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Bill Williamson
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Sept/Oct 2016.2
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Article Comments posted by Bill Williamson
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All of the new buildings going up and already here are bland, faceless, square boxes devoid of any unique features that make them interesting to look at and improve the sense of our city being different from Anytown, USA, or for that matter, Lethbridge or Mississaga.
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The ever articulate, multi-syllabic Gene nails it again. Great piece. I'll always see those square, featureless boxes piled up as 'file drawers for people' in the future. There is not one amazing, innovative building being put up in Victoria which is why everyone fawned over the only mildly different Atrium. It was the last squeak of imagination here in town. Are there no architects in Victoria with the ability to design something not square and boring?
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Gene is brilliant at clearly expressing our inchoate feelings of homeness in the few neighbourhoods left that are still examples of 'human scale' that vertical human storage highrises do not deliver. Neighbourhoods like Fernwood, Oaklands, and Gorge-Tillicum are examples of what I believe should be our future not the horrors of the Hudson 'neighbourhood'.
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Once you've read this bit by Gene, there is a fascinating article in The Atlantic that expands on the idea. It's an idea that Gene is not alone in suggesting.
"We may, once again, have hit the civilizing limit. It always feels different, the result of some distinct narrative, some particular set of claims, or personalities, but it’s always the same: a civilization, an empire, reaches a stage at which communication fails and the arguments, the “why” of a culture, become ambiguous, self-contradictory, less-shared or share-able. Still, the cultural enthusiasms underlying the idea of social improvement make objectivity or thoughtful pause difficult (and modesty nearly impossible); make us reluctant to understand things as operating in cycles…even though cycles in nature surround and shout at us; not least that you don’t get better, just older."
The Atlantic's article is called "The Next Decade Could Be EvenWorse."
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I have read every one of Gene's articles in Focus from the first time I discovered them until this one. Gene writes about life and also Victoria in ways that make me think that I am seeing with new eyes even though I was born and raised here. I always look forward to a new edition of Gene's musings and ramblings about the city I love almost as much as he does. Anything he writes is worth the time. I am very glad he is going to continue to appear in Focus.
Victoria: going, going, gone?
in Development and architecture
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I'd love to have council candidates like you describe to vote for.