn’t want the lot,’ he says, because of its odd shape and certain covenant restrictions, but also, he contends, because ‘they couldn’t build a square box house on it’.

After interviewing many architects, he chose Battersby Howat because of the practice’s creative and collaborative approach to design. Unusually, Christianson was the builder on the project as well as the client. He worked closely with the firm, even camping out on the construction site. Happily, there was a synergy between client and architect that made for a harmonious working relationship. Similarly, there is a synergy between site and design.

‘From a design point of view,’ explains Battersby, ‘we could see right away, because of the defined building envelope, that the site was going to drive what was going on formally.’ So plans and sections were explored through ‘small shifts in geometry from the orthogonal’ that responded to site conditions, views, and ease of water flow from the roof forms. Battersby Howat let the contours of the site inform their design so exquisitely that the house appears folded into the landscape; boundaries between built and natural form are blurred.

With the property divided into three levels – two bedrooms and a recreational area on the lowest level; the living, kitchen and home office area on the main floor; and a crow’s nest of a master bedroom and bathroom at the top – it neatly fits generous floor space into a relatively small footprint. From level to level, the interiors unfold as a series of tightly framed vignettes. Once through the main level’s swinging pivot front door, the big reveal is an almost narcotic view of ravine and forest. Orientations and glazing are primarily focused onto the westward slope of the ravine, to maximise views and light. Glazing along the open kitchen leads up to the east-facing home office area that looks out onto a patio with a fire pit. The sloped ceiling streamlines the fluid spaces.

The descent to the bottom floor is marked by offset stairs that unite all three levels, creating a kind of architectural canyon that reflects the ravine. In an Ericksonian moment, terraced concrete steps lead into a sunken inner sanctum (past a raw concrete wine room) that feels like a subverted suburban rumpus room. A womb-like perch from which to gaze out at the ravine in winter months, it becomes a covered pavilion and viewing platform in the summer, as glass doors open up entirely into the site, blurring indoor and outdoor. A green wall, flanked by a Zen rock garden, offers privacy.

The master bedroom suite upstairs exudes monastic luxury, with a raw concrete wall framed by a wooden screen and a view through westward glazing that extends out onto a roof terrace. Through a skylight in the adjoining bathroom, the snow-capped peaks of the North Shore mountains beckon. It’s here that Christianson awakens every morning to the sounds of the creek below, framed by a thick forest of tall firs, and the cries of eagles. Even though his office in the city is only a 15-minute drive away, ‘sometimes, on Monday mornings’, he confides, ‘I find it really hard to leave’. 

As originally featured in the May 2019 issue of Wallpaper* (W*242)

INFORMATION

battersbyhowat.com

BIG and Westbank are putting the finishing touches on their Vancouver House tower, which is due to receive its first residents this summer

Viewed from the north end of the Granville Street bridge, BIG's 150m twisting tower for Canadian developer Westbank, Vancouver House, seems to lean almost too close for comfort. Its expressive form – typical of the Danish practice's work – takes signature architecture to another level; yet project architect Vance Harris, of local partner Dialog, assures us that it’s ‘the safest place to be in an earthquake.' In 100 years from now, he says, it will still be standing.

Top notch seismic safety standards aside, gazing down from the 59th floor reveals a dazzling city that has seen a dizzying rate of construction over the past decade, and this tower, first commissioned by Westbank in 2010 when Ingels was a relatively young and not-as-well-known architect – has become a symbol of this.

The project cleverly reinvents the ‘Vancouverist' tower and podium typology, transcending bridge setbacks and site constrictions with a narrow triangular floorplate that widens as it rises past the bridge level, reclaiming space and maximizing views, while three triangular retail, office and leisure complexes articulate the base. The Westbank website quotes Ingels saying, ‘think of Vancouver House as a giant curtain, at the moment of being pulled back to reveal the world to Vancouver and Vancouver to the world.'

Luxury units in the sky can be reached through the city’s fastest elevator; there's a soon to be materialised eighth floor swimming pool that will have walls of tropical hardwood; and a currently empty ground level, where commercial areas will soon include high end grocery stores. The scheme ends under the bridge, right where an installation by Rodney Graham – a spinning, shimmering chandelier – will make its debut this autumn.

Its curvilinear form – the result of 150m of subtle pixelation – rises from a thin triangular floorplate to a perfect rectangle at the top, with variegated floor plates creating enticing articulations throughout and offering a near sci-fi feel. Ingels says that in addition to City of Glass author Douglas Coupland, another Vancouver scribe who inspires him is science fiction writer William Gibson, whose Bridge trilogy series centres on a bridge that becomes a shantytown after an earthquake.

Vancouver House residents will begin to move in at the end of July. Next stop for Ingels and Westbank CEO Ian Gillespie is Calgary's Telus Sky – a kind of inverted twin to Vancouver House that tapers from a wide floorplate to a thin peak; and one of four projects the architect is currently working on for Westbank.

INFORMATION

For more information visit the BIG website

After a contentious mayoral race in October that saw the current mayor win by a slim margin, Vancouver faces growing pains as it grapples with being one of the world’s most liveable yet unaffordable cities. Its charms and natural landscapes attract international interest yet exile long time residents and creatives to its suburban margins. 

With Vancouverism once exported as an international model for sustainable city building, Canada’s third largest metropolis is in the midst of a housing crisis that threatens its very civic health. Yet at the same time, the city is seeing a slew of new public projects emerge, as well as some of the world's biggest names in architecture flocking in to build here.  

Poised between its relatively recent past, and its future as a growing global metropolis, the 133-year-old city boasts a key new cultural space; the Vancouver Art Gallery is part of the sea change. The current Edwardian former courthouse, bursting at the seams, will give way to a new 300,000 sq ft gallery designed by Herzog & de Meuron and slated for completion in 2023.

Vancouver based developer Westbank has attracted international starchitects like Kengo Kuma and BIG, to design mixed used residential towers, and Büro Ole Scheeren has unveiled plans for two ‘vertical village’ skyscrapers.

On the city’s edges, there is a flurry of activity at the Arthur Erickson designed Simon Fraser University – where Perkins and Will have designed a new Student Union Building. Meanwhile at UBC, a luminescent new aquatic centre by MJMA & Acton Ostry Architects is the latest jewel in the campus crown. In between these two campuses, the new Emily Carr University of Art and Design by Diamond Schmitt Architects lends a multidisciplinary industrial edge to the surrounding new Great Northern Way arts district.  

Patkau Architects who won a RIBA award in 2018 for their Audain Art Museum in Whistler, have triumphed again with the impressive Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver, where Michael Green’s city hall references both mid century optimism and 21st century green technology.  

But projects by the city’s patron saint of modernism, the late Arthur Erickson – like his Robson Square urban plaza and his Museum of Anthropology – still hold their own. And now his 1980 Evergreen Building that narrowly escaped demolition over a decade ago will enjoy an extraordinary architectural homage by the likes of Shigeru Ban – an elegantly small footprint triangular glass and wood tower that practices true architectural symbiosis, extruding organically from its neighbour.

Original landscape architect and longtime Erickson collaborator, 95 year old Cornelia Oberlander has been commissioned to streamline terraced plantings, and her rooftop garden for Moshe Safdie’s Vancouver Public Library opened in September, offering a timely reminder of how Vancouver can stay true to its ‘green city', community minded ideal.

Vancouver Art Gallery by Herzog de Meuron
A generous public plaza area will extend the gallery’s footprint into the street. Image: Herzog & de Meuron

Emily Carr University of Art and Design by Diamond Schmitt Architects
An anchor for the surrounding Great Northern Way arts district, the Emily Carr University of Art and Design by Diamond Schmitt Architects combines high tech, multidisciplinary chic with an industrial edge. Photography: Tom Arban

Emily Carr University of Art and Design by Diamond Schmitt Architects
The project brings new life to a former no go zone, bordered by a railway but framed by gorgeous city views. Photography: Tom Arban

Oakridge by Gregory Henriquez
The transformation of Oakridge from suburban-feeling mid century shopping mall into brave new civic world is rather startling.

Oakridge by Gregory Henriquez
The new mixed-use community that will span 28-acres and feature 9 towers and a 9-acre park at its core, was master planned by design lead Gregory Henriquez, with interior design by WonderWall and Piero Lissoni.

1550 Alberni by Kengo Kuma
A curvilinear sculpted art piece, 1550 Alberni will also be a 43-storey tower with 188 homes by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. The building’s shimmering surface shape shifts and reflects the changing city by the sea. The ground floor will house Japanese restaurant Waketokuyama in its first location outside of Japan.

1500 West Georgia by Büro Ole Scheeren with Francl Architecture
Büro Ole Scheeren, working with local firm Francl Architecture, has unveiled plans for two ‘vertical village’ skyscrapers comprised of irregularly stacked glass boxes divided by greenery.

1500 West Georgia by Büro Ole Scheeren with Francl Archietcture
The LEED Platinum project opens up the inert shaft of the tower of glass to embrace and reflect the surrounding urban and natural landscapes.

SFU SUB by Perkins+Will 
Designing a new student union building at the apex of Arthur Erickson’s iconic 1965 Simon Fraser University is not a feat for the faint of heart. 

SFU SUB by Perkins+Will 
Happily, designs for the soon to be completed new SUB by Perkins and Will respect the bones of Erickson’s original design while creating a contemporary light filled space.

Terrace House by Shigeru Ban with Francl Architecture
Not only is Shigeru Ban’s new Terrace House, a 19-storey mixed use project, slated to be North America’s tallest hybrid timber structure when it completes in 2021, it’s also an extraordinary homage to the legacy of Arthur Erickson and his adjacent Evergreen Building. 

Terrace House by Shigeru Ban with Francl Architecture
Mimicking the Evergreen’s geometry and extracting its design DNA, there is a sense that Ban’s building is born from Erickson’s. 

Polygon Gallery by Patkau Architects 
The new art gallery in North Vancouver opens up to the south facing harbour and city view with an elegant rectangular eye, while its Eastern flank references the still active local industry with a striking sawtooth form. 

Polygon Gallery by Patkau Architects 
Light filled galleries frame the Vancouver skyline, while a large plaza extends to the seawall, welcoming all.

Public Library roof garden by Moshe Safdie Architects, DA architects and Cornelia Oberlander
Two decades after the project’s completion, the design team of Moshe Safdie Architects, DA architects and landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander reunited to fulfill the original design intent of a public roof garden atop Vancouver’s Public Library. Photography: Robert Stefanowicz

Public Library roof garden by Moshe Safdie Architects, DA architects and Cornelia Oberlander
A new theatre, exhibition hall and a quiet reading room make the upper floors a popular destination for library users. Photography: Robert Stefanowicz

Vancouver House by BIG
Designed by BIG in collaboration with local architect DIALOG, Vancouver House looms like an amorphous architectural creature sidled up against the Granville Street Bridge. 

Vancouver House by BIG
Expanding from a 560 sq m triangular footprint into a 1,300 sq m rectangular tower, the VH will be one of the city’s tallest new buildings at 156 m.

UBC Aquatic Centre by MJMA & Acton Ostry Architects
A new aquatics centre for the University of British Columbia - a highlight in a flurry of current campus projects - is surrounded by fritted glass and crowned with an angular white roof. Photography: Shai Gil

UBC Aquatic Centre by MJMA & Acton Ostry Architects
Looming like a giant oculus at the campus gateway, it’s a place to see and be seen, quite literally. Photography: Shai Gil

Styled after the Italian alimentari – or grocery store – Caffe La Tana is nestled at the tail end of Vancouver’s Little Italy.

The shop and restaurant, owned by restaurateur Paul Grunberg, chef Mark Perrier, and designer Craig Stanghetta, is an elegant yet casual affair.

La Tana (Italian for ‘the den’) pays homage to the fox muse of the owners' popular Italian osteria, Savio Volpe, and features nods throughout to their frisky character.

The interiors were conceived by Stanghetta’s Ste Marie Art + Design and feature luxe Italian touches such as plentiful marble and ornate woodworking – all while maintaining the laid-back charm of the Pacific Northwest. Hand-drawn woodland wallpaper, lush green bench seating, and glimmering brass and gold accents tuck patrons into burrow-like comfort. 

Freshly-made pastas are set in a custom glass display case, lure one to linger, perhaps, for a lunch of pappardelle alla Bolognese. 

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

635 Commercial Dr

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As a teenager in 1940s Calgary, Arthur Mudry dreamed of being an aeroplane engineer. But a chance discovery of a book on gothic cathedrals caught his imagination, and changed his career trajectory to architecture. Perhaps this is why his work embodies a sense of both the sacred and the ethereal.

In the architectural cathedral that is West Vancouver’s coastal forest, as one approaches his 1965 Beaton residence from its steep cliffside entry that descends towards the Pacific waters of Garrow Bay, the house appears to hover over the landscape. There’s a feeling that the magnificent home, at one with its site, could take flight at any moment. In fact, feats of architectural levitation aside, the house is in danger of disappearing.

West Vancouver, Canada’s treasure trove of midcentury modernism, where Arthur Erickson, Ron Thom, Barry Downs, Fred Hollingsworth and other architects built some of their most sublime residences, has a rapidly rising real estate value. Erickson’s Graham House fell victim to lax preservation laws in 2007. Now other midcentury gems, such as the BC Binning house, are on deathwatch in a district where developers often triumph over heritage advocates.

So it is a rare privilege to spend time with Mudry revisiting one of his most beloved houses, one that, after the demise of its original owners last year, is listed at C$7.9m (£4.6m) – ‘lot value’, says a local developer whose company, like many others, now builds ‘monster homes’ on West Vancouver’s large lots, often ten times the size of the relatively modest midcentury footprints like that of the Beaton residence.

Rooted in bedrock, yet reaching for the sky, bound by sea and forest, the house is a device for viewing nature. A kind of rustic West Coast pavilion – a cousin perhaps to Arthur Erickson’s 1958 Filberg House – it is part Shinto temple, part paean to Pacific forest. A residential shrine, its architecture draws in the centrifugal force of the elements. It would seem no coincidence that Mudry’s subsequent project was a rough cedar-clad Baptist church in West Vancouver, shrouded by a grove of old-growth firs. 

For Mudry, revisiting the house he built for Malcolm Beaton, a bookmaker, and his young family, is like rekindling an old romance. ‘The first time I saw it, I fell in love with this site,’ confesses the Frank Lloyd Wright afficionado. ‘This,’ he exclaims, opening his arms wide to embrace the ocean, forest and bedrock of what was once a camping site for his clients, ‘is so big! And if you don’t grasp that – then you’ve missed the essence of this place.’

‘Nature is sacrosanct,’ proclaims the now 85-year-old architect, ‘so I tried to tie the form of living into the crevices of the rocks and the spirit of the trees.’ Rather than blasting the bedrock, Mudry designed a meandering entranceway via a winding staircase that respects the contours of the site.

‘There should be joy in how you walk to the entrance – but also awareness of the environment. It’s not that easy,’ he laughs, ‘to get to the front door.’ Inspired by the surrounding trees, Mudry conceived the form of the house as one supported by a series of hyperbolic paraboloid posts that open up like parasols, creating a sense of interior forest canopy. ‘I wanted this house to be rooted into the ground,’ Mudry explains, ‘and then to grow vertically like a tree that opens up, creating the ceiling.’

It’s a design that ultimately enhances rather than detracts from the environment. ‘One of the sins of our time,’ rails the architect, ‘is that when we find beauty in nature, we never know how to live with it in the right relationship.’ ‘But this house,’ he continues, ‘adopted the people that inhabited it, giving them shelter and protection.’

As one enters the house, he says, ‘it’s like stepping into nature’. And indeed, once past the heavy timber Japanese-style door and welcoming lanterns, the westward view of ocean provides an instant embrace.

Arriving upstairs in the master bedroom, sheltered to the east by a Japanese-style lattice and etched-glass window that create a double screening effect, the whole bay seems to envelope the space. Standing at the main entrance downstairs, the tip of the ceiling is visible through the south-facing glazing. The eye follows its line to reveal a cedar post supporting the umbrella-like vaulted ceiling, with no cross beams to distract from the arc of the protective forest-like canopy.

From the great hall-like living space – a mini-cathedral in the woods – ocean, islands and mountains sing their hymns. The master bedroom upstairs observes it all as if from a choir loft. The house is a canvas for the elements; a tabula rasa reinvented every day by shifting light and tides. At night, its western façade becomes a jewel-like Japanese lantern. But it’s the sunset that makes Mudry – who is clearly concerned about the fate of the building – most emotional. ‘You should see it!’ he enthuses, his eyes alive with memories. ‘When the sun reaches the horizon and hits the interior, suddenly everything’s on fire!’

As originally featured in the October 2018 issue of Wallpaper* (W*235)

Büro Ole Scheeren has unveiled the design for a new pair of residential towers in Vancouver, the Barclay Village. The architect was challenged to bring a new scale to the low to mid-rise neighbourhoods of the two Robson and Davie Villages, while being sensitive to the historic urban fabric.

‘I wanted to replicate the scale and structure of the neighbourhood and conceived the building as an accumulation and vertical stacking of these cubic volumes, as if flipping the historic villages from the horizontal to the vertical,’ says Scheeren of the design.

‘What is also important about the project is that it merges a range of residencies, including so-called market housing and social housing. Rather than separating them into a high-end tower on the one hand and a low-end, second-class tower on the other, we are integrating the social housing component into the main building, so that all residents, regardless of their wealth, inhabit the same space and the same quality of space,’ he says.

The two towers are each formed of stacked volumes that vary in size to open up receding platforms that serve apartments with balcony space.

The buildings are connected at the base by a multi-storey ‘bridge’ that forms the base of the building. This space includes internal courtyards, public amenities, communal spaces and gardens. Scheeren was inspired by the dense network of green spaces in the local area and wanted to create a soft boundary between Barclay Village and its neighbouring villages.

The Barclay Village is Büro Ole Scheeren’s second project in Vancouver following Fifteen Fifteen located in the centre of the city ‘With Fifteen Fifteen I wanted to counter the purely extruded verticality of the city, and create a building that was both vertical and horizontal, a building that expresses this very special point in the city, and that reaches out to connect to the surrounding city and nature,’ says Scheeren.

‘Barclay Village on the other hand is situated within a historic and popular neighborhood of the city, and it was important to acknowledge this context. It is less about creating a singular landmark, but a continuation and amplification of an existing neighborhood and a sensitive response to its local context.’

‘Like many cities today, Vancouver’s skyline is dominated by verticality and extrusions of generic towers that don’t necessarily engage with their environment and create isolation rather than connection. Albeit in different ways, both projects seek to create this connection with their urban and natural surroundings.’

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Büro Ole Scheeren website

The West Vancouver Museum’s ‘Selwyn Pullan: What’s Lost’ – their third exhibition of the work of Canada’s answer to Julius Shulman in a decade – is as much about the loss of chemical photography as it is about Vancouver’s vanishing architectural heritage.

Rather than merely digitally scanning the oeuvre of the celebrated photographer, who donated his archive to the museum before he died at age 95 last year, director Darrin Morrison and assistant curator Kiriko Watanabe have painstakingly worked with the original negatives to remove the blemishes of time and to replicate the colour and feel of the original prints.

‘We didn’t want to just document his work,’ says Morrison of the photographer – a ‘perfectionist’ who took pride in printing his own images, ‘but to celebrate his artistry’.

And so they have, in a thoughtfully-curated exhibition on until 14 July, that evokes a nostalgic sense of both absence and presence. Pullan’s hand-built camera stands in for the man himself and welcomes visitors to the modest two-room gallery that has become a temporary shrine to the disappeared buildings of Vancouver.

The South side of the gallery offers some stunning black and white prints – many exhibited for the first time – that include the Birks building, an Edwardian treasure bulldozed in 1974 and replaced by a corporate tower. A 1957 image of the Thompson Berwick Pratt designed BC Electric Building (since residentialised, renamed the Electra and featured in the Architour section of the Wallpaper*City Guide Vancouver) called ‘Downtown Vancouver’, recalls a time when it served as a beacon for ships in the nearby port. Today it is dwarfed by towers.

The North side of the museum offers two fabulous colour prints of the now demolished Ritz Hotel that speak to Vancouver’s mid-century age of glamour and elegance, while the back room offers mediations on loss that are simultaneously celebrations of heritage.

Pullan’s warm and intimate photographs of now demolished homes by iconic West Coast architects like Arthur Erickson and Barry Downs, with their respective owners enjoying them at a time when the single family home was not a luxury, are countered by engaging portraits of architects and artists of the era.

An image of the lone survivor – the Campbell Residence photographed with its 1960 newly remodelled kitchen – defies the odds of current day, condo crazed Vancouver and dares us to ponder what’s been lost.

INFORMATION

’Selwyn Pullan: What’s Lost’ runs at the West Vancouver Museum until the 14th July. For more information visit the museum’s website

For over a decade, Avenue Road has been bringing its signature mix of functional, yet artistically-minded design to fans in North America. With offerings ranging from furniture and lighting to textiles, kitchen products and architectural accessories, the brand has become known for helping its clients transform houses into homes with its highly personal and eclectically curated collection.

Armed with showroom spaces in New York, Miami and its hometown of Toronto, Avenue Road recently inaugurated a new Vancouver location, its first presence on the West Coast. Housed within a century-old industrial building in Gastown, the sprawling two-story space has been meticulously restored and renovated by local designers Abraham Chan Design Office, and presents Avenue Road’s wares in a sumptuous, elegantly appointed environment.

‘We didn’t set out to select a heritage building, but we were drawn to the building because, much like our pieces, it had stories to tell, having been home to a newspaper and a furrier for decades,’ recalls Avenue Road’s founder Stephan Weishaupt. ‘The dramatic scale of the building enables us to present a series of shifting scenes that people can discover as they move through the space and create both intimate and epic moments.’

Abraham Chan, a longtime client of Avenue Road’s, worked with heritage consultants to preserve much of the building’s original features. ‘We were immediately drawn to the building’s existing Douglas fir columns and beams, and knew we needed to integrate them in our design. To us, these elements reflect Vancouver’s older architecture, as well as the materials that are native to the province.’

He continues, ‘To revitalise these elements, we framed the columns between grand, illuminated arches, and exposed the beams while surrounding them with drywall.’

All around the space, there are odes to the city and its scenery, including the material palette which ranges from smooth grey oak flooring, sandblasted marble and flashes of industrial steel. Chan says, ‘The space is very much a reflection of Vancouver, which we see as this cosmopolitan city set within a landscape of raw, natural beauty. It’s this juxtaposition between raw and refined that we sought to evoke in our design.’

Avenue Road’s Vancouver outpost not only brings together creations from designers including Bruno Moniard, Moss & Lam, The Rug Company and Tribu outdoor furniture, it is also home to an architectural floral shop, Hanna by Celsia Floral – a tea salon is also set to come.

Weishaupt says, ‘The Avenue Road concept is as much about how different inspirations and elements come together as it is about the story of any individual piece. [All these features will] help make the showroom a place people can visit for inspiration frequently, and not just when they have a project to work on.’

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Avenue Road website

ADDRESS

Avenue Road
301 West Plender Street

Vancouver

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As Vancouver, currently one of the world’s least affordable cities for housing, seems caught between its utopian promise and increasingly dystopian present, a brave new project looms on the horizon. The redevelopment of Oakridge shopping centre as imagined by architect Gregory Henriquez, reads like the set from Dune meets Ville Radieuse. 

A launch at the Audain Art Museum on Whistler mountain this week, took place in the midst of the annual ICSC (International Council of Shopping Centres) conference, appropriately entitled ‘The Future is Now: Embracing Change’. The ambitious project driven by Westbank and QuadReal Property Group, builds on a more modest proposal by Ivanhoe (with Stantec Architects), which was acquired by QuadReal in 2017, and promises to blow up the traditional idea of the shopping mall and turn it into a mini-city.

Billed as a new municipal centre, the project will take the transformation of the once sleepy Cambie Corridor, connecting Vancouver’s airport to its city centre, to the next level. The area has already seen its traditional single family bungalow typology rapidly subsumed by lucrative land assembly deals and multi-family housing, with small footprint midcentury houses on large lots selling for as much as $11 million. The proposed mini-city of the future will offer a mix of oblong towers and curvelinear low and mid-rises, carpeted in greenery and seemingly extruded organically from the landscape, that will house 6,000 residents in 2,600 homes.

In addition the project will provide nearly 500,000 sq ft of workspace for 3,000 creative economy workers and 1,000,000 sq ft of retail space. There will also be a performing arts academy, live music venue, a public art programme, a library and community centre with day care. External space will include an outdoor, pedestrian only ‘high street’ thoroughfare, and a ten-acre park. The entire complex, promise the developers, will be powered by a district energy system. ‘It’s a place you may never have to leave’, enthuses Henriquez. 

This optimistic civic vision appears to offer an oasis of urbanism in a surrounding desert of suburban style housing. Carved out of the existing 28.3 acre land parcel that was once a green, forested area, Henriquez plans to re-insert the original topography (the site is one of Vancouver’s highest elevations) by creating parkland, green roofs and terracing - including an intriguing plan for elevated winding pathways that recalls a Vancouver version of the High Line. This will lend the formerly flattened parking-lot oriented mall a sense of high tech hilltown. 

Westbank CEO Ian Gillespie points to the development as a futuristic carless community linked to rapid transit, and before long, to driver-less vehicles. And Wonderwall’s Tokyo based Masamichi Katayama – praising Vancouver’s ‘connection to nature’ – plans interiors that will open up the traditional closed-off mall to the surrounding future greenery, bringing the outside in quite literally with plans for indoor plantings. A brochure vows that, ‘the emphasis will be on catalysing a relationship with the consumer that transcends the store.’

It’s all quite a heady vision, and with completion several years away, in 2025, still one of broad strokes, not fine grain. One can only hope that Henriquez’s intention of reconnecting the shopping centre to the city, via new retail street walls to define the perimeter of the site, will bear urbanist fruit. Stay tuned.

INFORMATION

For more information visit the website of Henriquez Partners

Bucking the trend toward downsized or disappeared retail spaces, Vancouver’s new Leisure Center offers an exciting reinvention of the lifestyle store. Built on the bones of an old furniture shop in a 1930s heritage building, the two-storey, 22,000 sq ft emporium of all things chic is a thoughtfully curated meditation on modern luxury. It offers not only fashion but also art, music, books, homeware, cosmetics and refreshments in a space designed by Casper Mueller Kneer that reads like a sleek new world souk.

On the first floor, sections are delineated and the cavernous space made more intimate by L-shaped aluminium panelled walls that function as showcases for garments by Comme des Garçons, Balenciaga and Vetements as well as the likes of MA+, Guidi, Devoa and Vancouver by way of Parsons School of Design alumni Laurence & Chico.

Vancouver’s new Leisure Center.

But also on offer is a well edited selection of art, fashion and design books overseen by Donlon Books (‘reading is the new luxury’ says owner Mason Wu) that winds its way into a section of organic skincare products and aromatic perfumes, that leads to a homeware section with covetable objects by the likes of Tom Dixon, and eventually to a café serving high-end mate and hibiscus-infused herbal concoctions sourced from New York-based apothecary The Alchemist’s Kitchen.

Everywhere, the moveable retail feast is embellished by local and international art on display, with a pop up space for installation art in the centre (currently occupied by Myfanwy Macleod’s Ramble On – a rusted hulk of a 1977 Camaro) and an ever-changing Johnny Nash-produced soundtrack of local musicians.

Downstairs, private dressing rooms with fabric walls and black glass exteriors offer adjacent lounges where waiting spouses can relax with a drink. Augmenting the fashion-forward ambiance is a gallery/screening/lecture space, and a child’s play area under the stairwell finds its adult equivalent in a retro feeling vinyl lounge area complete with 1970s-style speakers purchased on Craigslist.

The whole effect is so inviting that patrons often come to shop and stay for hours. The antithesis of the harshly lit, buy-and-leave-quickly mall experience, the Leisure Center is a retail oasis that elevates shopping to an art.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Leisure Center website

ADDRESS

Leisure Center
950 Homer Street
Vancouver BC V6B 2W7

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In the midst of an apparent civic ice cream boom, with over a dozen new joints serving everything from gelato to creamsicles, Vancouver’s La Glace distinguishes itself with a charming French élan. Think a belle époque whirl with orientalist touches that marries stylish art nouveau curves with the geometry of Art Deco. 

Designed by Vancouver’s Arithmetic team to showcase pastry chef Mark Tagulao’s hand crafted artisanal ice cream made a la francaise with cream, egg yolks and minimally aerated sugar, this is the kind of place Hans Christian Anderson would take a can-can girl on a post-Tivoli date. Its romantic fairy tale flair – with a Chinoiserie inspired hand painted, gold leafed mural with pairs of peacocks and floral motifs on one side- is grounded by a sleek Marcel Breuer style mint banquette and curved white marble bar. 

Traditional favourites like Bananes Foster and Ganache are paired with profiteroles and meringues, while creamy cashew milk based vegan flavours offer a little new world decadence. 

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

2785 West 16th Avenue

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PHOTOGRAPHY

Gillian Stevens

Fairmont Pacific Rim

With a lobby that has become one of the city’s see-and-be-seen meeting spots, the Fairmont Pacific Rim hits all the essential notes for the perfect lifestyle-orientated business hotel – not least its downtown location right on the harbour adjacent to the Vancouver Convention Centre. Ask for one of the Owner’s Suites with views of the North Shore Mountains and Stanley Park to get you in the mood for a morning jog along the seawall. No running gear? No problem: the Fairmont’s partnership with Reebok means members of the President’s Club loyalty programme don’t need to travel with activewear.

1038 Canada Place; Tel: 1.604 695 5300; www.fairmont.com

Rosewood Hotel Georgia

In a Georgian Revival building dating from 1927, the Rosewood Hotel Georgia, one of the city’s oldest properties, is a beauty with plenty of original period details, handsome wood paneling, clean lines and an extensive Canadian art collection. A glass-bottomed indoor saltwater lap pool that presides over the meeting rooms on the floor below, might entice business travellers into a post-work swim, but the hotel’s location – right across the street from the Art Gallery and one block away from the high-end shops on Robson Street – will tempt you first.

801 W Georgia Street; Tel: 1.604 682 5566; www.rosewoodhotels.com

Shangri-La Vancouver

With the brand’s typical five-star Asian offerings, the Shangri-La Hotel Vancouver provides the luxuries that a person could get used to – not to mention the pied à terre-sized accommodations (no room is smaller than 52 sq m) that includes the dreamiest of bathrooms. A one-hotel-fits-all-travellers property, its central location between the slopes and the sea will lure any business travellers to stay on and explore the city’s outdoor offerings – just make sure you come back for the West Coast Detox treatment at the CHI spa.

1128 W Georgia Street; Tel: 1.604 689 1120; www.shangri-la.com

The Burrard

A throwback to 1950s Palm Springs, this property used to be the Burrard Motor Inn before it got transformed into a contemporary hotel. But while the feel is unabashed retro-chic cool, the property is firmly in the 21st century with all the essential technology trappings from iPod docking stations to Nespresso coffee machines. More of a pied à terre than a pleasure palace, it’s handy then, that the property is located so centrally with Vancouver’s many restaurants and bars just a hop, skip and a jump away.

1100 Burrard Street; Tel: 1.604 681 2331; www.theburrard.com

Loden Hotel

The Loden Hotel could not have picked a better address than tony Coal Harbour for its 77 rooms and suites. The understated, muted interiors, set over five floors in one of the neighbourhood’s glass skyscrapers, provided a natural background to enjoy the topographically-blessed landscape. For the ultimate in mountain-ogling, plump for the Halo Suite, which comes complete with wrap-around terrace.And while the tony neighbourhood is awash with sleek waterside eateries, we suggest staying in for some classic French dishes, from steak tartare to moules frites, at Tableau, the streetside bistro that is a favourite of guests and locals alike.

1177 Melville Street; Tel: 1.877 225 6336; theloden.com

The Jim Cheng-designed Fairmont Pacific Rim has long been Vancouver’s most gorgeous hotel. But its cavernous lobby – a see and be seen spot for local politicos, Hollywood stars and corporate party people – was crying out for a more intimate space. Enter Botanist – the latest creative offspring of Vancouver based restaurant designer wunderkind Craig Stanghetta and his Ste Marie team.

More than mere eatery, Botanist marries different eras – notably the 1920s and the 1980s – to create a unique contemporary ambiance that reads like the Miami Babylon club in Scarface designed by Gio Ponti for a West Coast client.

Similarly, the elevated West Coast fusion cuisine pairs French and Mediterranean elements with fresh local ingredients. 

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

1038 Canada Pl

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Main Street has always been the epicentre of Vancouver’s Chinatown, with traditional herbal shops, grocers and Hong Kong-inspired lunch counters like The Boss. But it’s also the harbinger of neighbourhood change – more often than not a contentious case of gentrification and shiny new flats. Now, a new kid on the block called Virtuous Pie nicely straddles the old Chinatown and the new hipster-ridden one that has seen the area rebranded as foodie central.

Right across the street from The Boss, the restaurant, owned by chef Jim Vesal, embodies a new world lunch counter with an old world Roman vibe, serving delicious all veggie pizzas that are rich, hearty and flavoursome.

The Med is a crowd pleaser; smokey baba ganoush, thoughtful house-made falafel, tofu based feta, roasted red peppers, kalamata and mint chutney. This is best complemented with a seasonal salad (try the Brussels sprout and squash) and washed down with a fresh spicy apple and pepper juice, and of course, finished off with a coconut-based mint and chocolate ice cream.

Like the cuisine, the decor by local design agency House of Bohn is a harmonious layering of elements: West Coast wood and Italian travertine counters with yellowy veins to match custom brass lighting that frame the open kitchen’s pizza oven. Clean contemporary custom benches flank long communal tables, creating the perfect space for Mandarin and Cantonese speaking locals to rub shoulders with young artists and entrepreneurs.

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

538 Main Street Vancouver

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When pioneering West Coast avant-gardiste Eric Metcalfe – aka Doctor Brute – covered the façade of the old Vancouver Art Gallery with leopard spots in 1973, they were designed freehand and painted in over five nights.

Forty-three years later, his signature spots appear on the exterior of the VAG as high-tech projection mapped creations, part of the city’s second annual Façade Festival.

The brainchild of the fledgling Burrard Arts Foundation – and partnered with Microsoft, the VAG and Go2 Productions – the festival features the work of four other city artists, and aims, says BAF director Christian Chan, to be 'an exercise in place-making'.

Designed to challenge traditional perceptions of civic architecture, the festival unfolds in Vancouver’s de facto town square, the newly pedestrianised Robson Street on the southern edge of the VAG, that links it to the rest of Arthur Erickson’s iconic Robson Square complex.

Subverting the often corporate overtones of projection mapping, and taking cues from the likes of Luminato in Toronto and Vivid in Sydney, the festival employs the neo-classical façade of the Francis Rattenbury-designed courthouse-turned-gallery as a portal into luminescent worlds.

From the neo-psychedelic code-based animation of Chris Shier, that uses motion-sensitive street cameras to bring passersby into the projection frame, to the surrealist paintings of Rebecca Chaperon suggesting narratives of mysterious landscapes and ghostly figures, Façade offers ephemeral delights. The intriguing intersection of visual art, architecture and public space is achieved via a rather rigorous creative process of maquette-making and precise measurements. Vancouver is at its best, it seems, by night.

INFORMATION                                                                                                              

Façade Festival 2016 finishes tonight, 5 September. For more information, visit the Burrard Arts Foundation website

Amongst a sea of bland, corporate eateries in Vancouver’s financial district, Nightingale is a beacon of eclectic charm and culinary cool.

The latest venture from chef David Hawksworth, whose flagship restaurant is only short 500 metre stride away, Nightingale is the more relaxed version to its high-end cousin.

Housed in a heritage building that was the former University Club, the soaring double height space has been designed by Toronto-based outfit Studio Munge and is a modern take on a traditional gentleman’s club that seamlessly respects the original framework; white butcher tiles are tempered with light timber wood panelling, while industrial lighting, wrought iron chandeliers and mahogany leather seating adds a dash of sophistication.

The ground floor is anchored by a handsome marble bar, while the mezzanine level with its woven silver and copper inlay lattice screen railing is the perfect perch to people watch meet for a weekday power lunch. The best seat in the house though, is the 12-seat chef’s table at the far end of the kitchen; with views of the nearby Coal Harbour buildings, there is no better spot to tuck into chef Hawksworth tasty modern Canadian menu.

Divided into five categories, which are arranged from the lightest (raw) and make their way through an assortment of vegetables, pizzas, small dishes and the most substantial (large), the plates are perfect for sharing. And while the substantial pizzas are more than enough to satisfy, for those wanting a heartier offering, we’d plump for the pork belly, served with native Okanagan stone fruit.

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

1017 West Hastings Street

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West Vancouver is one of Canada’s wealthiest postal codes. It’s also a treasure trove of midcentury modernism that’s under threat due to rising real estate prices and the municipality’s relatively large lot sizes. And it's home to one of the hardest working – if relatively under-funded – design and architecture museums in the nation.

Located in a tiny building near the city hall, The West Vancouver Museum squeezes lots of aesthetic content into its small square footage, with exhibitions that celebrate the best of West Coast design. Its annual fund raiser – the West Coast Modern Home Tour – offers a carefully curated peek into the fate of modernist classics as well as contemporary interpretations of work by the likes of Fred Hollingsworth, Arthur Erickson and other architects who first made their mark with midcentury residences.

This year’s 11th annual tour of six homes did not disappoint, with noted West Coast modern architect Barry Downs on hand for tours and anecdotes, at a Ron Thom house he designed the garden and entranceway for.

The 1958 diamond grid shaped Dawson/Purdie residence, updated by more contemporary renovations, still exudes Thom’s particular Frank Lloyd Wright inspired take on the West Coast, with extensive glazing that opens up to surrounding fir trees and a hearth built from nearby river stones.

Also on the tour was Downs’ 1966 Smith/Dick residence, heralded by tall firs at its entrance and folded into a rocky site overlooking mountain vistas, that still retains its unique light-filled treehouse feel. The owners – who have carefully renovated the kitchen and bathroom, and subdued the original 'wild' garden plantings – have recently sold the house to a young family.

Happily, this was the original intent of the architect – to create an ideal home for children to grow up in – but one that has been thwarted by high real estate prices in an area that was much more affordable 40 years ago.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the West Vancouver Museum website

In an ‘endangered’ Chinatown caught in a tug of war between preservationists and developers, Kissa Tanto infuses new life into the upper floor of an old building that sat empty for 30 years.

Located in the 200 block of East Pender - a mix of local Chinese markets and hipster cafes – the  Ste. Marie designed restaurant deftly weaves together multiple narratives and a new world Japanese/Italian fusion cuisine partly inspired by chef Joël Watanabe’s own mixed heritage.

With a nod to Tokyo’s 1960s jazu kissa - or jazz cafes - its iconic Hotel Okura, the story ‘the Restaurant of Many Orders’ by poet Miyazawa Kenji, and Italian architect Gio Ponti, restaurateur Tannis Ling’s latest venture channels retro-charm in a playful contemporary vein.

Across the street from a Chinese senior’s complex, Kissa Tanto has an almost residential feel, with a balcony full of greenery luring patrons upstairs into a welcoming yet mysterious space.

Here a collage of eras – from Italian modernist touches to 1970’s style pleated lamps with custom brass elbows and expertly curated Chinatown chachka- evoke a sense of timelessness. A palette of walnut and maple and eye level lighting creates an intimate feel, while a high gloss coved ceiling and pearl coloured mosaic tile floor offer delightful luminescence. A bar with an impressive vinyl collection and enthusiastic cocktail shaking anchors the space between the cosy royal blue and dusty rose banquettes at the back and the buzzy front of house with Chinatown street views.

The cross-over cuisine – think potato tortellini with seaweed or tempura zucchini flower - is as subtly layered as the design, but it’s the magical club-like ambiance that transports diners to another time and place.

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

263 East Pender Street

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PHOTOGRAPHY

Knauf & Brown

A new exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) offers a unique perspective on Picasso’s relationship with the women in his life.

'Picasso: the Artist and his Muses' is remarkable in its consolidation of the historical and photographic archive of Picasso’s wives and lovers, from Fernande Olivier to Jacqueline Roque. While there have been other exhibitions examining Picasso’s relationships (notably 2014’s exhibition 'Picasso & Jacqueline: The Evolution of Style' at New York’s Pace Gallery), this is one of the first to focus on all six women who were his long-time partners and 'muses'.

Curated by Katharina Beisiegel, deputy director of Art Centre Basel, (a city known for its Picasso collections and home to Herzog & de Meuron, designers of the new VAG) the exhibition aims to show the 'pictorial morphology' of Picasso’s relationships with the six women. In doing so, the curator hopes to 'empower' the women as active participants in his art, rather than mere passive objects of his desire.

With works on loan from 35 different collectors, and with full cooperation from Picasso’s family and foundation, highlights include early sketches of Fernande that show the beginnings of Picasso’s cubist tendencies; new photographs of former ballerina Olga Khokhlova; the 1939 Reclining Woman Reading, a portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter contrasted in its rounded voluptuous lines to the angular, fragmented portrait of Dora Maar he painted on the same day; and the 1941 nude of Dora Maar that seems obviously influenced by her experiments in double exposure/split image photography.

Also present is the famous portrait of Françoise Gilot (the only woman who dared leave Picasso, mother of Paloma and a living, working artist) Woman With a Yellow Necklace. The black spot on the left side of her face is not a birthmark, but rather a cigarette burn 'branding' by the jealous Picasso.

The cosy domesticity of his life with Jacqueline – as evidenced in the 1971 double portrait Man and Woman – contrasts with her role as 'gatekeeper' to the artist: not only did she protect his precious art making time from fans and collectors, but also barred contact with family members from previous liaisons.

The VAG exhibition offers both a deeper understanding of the osmosis between Picasso and his muses and a treasure trove of on loan works by the 20th century’s most renowned artist. The show also speaks to the gallery’s goal of offering not only contemporary Canadian art, but as articulated by senior curator Ian Thom – who helped coordinate the arduous task of shipping the works to the rather remote West Coast city – 'bringing the best of the world to Vancouver.'

Also present is the famous portrait of Françoise Gilot (the only woman who dared leave Picasso, mother of Paloma and a living, working artist). Pictured

The VAG exhibition offers both a deeper understanding of the osmosis between Picasso and his muses and a treasure trove of on loan works by the 20th century’s most renowned artist. Pictured: Seated Nude, 1922.

INFORMATION

’Picasso: the Artist and his Muses’ is on view until 2 October. For more information, visit the VAG website

ADDRESS

Vancouver Art Gallery
750 Hornby Street
Vancouver, British Columbia
Canada V6Z 2H7

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TELEPHONE

604.662 4719

For its 12th exhibition, Vancouver’s Rennie Collection offers up a bit of metatheatre along with its private collection. Showcasing the work of 41 prominent and emerging artists from real estate marketing tycoon Bob Rennie’s cache of 1,500 plus works, the exhibition – with the working title of 'Chaos' – unfolds a few hundred metres from skid row.

Approaching or leaving the historic Chinatown Wing Sang building repurposed by architects Walter Francl and Michelle Biggar, one is very likely to encounter people screaming at imaginary enemies or shooting up in back alleys.

The ambitious show is loosely themed on displacement, loss and identity, covering three floors and encompassing 57 works. Its scope is almost journalistic, with Rennie’s statement imprinted on one wall thanking viewers for 'questioning the world with me'.

'Chaos' begins with John Baldessari’s Camel Contemplating Needle, which plays on the biblical proverb about a rich man’s difficult path to heaven, with a beast made of Ferrari fiberglass; and Jota Castro’s Motherfuckers never die series – two light boxes, one boasting names of leading corporations and the other of famous terrorists, and a mirror bearing the names of prominent art dealers. (Eric de Rothschild is included, Bob Rennie is not.)

It ends with a floor monikered 'Utopia', which features a Norman Rockwell painting of two wide-eyed WASPS called On Top of the World (Rennie’s very first acquisition, aged 17) sandwiched by two works by South African artist Anton Kannemeyer (B is for Black and W Is for White) that explore racial stereotyping.

In between, a whole world of art and issues are explored: from NYC-based Bahamian Tavares Strachan’s I belong here – a beautiful explosion of fragmented neon text – to Gilbert and George’s Bomb, playing on terror headlines found in the Evening Standard, to African American Hank Willis Thomas’ Priceless, fusing a MasterCard slogan with an image from his cousin’s funeral.

But the small pieces are often more powerful than the large. A hoodie covered in resin by Kevin Beasley and Dan Halter's single distressed burlap African shopping bag speak to displacement and loss. A tiny, perfectly articulated bronze statue of an anonymous black man with his hand in his pocket by Thomas J Price and Mona Hatoum’s bullet-scarred miniature of Beirut’s Place des Martyrs offer meditations on monumentalism, scale and violence. And General Idea’s Black Aids resonates with Brian Jungen’s melted black Nike air shoe in the shape of a KKK hat, in their narratives of the marginalised and the disappeared.

Right on target with the local metatheatre, First Nations artist Judy Chartrand’s If this is what you call 'Being Civilized' I’d rather go back to being a 'Savage', presents five gorgeously made ceramic bowls celebrating cockroach ridden skid row hotels, the bodies of the insects set off by an iridescent blue gaze.

There is real beauty in this 'Chaos'.

INFORMATION

 ’Chaos / Winter 2015 Collected Works’ is on view until 20 May. For more information, visit the Rennie Collection’s website

ADDRESS

The Rennie Collection
The Wing Sang Building
51 East Pender Street
Vancouver, BC V6A 1S9

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Located on the edge of Vancouver’s burgeoning design-driven Armoury District, Kahve elevates the city’s cross-cultural aesthetic. 

The Turkish word for ‘coffee’, that migrated to Italy and became ‘café’, its Vancouver incarnation is part coffee shop, part showroom and was opened by Korean art critic John Rhee and designed by Japanese-Canadian architect Eitaro Hirota, with a zen meets Scandinavian sensibility. 

And while the neighbourhood is fast becoming a café hub, Kahve’s sleek interiors sets it apart; constructed by a craftsman trained in traditional Japanese carpentry, clean minimalism is expressed through a palette of Douglas fir timber, polished concrete flooring, quartz countertops and an all white interior that amplifies the space and drenches it in light- even on rainy days.

A prominent maple display wall featuring an array of Alessi coffee making equipment and  George Jensen homewares was made using traditional Japanese joinery, referencing the wooden ‘Koushi’ screens seen in the Kyoto Machiya storefronts. The lighting and furniture by Muuto are also for sale.

Viewed from outside, the wall makes it appear as if patrons are part of the window display. For the chic single-origin coffee connoisseurs in the ‘hood, Kahve is quite literally the place to see and be seen.

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

1822 West 1st Avenue

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PHOTOGRAPHY

Eitaro Hirota Design

How to convey the experience of an exhibition that takes up all four floors of the Vancouver Art Gallery, includes 156 artists and spans the breadth of Pablo Picasso to Afrika Bambatta? In a word, it’s dizzying.

But there’s also something rather thrilling about the three years in the making aptly named Mash Up – the VAG’s biggest show to date - that currently has Terminal City in a tizzy. (The queue on opening night last week stretched over two city blocks).

Looking at collage, remix, found object art as well as cultural 'borrowing' over the past century, each floor has a theme, ranging from early Twentieth century at the top to current day on the bottom. Descending in chronological order makes most sense, but mixing it up floor-by-floor is truer to the exhibition’s essence. Tellingly, in a sympathetic gestalt, even the official VAG art map mislabelled two floors – switching late 20th century and post-war eras.

But this may be the curatorial intent. One leaves the exhibition which begins with Victorian collage and ends with a Valerie Blass hybrid sculptural creature – part ancient Egyptian, part animal, part pop art –– with synapses swirling with unexpected connections and observations.

The exhibition is as much audio as visual. An intriguing aspect of the top floor early 20th century section juxtaposes the first sound poems of Kurt Schwitters with an 80’s homage by Brian Eno. Early industrial noise music by Luigi Russolo somehow recalls the 80’s industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten. And an entire room dedicated to the Eno/David Byrne 1981 collaboration My Life in the Bush of Ghosts mixes film, objects like the 1954 book of the same name by Amos Tutuola and tracks like Qu’ran that samples Algerian recitations, with curatorial notes about the dangers of neo-imperialist borrowing.

With such a rich vein to mine – one that includes architectural hybrids like the Frank Gehry residence in Santa Monica and Bjarke Ingels’ power station with ski slope – encountering classics like Warhol’s Marilyn series proves unexpectedly banal. But 'Mash Up' also functions as a kind of generational Rorschach test and beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder. That said, a highlight was the section on 'creative salvage' featuring early 90’s found object furniture by Tom Dixon and deconstructed fashion design by Martin Margiela.

In an age when 'cultural borrowing', copyright and creativity often butt heads, Mash Up serves some delicious food for thought.

INFORMATION

’MashUp: The Birth of Modern Culture’ is on view until 12 June. For more information, visit Vancouver Art Gallery’s website

ADDRESS

Vancouver Art Gallery
750 Hornby Street
Vancouver, BC V6Z 2H7

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Historic charm, timeless traditions, and modern architecture fuse in Vancouver’s edgy Chinatown neighbourhood, where a site previously occupied by a parking garage is now home to Juniper Kitchen & Bar.

West Coast lifestyle and philosophy play heavily on the interiors and cuisine, where Simcic + Uhrich Architects have designed a textural space of raw materials that lend the 104-seat restaurant an understated coolness. Case in point is the vaulted ceiling that arches above a concrete, copper-dusted bar top. Crafted out of bended plywood, it calls to mind skateboarding ramps or ocean waves (depending on whether you ask the architect or owner Lilian Steenbock). A whimsical mural that wraps around the mezzanine lounge illustrates the folklore of the Pacific Northwest. Meanwhile in the dining lounge below, a piece by artist Ricky Alvarez features hundreds of foraged driftwood branches amassed in the Gulf Islands.

Chef Sarah Stewart pays homage to Canada’s culinary heritage and her love of nature with a seasonal menu that highlights ingredients from ocean, deserts and verdant forests of the Pacific Northwest. Dishes like the back cod on a bed of cauliflower puree with braised endive, duck fat potato and crispy duck skin are playful yet comforting. Behind the bar is Shaun Layton, who showcases his deep passion for artisanal and small-batch spirits with a tantalising cocktail menu. As you might expect given the restaurant’s name, the Gin & Tonic selection is front and centre. Try the Catalan, which features Defender Island gin, thyme, grapefruit and Mediterranean tonic.

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

185 Keefer St

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PHOTOGRAPHY

Luis Valdizon

Once known for its mom-and-pop shops and dilapidated storefronts, Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant neighbourhood is undergoing a fast transformation thanks to adventurous designers, creative types, and restaurateurs who are setting up shop. 

The latest addition is Savio Volpe, a 75-seat osteria and labour of love between three partners (L’Abattoir’s Paul Grunberg, Chef Mark Perrier and Ste Marie studio principal Craig Stanghetta) that fuses simplicity, drama and cheekiness—both in its design and farm-fresh menu. Here, diners can watch Perrier in the open kitchen as he works his magic at the wood fire grill. Dishes like grilled squid on a bed of chickpeas with tomato and chilli, and rib of beef drizzled with aged balsamico and Grana are unpretentious but hearty. There’s an all-Italian wine list, classic cocktails, house made Italian sodas, and fresh made pasta that would make any Nonna proud.

Like the menu, the design is rooted in an honest, unadorned style that juxtaposes humble with pretty. Stanghetta chose quarry tiling, pleated red and white oak panelling, and mixed banquet seating that showcases sartorial workmanship. Above the bar is a playfully modern light that riffs on the classic Stilnovo chandelier. Meanwhile, tomato cans, olive oils and preserves are as ceremoniously displayed on custom-built shelves as the Bruno Munari-inspired collage style canvases that hang on the walls.

Savio Volpe is a modern farmhouse eatery in a neighbourhood on the brink— the type of place you’d want to walk into and stay a while.

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

615 Kingsway

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Natural beauty is the name of the game at Vancouver-based Harlow Skin Co, where unnecessary additives and preservatives are firmly eschewed in favour of small batches of essential oils and other raw materials, to ensure optimum freshness and purity.

It's certainly not your average beauty and skincare range, combining rich natural ingredients like luxe Ghanaian shea butter and organic macadamia nut oil to create such classic-in-waiting scents as 'French Toast', 'Wild Heart' and 'Daydream'.

Aside from the company's core collection, which consists of staple body butters and face elixirs – as well as body whips, salves and soaks – its latest ranges draw on the deep connection between nature and natural remedies. 'Woods' is inspired by dewy mornings and moonlit forest nights, while 'Rejuvenate' is all about waking up tired eyes and softening fine lines with flora-derived ingredients. For example, one might start the day with the petal infused jojoba oils in the Flora Face Potion, which acts as a quick fix toner, primer or hydrator on the go, or wind down for the night with the pure earth clay mask with exfoliating poppy seeds. 

'We create clean, self care products with a stylish aesthetic based around integrity, health and well-being,' explains CEO and creative director, Chrystal Macleod.

A shimmering new residential development is bringing high design to Metrotown, a rapidly growing area – buoyed by Canada’s second largest shopping mall and rapid transit hubs – in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby. The sleepy Kingsway corridor area, full of ageing strip malls, is enjoying a wave of new high-rise development thanks in part to Asian real estate investors.

Echoing a trend in downtown Vancouver that has seen local developers bring in international talent – for projects ranging from Norman Foster’s Jameson House to Ole Scheeren’s design for a new tower in Coal Harbour – Rize Alliance is launching Gold House. The two 40-storey tower, mixed-use development (designed by local firm Chris Dikeakos Architects) is not only bringing much needed density to the Kingsway corridor, but also internationally known interior designer Lisa Garriss of HBA.

Celebrated primarily for her globe hopping hotel design – from the Armani hotel in Milan, to the Karma Resort in Bali, and other projects in Dubai, Miami and Goa – Garriss says she always ‘approaches each project in accordance with its environment’.

Based in LA, Garriss was impressed by Vancouver’s natural beauty and lush greenery. Rather than compete with the scenery, she kept interior palettes in rich neutrals that would 'draw in light' from the outside.

Noting that ‘in Los Angeles it’s all about shelter from the sun’, in Vancouver her design approach was informed by the need to maximise daylight in a northern rainforest. While the gold theme is an important one to the project, Garriss expresses it subtly, through lighting fixtures and gold hued fabrics.

More dramatic gestures are saved for the lobby, where the 40 ft high ceiling is illuminated by large rectangular gold lanterns and flanked by a display wall of golden, curved metal panels that read like Gehry-esque sculpture.

The phenomenon of city food trucks enabling talented chefs a creative platform has come full circle. The success of Vancouver’s beloved Le Tigre has given founders Steve Kuan and Clement Chan the opportunity to open a bricks-and-mortar establishment sited on the edge of the city’s Chinatown in a dual-fronted building dating to 1901. Local architects Scott & Scott have translated the terroir of the street into a minimal space centred around a large communal table and a bar where diners can view the kitchen’s theatrics. A coolly utilitarian interior of raw concrete and timber was installed to age and adopt a handsome familiarity, a theme bolstered by informal benches, linear pendant lights and tables. The stripped-down aesthetic allows the modern Asian dishes – a mash-up of Chan’s classical training and love of East and South-East Asian fare - to shine. The picture-perfect octopus salad with jalapenos is plated with tuna crudo and nutty romesco sauce, but it’s the addictive rye and gochujang-marinated chicken wings that regulars return for.

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

958 Main Street

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With juice bars springing up left, right and centre at the moment, it's hard to distinguish between the real deal and people who are just jumping on the detox bandwagon. Vancouver-based Nectar Juicery is taking a refreshingly realistic, design-centric approach to organic juicing, which is helping to set it apart from the rest. Its focus is less on weight loss, more on channelling a balanced, healthy regime that will work alongside a busy schedule. 

Led by local entrepreneurial/holistic nutritionist and bestselling author Tori Holmes, they suggest taking the same approach to your body as you do with your home, timing cleanses depending on whether you are an habitual neat freak or the annual spring clean type.

Holmes' recent focus has been the launch of the health brand's first flagship store, which just opened on West Hastings Street, Vancouver. The minimalist, Scandifornia-themed interior is the work of Kelly Deck Design, with industrial lighting from Matthew McCormick and minimalist millwork from Lock & Mortice.

Aside from Nectar's flagship store, the brand has developed its own juice on tap concept, which is available in cafes and restaurants across the Lower Mainland. Having also gained fans in the form of several high profile corporates, including Hootsuite and Mobify, it seems as though Holmes is on a one-woman mission to take over Vancouver's health food and drink scene.

ADDRESS

Nectar Juicery
102 West Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC V6B 1G8

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The site of a new residential tower at the edge of Vancouver’s Coal Harbour - located at the junction where the grid system splices and begins to expand - inspired architect Ole Scheeren to marry the horizontal and the vertical in intriguing new ways.

1500 West Georgia, the proposed 48 story residential tower by Bosa Properties poised on two ground levels and six basement floors, could well become Vancouver’s new urban beacon. Not only does it delineate the end of Stanley Park as it merges into built environment, but it also heralds the beginning of ‘downtown,’ says the Bejing-based German architect, known for his innovative designs of both public and residential buildings.

The antithesis of the tower-as-silo, the interplay of the horizontal and the vertical offers a texture and dimensionality that will distinguish the building from its neighbours on Vancouver’s growing skyline, whilst simultaneously embracing its natural surroundings. While many towers in the ‘city of glass’ appear indifferent to the stunning nature that envelopes Vancouver, ‘the design for this building,’ explain Scheeren,  ‘exemplifies our ambition to reconnect architecture with the natural and civic environment and go beyond the hermetic confines of towers that increasingly inscribe our lives.’

By designing a series of horizontally extended ‘sky-houses’ in the building’s mid-section (subverting the traditional drama of the top and base of the building in favour of the often neglected core), Schereen also generates view corridors that encompass both the city and the water.

‘I wanted to create a truly livable residential space, in one of the world’s most livable cities,’ the architect told Wallpaper*, noting that many of the interior spaces of the city’s towers offer narrow corridors and confined rooms at odds with the openness of the natural environment.

The designs in particular read like mini Koenig-inspired Stahl residences: refined, elevated and densified for a new urban reality. But the architect’s vision extends beyond merely animating the civic skyline and residential experience. He also hopes to animate the public space below. Working with the existing fountain on site, he plans to open up the water feature with a public plaza that could house a café, while a ‘black box’ with images projected onto its transparent glass wall could house a theatre or gallery.

‘My buildings are livable,’ notes Scheeren, a fact he’s proven in Singapore before and clearly aims to do again.

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The new permanent light installation created by Vancouver-based design firm Bocci gives life and soul to a heretofore rather anonymous plaza in front of the Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel. The public artwork features Bocci's latest product, 16, a glass light poured in layers and supported by a modular steel armature.

Known for its dramatic large-scale installations and equally inventive glass lights, Canadian design firm Bocci has created its first permanent outdoor public artwork in its hometown of Vancouver.

Located at the foot of the city’s artiest and chicest luxury hotel, the Fairmont Pacific Rim, the sculptural piece - titled 16.480 - consists of a ‘grove’ of 11 stainless steel trees adorned with 480 layered glass petals that light up at night to create a canopy of light.

The trees, which measure between four and six meters in height, are arranged in four distinct groups amid a ‘forest floor bed’ of charred cedar planks and tiles cut to the same dimensions as the surrounding paving stones. The wood base references the ‘beautiful wood cobbles used as paving in large parts of early Vancouver,’ explains Bocci’s creative director Omer Arbel. All arranged in stepped formations and mounds, the aim is to provide informal seating and natural gathering areas.

Though Arbel and his team are more used to making ‘things that drop from above,’ they chose to make a piece that emerges from below this time, giving life and soul to the previously rather anonymous and wind-swept space between the hotel entrance and the office tower to the west.

‘What we tried to do with those trees is grab as much of that rectangular volume as possible and tie it back in a tactile way to the onlooker,’ explains Arbel. ‘Some of the leaves come to within inches of your face, and others stretch out towards the two facades of the buildings. As a visitor this allows you to project yourself out and inhabit a larger volume in a more visceral and poignant way.’

The Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel is no stranger to statement art: a poem by British artist Liam Gillick wraps around floors five to 22 of its most visible corner; an abstract shimmering stainless steel forest scene by architect James Cheng graces its south western façade; and plenty high-calibre art dress the walls within.

Hotel owner, developer and founder of real-estate giant Westbank, Ian Gillespie, is known for integrating art and architecture in all his projects, saying it not only adds value to developments but also creates a growing ‘body of contemporary work’. Bocci’s steel-and-glass illuminated forest has imbued the Fairmont Pacific Rim entrance plaza with a new sense of poetry and majesty, providing the city with an alluring moment of surprise and discovery.

The glass-and-steel trees by Bocci are one of several artworks adorning Vancouver’s Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel. Visible in the background is a shimmering stainless steel façade by the hotel's architect James Cheng depicting North Vancouver’s rainforest through thousands of perforated circles, bumps and dimples. Photography: Gwenael Lewis

In a city known for its sushi and the seaside, Miku manages to elevate both aesthetics. The second restaurant in Vancouver by Seigo Nakamura, who first introduced aburi sushi to Canada in 2007, Miku is a 5400-square-foot dining experience. Perched on the edge of the industrial waterfront, patrons can drink in unparalleled views of the surrounding ocean, mountains and shipping containers unloading at the Port of Vancouver whilst dining on a seafood rich menu, spiced up by the likes of brown butter wasabi prime rib and exotic rum and ginger beer cocktails (a tropical influence from Nakamura's Miyazaki home). The interiors by local firm SSDG - highlighted by an undulating ceiling sculpture over a circular mosaic bar and custom murals by a Kyoto artist - are equally inviting.

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

70-200 Granville Street
Granville Square (Canada Place Way and Howe Street) Vancouver
BC
Canada

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Terminal City’s latest culinary venture has dared to install itself opposite historic Pigeon Park - turf adamantly claimed by the local homeless community and now unremittingly picketed by anti-gentrification activists. Drama aside, the scene is best savoured with a sake-infused cocktail and a selection of West Coast-style tapas (think chili lime peanuts, beef tataki and parisienne gnocchi). The simple, elegant fare is honed to perfection by Winnipeg chef Makoto Ono, who trained at his parent’s sushi bar, cooked in London and opened restaurants in Beijing and Hong Kong. Interiors are by local restaurant designer of the moment Craig Stanghetta, whose studio Ste Marie marries Japanese minimalism and deco references with warming wood furniture and bespoke lighting (by partner company Good Animal). Standout features include a quirky goose wing prosthesis by Mexico-born artist Enriquez Alvarez, and claw taps by local studio Espiritu design.

INFORMATION

Website

The hands-down winner of the Best Use of Former Olympic Site category is Vancouver's new Cactus Club. Located opposite the Olympic cauldron (its torches still lit on special occasions, such as, umm… new restaurant openings), it was designed by Acton Ostry Architects within the shell of a pre-existing wing of the green-roofed convention centre.

Vancouverites are delighted with its current incarnation as another jewel in the crown of chef Rob Feenie (formerly of Lumiere) that blends fine dining and casual fare. Think sushi in delicately wrapped rice paper, prawn ravioli with truffle oil, lamb popsicles (inspired by top Van restaurant Vij's) amid Acton Ostry's elegant design.

Notable features include Poulson lamps, Bocci lighting, inlaid hand-cut Brazilian slate flooring, custom fir fin ceilings and a Warhol original of Wayne Gretzky. A series of terraced and sequenced framed views ensures everyone can dine by the sea - but for the best views, ask for a table by the huge angled windows.

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

1085 Canada Place
Vancouver
Canada

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It might seem odd that one of Vancouver's most acclaimed kitchens is in a bright orange truck with an image of the Virgen de Guadalupe poised to bite down on a taco. But for some years now Tacofino has been dishing out what locals insist are the best Baja-inspired tacos in British Columbia. And now owners Ryan Spong, Kaeli Robinsong and Jason Sussman have set up a bricks-and-mortar space in the up-and-coming neighbourhood of Hastings-Sunrise in East Vancouver. They had designer Omer Arbel strip a former Malaysian restaurant back to the studs and anchor the space with handsome communal tables and benches made from rescued timber and steel tubes. They're lit by an aerie of glass bulbs that double as pots for succulents and cacti. Already Tacofino fans are crowding the small space to partake in the menu of bocadillos; shared platters of tamales stuffed with prawns, crispy masa, lardons and egg; and tacos filled with tempura-battered lingcod and chipotle mayo.

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

2327 East Hastings Street 

Vancouver

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Vancouver’s Olympic architectural legacy is less about starchitects and iconic buildings than about the very Canadian values of community consultation and environmental sensitivity - with locally harvested softwood getting top billing.

Cannon Design’s speed skating Oval, with its unique undulating wooden paneled roof – one of the longest clear spans in North America - wins points for reusing wood salvaged after a voracious pine beetle infestation destroyed half of British Columbia's pine forests.

The Olympic Park Day Lodge, by Merrick Architects, combines cutting edge green design and stunning views of the surrounding Callaghan Valley. At its centre, Glulam beams follow the upward tilt of the roof, engaging with the coastal mountain range and offering a cathedral like sense of spaciousness and majesty.

At the core of the Walter Francl-designed Trout Lake ice rink, is an arch formed from 70-foot Glulam beams and supported by a concrete buttress wall. Geometry in motion, the building almost disappears into the sloped topography. Organic modernism at its best, the curvilinear white clamshell roof echoes the snow-capped mountains.

Finally, the Athlete's Village is home to a community centre designed by the late Arthur Erickson - destined to eventually become a new mixed-use neighbourhood after the 2010 games - along with a 1.2 million square foot waterfront convention centre and the stylish new Hillcrest curling and Kilarney ice rinks. Olympic architouring looks set to be a key event.

www.vancouver2010.com

The Bombardier Learjet

Interior of the Learjet

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The Bombardier Learjet

The Staircase House by Cindy Rendely, Toronto

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Coast restaurant, Vancouver

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Supernova by Douglas Coupland

Read the article: Douglas Coupland's art

Talking sticks by Douglas Coupland

Penguin Pretty Vacant by Douglas Coupland

Coyote by Douglas Coupland

Patricide by Douglas Coupland

Penguin Cumshot by Douglas Coupland

Penguin Clash by Douglas Coupland

Matricide Silver Skate by Douglas Coupland

Matricide Beer by Douglas Coupland

Drip Maple Syrup

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Form & Forest by D'Arcy Jones Design

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The Keefer Hotel, Vancouver

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Laneway House, Toronto, by Kohn Shnier architects

Read the article: Kohn Shnier, Toronto

Richmond Olympic Oval by Cannon Design

Read the article: Vancouver Winter Olympic architecture

Territory table and chairs by Samare Design, Montreal

Read the article: Samare design, Montreal

Territory lounger by Samare design

Territory desk and chair by Samare design

R-Mountie bench and throw by Samare design

Still House by Level Design, Vancouver

Read the article: Level Design, Vancouver

Sunset Cabin by Taylor_Smyth Architects, Toronto

Read the article: Taylor_Smyth Architects, Toronto

40R_Laneway House by Süperkul, Toronto

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SHIFT Cottage by Süperkul

The Trans Canada Trail

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Nylon Haneda by WANT luggage

WANT luggage, Montreal

Newberry White by WANT luggage

Nylon Haneda by WANT luggage

Dumont black by WANT luggage

Carl Phare's wooden rollercoaster, designed in 1958, Vancouver

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Fashion by Ying Gao, Montreal

Read the article: Ying Gao, Montreal

Form and Forest launched this year and combines the craft of two brothers, Jeff and Ryan Jordan, one in prefab, one from the world of industrial design, with the art and architecture of D’Arcy Jones Design on the west coast in Vancouver.

It is a design-focused initiative for those looking to get off the grid (and into the green) as soon as possible. Every conception is streamlined for maximum mirth. Ryan explains that these modular shells are ‘escape pods’ for urbanites with a refined aesthetic. ‘Our clients are not looking to replicate their urban existence.’

The panelized prefabs ship easily to areas that are difficult to access and the strictly exterior design team customizes units for vistas, local building codes, and the unique constraints of the client’s ideal site. Cabins come in size large (1200+ square foot) and small (400-800 square foot). Two entirely new designs will be available for spring 2010.

www.formandforest.com

The Bombardier Learjet

Interior of the Learjet

Read the article: Bombardier Learjet

The Bombardier Learjet

The Staircase House by Cindy Rendely, Toronto

Read the article: Cindy Rendely

Coast restaurant, Vancouver

Read the article: Coast restaurant

Supernova by Douglas Coupland

Read the article: Douglas Coupland's art

Talking sticks by Douglas Coupland

Penguin Pretty Vacant by Douglas Coupland

Coyote by Douglas Coupland

Patricide by Douglas Coupland

Penguin Cumshot by Douglas Coupland

Penguin Clash by Douglas Coupland

Matricide Silver Skate by Douglas Coupland

Matricide Beer by Douglas Coupland

Drip Maple Syrup

Read the article: Drip Maple Syrup

Form & Forest by D'Arcy Jones Desig

Read the article: Form & Forest

The Keefer Hotel, Vancouver

Read the article: Keefer Hotel

Laneway House, Toronto, by Kohn Shnier architects

Read the article: Kohn Shnier, Toronto

Richmond Olympic Oval by Cannon Design

Read the article: Vancouver Winter Olympic architecture

Territory table and chairs by Samare Design, Montreal

Read the article: Samare design, Montreal

Territory desk and chair by Samare design

R-Mountie bench and throw by Samare design

Still House by Level Design, Vancouver

Read the article: Level Design, Vancouver

Sunset Cabin by Taylor_Smyth Architects, Toronto

Read the article: Taylor_Smyth Architects, Toronto

40R_Laneway House by Süperkul, Toronto

Read the article: Süperkul, Toronto

SHIFT Cottage by Süperkul

The Trans Canada Trail

Read the article: Trans Canada trail

Nylon Haneda by WANT luggage

WANT luggage, Montreal

Newberry White by WANT luggage

Dumont black by WANT luggage

Carl Phare's wooden rollercoaster, designed in 1958, Vancouver

Read the article: Wooden rollercoaster

Carl Phare's wooden rollercoaster, Vancouver

Fashion by Ying Gao

Read the article: Ying Gao, Montreal

Fashion by Ying Gao, Montreal

If you're looking for an antidote to expensive housing and still think pre-fab is fabulous, Vancouver-based Level Design could have the answer. Brad Cameron has created the Still House, a custom designed post and beam home conceived by the architect as a paean to West Coast Zen and naturally harvested BC wood.

There are eight different models, from budget-conscious Glulam versions to houses made from salvaged old-growth softwood (often culled, perfectly preserved, from the bottom of lakes), meaning that the Still House is equally at home in rural or urban settings. State of the art window walls offer a seamless connection to the surrounding landscape and make this the ideal dwelling for the eco-minded modernist.

www.leveldesign.ca

The Bombardier Learjet

Read the article: Bombardier Learjet

The Staircase House by Cindy Rendely, Toronto

Read the article: Cindy Rendely

Coast restaurant, Vancouver

Read the article: Coast restaurant

Supernova by Douglas Coupland

Read the article: Douglas Coupland's art

Talking sticks by Douglas Coupland

Penguin Pretty Vacant by Douglas Coupland

Coyote by Douglas Coupland

Patricide by Douglas Coupland

Penguin Cumshot by Douglas Coupland

Penguin Clash by Douglas Coupland

Matricide Silver Skate by Douglas Coupland

Matricide Beer by Douglas Coupland

Drip Maple Syrup

Read the article: Drip Maple Syrup

Form & Forest by D'Arcy Jones Design

Read the article: Form & Forest

The Keefer Hotel, Vancouver

Read the article: Keefer Hotel

Laneway House, Toronto, by Kohn Shnier architects

Read the article: Kohn Shnier, Toronto

Richmond Olympic Oval by Cannon Design

Read the article: Vancouver Winter Olympic architecture

Territory table and chairs by Samare Design, Montreal

Read the article: Samare design, Montreal

Territory lounger by Samare design

Territory desk and chair by Samare design

R-Mountie bench and throw by Samare design

Still House by Level Design, Vancouver

Read the article: Level Design, Vancouver

Sunset Cabin by Taylor_Smyth Architects, Toronto

Read the article: Taylor_Smyth Architects, Toronto

40R_Laneway House by Süperkul, Toronto

Read the article: Süperkul, Toronto

SHIFT Cottage by Süperkul

The Trans Canada Trail

Read the article: Trans Canada trail

Nylon Haneda by WANT luggage

WANT luggage, Montreal

Newberry White by WANT luggage

Nylon Haneda by WANT luggage

Dumont black by WANT luggage

Carl Phare's wooden rollercoaster, designed in 1958, Vancouver

Read the article: Wooden rollercoaster

Fashion by Ying Gao

Read the article: Ying Gao, Montreal