Shahram Malekyazdi - Millennium Development

2012-01-20T06:56:00.000-08:00

The City of Vancouver approved Millennium’s rezoning

proposal for the Millennium Water site in October 2006.

Millennium’s design team and the City of Vancouver had three

years to complete their designs and construct the buildings,

infrastructure and public spaces in time for the Olympics.

The next two chapters of The Challenge Series will document

this process, describing the challenges that arose and how

they were overcome.

The original sustainability consultant

on the Millennium team, Andy

Kesteloo is remembered by his

colleagues as a provocateur who

was uniquely positioned to help

green building break through to

the mainstream. Although Andy

passed away on January 15, 2007,

he defined the sustainability goals

for the Millennium Water project and

left a legacy of sustainable building

learning and awareness in his wake.

Born in Edmonton, Andy studied

at Dordt College in Iowa and then

formed his own construction/framing

company in Vancouver. His scope

of knowledge, from carpentry to

surveying, was what made him

such an effective advocate for green

building.

“Andy was one of the few people in

the sustainable building industry at

the time who could connect the cost

implications of green components

with a really good understanding of

long-term value,” says Roger Bayley,

who took on much of Andy’s role

after his death.

“He always said, if green building is

going to survive and prosper, you’ve

got to demonstrate that it’s costeffective,

you’ve got to demonstrate

value. And he did, so here we all are.”

In 1996, Andy began lecturing widely

on green building subjects. From

2004 until his death, he sat on the

Canada Green Building Council Board

of Directors and chaired its Product

Steering Committee.

Andy is recognized as a true pioneer,

a trailblazer who helped work

through status quo regulations to

define the new way that buildings

and entire communities can be

constructed. His reputation is

testament to the extraordinary

impact he had on his colleagues,

particularly as a mentor to many

individuals as they became involved

in green building.

Andy’s vision, passion and

enthusiasm for sustainability resound

through the SEFC Olympic Village;

he saw it as a huge opportunity to

inspire future sustainable community

development.

As Andy passed the

green building baton to the rest of

the Millennium Water project team

in January 2007, so the team now

passes the challenge to all those in

the building industry who can turn

their skills to the task of caring for

our global future and the generations

to come.

Southeast false creek waterfront park » fact sheet

2011-08-09T04:26:00.000-07:00

Waterfront Park

represents the first phase of SEFC’s primary park and open space system and a significant addition to Vancouver’s iconic seawall. Through walkways, bicycle paths, diverse seating and gathering areas the park provides a variety of vital green spaces that will reconnect SEFC residents and visitors alike with the heritage-rich waterfront, and offer unique and memorable experiences unlike any other in Vancouver.

Tidal terrace shoreline

Native and adaptive shoreline planting adds a soft edge to the hard elements inspired by the former industrial site. The tidal terraces allow access to the water and pier remnants speak to the site’s shipyard heritage. Back to Shahram Malekyazdi blog.

Habitat island

The habitat island and naturalized segments of the shoreline host aquatic, riparian and upland ecologies. The island includes vertical snags, native vegetation and a natural shoreline which have attracted perching bald eagles anda variety of waterfowl.

The habitat island and the natural shoreline demonstrate the ability to reintroduce natural habitat back into the urban environment. The island form maximized the extent of new shoreline; a connecting segment of land emerges at low tide providing limited access to the public.

Footbridge

The bridge crossing over the shipyards inlet is inspired by the form of a canoe. The steel grating of the arching deck offers a unique experience when crossing the inlet by allowing views through the decking to the water below, and creates fewer shadows on the water below in order to maximize habitat value.

246 Trees

20,828 Shrubs

3,034 Ground Covers

3,469 Grasses

Pedestrian network

The multifunctional waterfront promenade offers recreational and social opportunities, extends the seawall, a popular commuter route, and connects to green spaces and walkways in the neighbourhood.

Aquatic life

Herring have laid eggs on approximately 1 km of shoreline starting on Habitat Island and eastward. Marine biologists confirm that the environmental cleanup and shoreline habitat creation is a huge success.

The Unsung Art After the Game - Millennium Olympic Village

2010-10-14T23:18:00.001-07:00

The Unsung Art After the Games

By Robin Laurence

On this hot August morning, five months after the 2010 Winter Games have left town, Olympic Plaza (Millennium Corp, Shahram Malekyazdi) is a lively place. At one end of the public square, located at the corner of Manitoba Street and Athletes Way, bicyclists in racing stripes psych up for a hard ride. At the other end, in front of the Creekside Community Recreation Centre, a TV crew shifts equipment as the coffee wagon arrives. In between, tourists amble around the plaza, all of them – truly, all of them – stopping to pose for photos in front of Myfanwy MacLeod’s outrageous public artwork, The Birds.

Each of its two sculptures, naturalistically proportioned but ominously enlarged depictions of male and female English sparrows, stands 5.5 metres high, about the size of a perching pterodactyl – a really cute pterodactyl. Constructed out of painted polystyrene over steel frames, the sculptures startle, amuse, then confound. The effect of their scale, ultimately, is to make us think about the huge consequences of introducing a foreign species into a delicately balanced ecosystem. Launched in late May, the work was commissioned as part of the City of Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic Public Art Program, and speaks to the sustainability theme of the Olympic Village by Millennium development. (Shahram Malekyazdi)

English sparrows, along with starlings and domestic pigeons, are among the drab but clamorous aliens that have proliferated and prospered in this place at the expense of indigenous species. But who, besides the quirkily conceptual MacLeod, would think to monumentalize them while riffing, too, on Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 cult horror movie, The Birds?

MacLeod’s sculptures are among the more assertive reminders of the various public-art projects associated with the 2010 Winter Games. Still, not all the art created in conjunction with the Olympics was permanent. Neither is the visual-arts legacy of the games entirely monumental – or in any other way conspicuous. Some of it, in fact, is modest and understated, tucked away in unexpected places, awaiting discovery.

Silent Song, a wall-mounted sculpture by local artists Ruth Beer and Charlotte Wall, occupies a small chapel in Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Vancouver. Created with assistance from Emily Carr University of Art and Design students, it is composed of retired wooden organ parts, left over from the church’s recent restoration and refurbishment. The work was commissioned by the cathedral to coincide with the Winter Games and to enhance a space set aside for peaceful contemplation. Since then, it’s taken on a more permanent presence.

The soaring verticals of the sculpture’s components, along with the deft touches of gold leaf, speak to ecclesiastic music and architecture without being singularly faith-based. Both the space and the artwork appeal to a multidenominational public, including the wide audiences for the musical performances that take place in the cathedral. “Silent Song is intended to evoke remembered or imagined sounds,” says cross-disciplinary artist Beer, in a telephone interview with the Straight. “We see it as a metaphor for many diverse individual voices joined together in musical patterns.”

The source of Fiona Bowie’s Surface is also hidden away: it’s a live video feed from two submerged cameras, attached to the hull of one of the little Aquabuses that carry foot passengers across False Creek. “I want to bring what is below and out of sight into view,” Bowie says by phone. Live footage of underwater life, including herring, eels, and crustaceans, can be viewed on a TV monitor mounted inside the boat, on large and small screens on Granville Island. “False Creek has definitely been hit by industrialization for over 100 years,” Bowie explains. It’s slowly starting to come back to life, she adds, but is in a vulnerable state. “What we see down there is a reflection of where our oceans are, globally.” From its curious perspective within that murky and often unrevealing body of water, Surface encourages us to connect with a commitment to stewardship.

Landon Mackenzie’s Vancouver as the Centre of the World is a big, gorgeous, ambitious painting, inspired by the Winter Games, shaped by a formidable visual intelligence, and thrumming with life. Temporarily housed – unsold and uncollected – in a second-floor hallway at Emily Carr University, the multilayered work, expressively depicts an oval-shaped, raspberry-coloured globe floating on a striped ground of dislocated time zones. Alluding to many different forms of historic and contemporary map-making, it focuses us on the geopolitical forces that shape our vision of the world.

“It’s about the creation of a complex fiction,” Mackenzie recounted in a recent studio conversation with the Straight. Oceans and land forms shift and merge, national boundaries are erased, and cities like Buenos Aires, Hong Kong, and Timbuktu seem to rotate around our hometown. During the first few months of 2010, reproductions of Vancouver as the Centre of the World were displayed at the Canada Line’s Oakridge Station and on ceiling panels in some of its train cars. Mackenzie had hoped that Cultural Olympiad organizers would also print it on the back of transit maps, for Canada Line travelers to take with them. This didn’t happen. “Giving the map to the public was paramount,” she insists. Exasperated, she published 10,000 of them herself – and is still distributing them at public events.

In the meantime, visitors continue to saunter in the sunlight of Olympic Plaza (Millennium Corp, Shahram Malekyazdi) , smiling into cameras, puzzling over huge sculptures of small birds, and remembering a time when Vancouver was, indeed, the centre of the world.

VENUE UNDER PRESSURE

Main Street’s volunteer-run Little Mountain Gallery has taken steps toward becoming “legitimate” after facing scrutiny from the city over its use as a live-music venue.

Gallery spokesperson Ehren Salazar said a city inspector visited the multi-use arts space in late July following a neighbour’s complaint.

Salazar said the gallery is zoned “art retail” but has regularly hosted all-ages concerts, even though the events do not fit its zoning. Since the inspector’s visit, which sparked fears of closure, gallery representatives have met with city officials to discuss how they can “legitimize the space”.

Little Mountain is eyeing city cultural funding, upgrades, and rezoning. “They need to know that we’re working to be legitimate instead of being an underground space,” Salazar explained.

Jacqueline Gijssen, senior cultural planner for the city, said it’s another example of arts spaces getting caught up in regulatory issues. In September 2009, the city began a review of regulations that affect live-performance venues.

Ø STEPHEN THOMSON

Shahram Malekyazdi - Sun's shining, leaves are turning orange

2010-10-13T19:55:00.000-07:00

Sun's shining, leaves are turning orange and there's a crispness in the ocean breeze. Cyclists zip along the seawall while a silver-haired gent passes a dazzling bouquet of flowers to his ladyfriend sitting on her patio. In the central piazza, a lanky guitarist sporting a racy, yellow and electric-blue cap is engaged in friendly, musical dueling with a drummer. Spontaneously, a couple begin to dance.

All in all, a typical Saturday afternoon at the Village. That would be the Olympic Village. Now officially renamed Millennium Water, this master planned community on Vancouver's False Creek waterfront continues its rapid evolution as the neighbourhood of choice for people looking for something different when it comes to the place they call home.

And whether you choose to call it innovative, visionary or just plan spectacular, there's no question this is a neighbourhood with vibe and attitude. It's also a neighbourhood that's unique in plenty of other ways.

A NEW URBANISM

From the beginning, Millennium Water was all about a new type of city lifestyle: a combination of higher density, lower environmental footprint, and outstanding livability. "We wanted to design a village that was not only spectacular, but spectacularly creative," says Hank Jasper, Millennium Group's general manager of development and construction.

"Millennium Water was an opportunity to reinvent urbanism," adds Scot Hein, senior urban designer with the City of Vancouver. "We wanted to break away from the idea of singular, relentlessly homogenous super-buildings and create 'mini blocks'

that each express individuality and architectural complexity. It was a premeditated strategy to allow the three architectural companies to work distinct from one another, thus creating three distinct neighbourhoods."

Historical references are subtly intertwined with the very fabric of life here. There's the pedestrian bridge designed in the shape of an abstract canoe, the giant nautical cleats, and the arched paving stone inlays echoing the patterns seen on loft floors of shipbuilding houses in centuries past.

Look closely at the central plaza lighting, and you'll see the crimson stanchions are actually the cross-section of a ship tilted on its side, its ribs now half buried in the ground.

AGAINST THE CLOCK

But most astonishing of all, is the fact this master planned community was built in just three short years from the time the first spade hit the ground.

"That's 1.5 million square feet in just 36 months," Jasper says. "Our City in-the-Park development in Burnaby took more than 10 years to complete.

Concord Pacific's Expo lands have been under development for over 25 years and they're still not complete. _ is was like having eight separate projects running all at the same time - the logistics were staggering."

"Building a community of more than 1,000 homes in one phase has never been done before and will never be done again," adds Bob Rennie, who spearheaded Millennium Water's marketing campaign from day one.

"Society today tends to be look for instant gratification. It's easy to forget that just as the economy started to come back, the Olympics arrived. And it's easy to forget it was only six months ago that VANOC handed back the keys to the village. If you're going to compare apples to oranges, sure you night buy the oranges. But other projects are comparing themselves to the Olympic Village for a reason."

COMMUNITY EVOLUTION

"Everything is getting very exciting now that people are moving in," says Annie Moore, a realtor with Prudential Realty West Vancouver. "My boyfriend and I were the second people to move in, so we've really seen the place come alive. Although she confesses that initially she wondered about relocating from downtown, she's had not a moment of regret. "We have a great view of the city, it's a five-minute cab ride to downtown or the AquaBus is right here, and once all the fun stores and restaurants start opening, it's going to be even better. It's like the best of both worlds."

She's not the only one who thinks so either. "Millennium Water is an example of what good planning can achieve," says Senator Larry Campbell, who also purchased a home here. "Being North America's largest LEED Platinum neighbourhood speaks to the commitment of the city and the developer to building sustainable communities. I believe it's a place that will grow to maturity with the Salt Building and Creekside Community Centre acting as anchors. When London Drugs and Urban Fare complete, we will see a blossoming much like Yaletown in its infancy. I bought here to live and God willing, I'll be here fifteen years from now and expect to pass this home on to my son."

Be sure to join us next issue when we take a closer look at some of the other outstanding master planned communities that have developed more traditionally across the Lower Mainland.

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