Woodward’s Designer Reveals Secrets
Architect Gregory Henriquez gives a tour of his creation’s quirky nooks and crannies, and replies to his critics.
By Christine McLaren | 25 February, 2010 | TheTyee.ca
…[The Woodward’s complex] is the climax of a vision that the City of Vancouver had for the revitalization of the Downtown Eastside. In order for it to be a success, however, it had to be a work of perfectly balanced art; both a symbolic and tangible expression of the quest for justice and equality in Vancouver’s troubled Downtown Eastside.
The man who packaged it all together, architect Gregory Henriquez, has spent his entire career seeking to blend architecture with activism…
At Woodward’s, Henriquez sought to do this by challenging himself to become the citizen architect — by participating socially, politically, and environmentally in the community through the architecture he designed. The goal was not only to design housing, but to mould a sense of belonging, interaction, and inclusivity in the Woodward’s community and Downtown Eastside…
Woodward’s at night. Photo courtesy of Kwazy
from the Tyee Flickr photo pool.
Read the full article at thetyee.ca.
A big step up from a cardboard box
Lisa Rochon
The Woodward’s project in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Photo: Darryl Dyck for The Globe and Mail
Besides taking risks with its houses of culture and sports, Vancouver is vilified for its lack of housing for the homeless. So it was with considerable joy that I toured the new apartments of the Portland Hotel Society – a five-storey facility designed as a practical, supportive and beautiful community atop an $80-million performing-arts centre in the Woodward’s redevelopment near the Downtown Eastside. Each of the more than 100 residents now enjoys a bachelor apartment with custom-designed maple cabinets, pull-down Murphy beds and sliding window screens for privacy.
Gregory Henriquez, the lead architect of the Woodward’s redevelopment, is giddy leading the tour, pointing out a long reflecting pool that runs alongside the window of a common room. The pool, the custom-designed furniture, all of the extras come via his collaborating developer, Ian Gillespie of Westbank Projects, the builder of the five-star Shangri-La and the just-opened luxury Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel. Henriquez says Gillespie couldn’t stomach cheap-looking housing so the developer subsidized the government formula for affordable units. Some of the residents were once musicians who played at the old Stanley Hotel. A piano has been donated. A choir has been started.
When a house feels exactly right, enough to be called a home, that’s when there’s music and not a single note is forced.
Read the full article at theglobeandmail.com.
Music review: Kagel’s bikes play Grand Avenue
February 23, 2010
The subset of bicycle-themed works in classical music is small. We have nothing as artistically central as Marcel Duchamp’s ready-made of a bicycle wheel. More typical of music might be an obscure 19th century British composer Stanislaus Elliot’s “Bicycle Sonata” for piano, contemporary British composer Colin Matthews’ lovely “Alphabicycle Order” for children’s chorus and orchestra, or Flip Baber’s re-orchestration of the “Nutcracker” Suite for bike parts.
The monster of bicycle music is Mauricio Kagel’s “Eine Brise,” which the composer called a “fugitive action” for 111 cyclists performing on the open road. Monday night, 111 or so (the count wasn’t exact) pedaled past the Colburn School in the chill air as the middle work in “Celebrating Kagel,” a Monday Evening Concerts tribute to the Argentine composer who became the trickster of the postwar European avant-garde.
The truth be told, “Eine Brise” (“A Breeze”) wasn’t much for the ears. Colorfully garbed cyclists paraded along Grand Avenue making whistling, fluttering-tongued and schussing sounds and ringing bells, as prescribed in the 1996 score. But they labored uphill too slowly to produce any hoped-for Doppler-like effects. Buses across the street easily drowned them out…
– Mark Swed
Read the full article at latimes.com.
That revolving ‘W’ celebrates a healing opportunity below
Woodward’s an invitation for us all to experience a historic social re-integration
BY BOB RANSFORD, SPECIAL TO THE SUN | FEBRUARY 20, 2010
The ‘W’ sign is once again rotating above Abbott and Hastings in downtown Vancouver. The Downtown Eastside development has become a model for modern urban regeneration, columnist Ransford comments. Photograph by: Jenelle Schneider, PNG, Special to the Sun
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The big red “W” -a rebuilt Vancouver icon on its Eiffel Towerlike base — marks ground zero for the rebirth of a real community in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
The Woodward’s development, topped once again with the rotating “W”, is a model for modern urban regeneration, demonstrating the mix of uses, urban-design detailing and intentional diversification required to make a real neighbourhood with a real sense of community…
I spent a couple of hours walking through Woodward’s the other day, hanging out in the public space and shopping there when most other Vancouverites and our onslaught of Olympic visitors were preoccupied with the fun zones throughout the downtown. It was relatively quiet there, but welcoming.
That’s when it dawned on me that it’s not just the housing and the mix of commercial and educational uses at Woodward’s that are already helping make the Downtown Eastside a real neighbourhood.
The real key to Woodward’s success is its public spaces and the way they are already beginning to instigate the kind of social interaction that is needed for all of us to know each other and understand how we all fit together in the Vancouver we all cherish.
The inviting public realm and the generously scaled public gathering places in the Woodward’s project are the places that will welcome people of all means, all cultures, all backgrounds and from all parts of the city, night and day, encouraging the kind of social interaction that builds real community… |
Read the full article at vancouversun.com.
Woodward’s 2010: Better Than One Could Imagine
By ANN ROSENBERG
The Woodward’s Department Store, first established at Main and Georgia Streets in 1892, moved in 1903 to Hastings and Abbott, a short walk from Gastown. In 1908 and several times thereafter, it expanded to almost fill a city block. Some parts of the earlier portions of the sprawling edifice featured roof-line pediments and curved concrete arches over upper storey windows that were typical of the Italianate style popular in Vancouver at the time…
On September 4, 2004, after 10 years of futile negotiations, the City of Vancouver chose Westbank Projects/Peterson Investment Group to develop and Gregory Henriquez Partners Archtitects to design the $400-million Woodward’s project. In the fall of 2006, after the landmark 1944 ‘W’ sign with Eiffel Tower-like support and parts of the original edifice were removed, what was left of the department store came down in a thundering implosion…
Read the full article at preview-art.com.
Replica of the original revolving Woodward’s ‘W’
is illuminated by 6,000 low-energy LED lights.
Photo: Gorrman Lee.
