George Norris, the artist who made what is arguably Vancouver’s most famous piece of public art—a giant steel crab in front of the Vancouver Museum and Planetarium—has died in Victoria.  It’s odd that so few know Norris’s name, considering the crab’s popularity, how prolific he was in his career, and his long art teaching career in Vancouver and Banff.

Vancouver does have a  long history of ignoring its own artists even as they’re celebrated elsewhere, but I’m still surprised that so many of Norris’ public pieces have been removed and destroyed, including the tall steel piece below which used to stand outside Pacific Centre downtown. This post is just a small reminder of Norris’ work. Find more information— here and many more works here.

One of Norris’ most popular works is the frieze on the exterior of the post office at 8th and Pine (I believe that’s the corner). Photo below.

Norris was trained in Vancouver and London at the Slade School. Norris is the uncle of award-winning Vancouver artist Arabella Campbell. 

A screenshot from Я на народе!. Try for yourself; go to the site and run your cursor over the kaleidoscope.

Everybody works but the vacant lot, Henry George as quoted by Fay Lewis

This is a parody artwork at Vancouver’s 221A Artist-Run Centre, parodying the “Micro Loft” building being erected next door to it in the current lightning-fast condo land rush taking place in Chinatown.

From their website:

221A is pleased to present Cube Living (Phase 2), a 4-week artist-in-residence with artist and designer Alex Grünenfelder, running from January 23 to February 25, 2013. Grünenfelder will examine how real estate developments operate as containers that capture living space as urban spatial commodities through the packaging of bodies, objects, lifestyles, identities, capital and politics.
Grünenfelder will begin a limited release of micro-properties measuring 1 cubic foot. This innovative product addresses the stagnation and endemic unaffordability of Vancouver’s real estate market. In developing a spatial commodity that can be purchased in very small units, Cube Living is able to offer affordable properties at prices under $50! Micro-properties are an accessible solution to the inflated real estate market crisis that threatens to push Vancouver’s economy into decline.

Many Vancouver residents find it difficult or impossible to enter the market. Despite government urban densification policies that have brought 10,000 new condo units to the city each year, [1] Vancouver remains the second least-affordable city in the world. [2]

Vancouver has experienced explosive real estate development since 1986. In the 2000s, then-mayor Sam Sullivan’s Ecodensity program initiated radical urban densification with the aim of promoting housing affordability and environmentally sustainable neighbourhoods. Pundits declared that flooding the market with new condos would result in more affordable—or at least stable—prices, so that new buyers could purchase small units and eventually trade up into a larger living space. Buildings got taller and condos got smaller, but prices have kept rising. Development and construction hasn’t been able to meet the goal of affordability and now the city is faced with a dire situation.

“The current property market is almost saturated. Sales are in decline because people can’t afford to lower their asking prices. We need to expand into new markets, and the only way to produce a lower tier of affordable entry-level properties is to create highly liquid, easily tradeable micro-spaces. This is the only way to address the affordability crisis within our market-driven real-estate economy.”

[1]RBC. “Vancouver’s housing market: moderation in store but vulnerable to a harsher outcome.” April 2012. Page 6. http://www.rbc.com/economics/market/pdf/vancouverhouse.pdf

[2]Demographia. “9th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survery: 2013”. Page 2. http://www.demographia.com/dhi.pdf

Ha.

221A website, twitter, Facebook event.

Photo by Dan Toulgoet , Vancouver Courier - Elvy Del Bianco presents rare films shot in Vancouver between 1964 and 1988 at the Waldorf Hotel in 2011.

This is one of the more interesting short talks I’ve listened to, and I’m posting it here in the hope that it gets wider distribution. It was presented by Elvy Del Bianco, a researcher with major BC credit union VanCity, itself a cooperative. Del Bianco’s position at VanCity is quite unique; his job is to research the relationship between arts and innovation and promote a cooperative business model in an attempt to foster social capital locally. What is social capital? Well, the short answer is that it’s the various benefits of cooperation. Del Bianco explains using the model of Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region, one of the most profitable in the EU thanks to its “lego economics” in which smaller businesses (balsamic vinegar, parmesan, even Ferrari) combine resources to leverage economic power. Culture both plays a role in and benefits from this model. It is also interesting to note that the region is not just wealthy but is one of the most democratic anywhere, with a small income gap in what is historically a left-wing Italian heartland with a long history of employee-owned companies.

Below is Del Bianco’s 6-minute talk at Vancouver’s Pecha Kucha, and it’s well worth watching no matter where you live. The audio is a little challenging at points, and as I found out when I spoke at Pecha Kucha, you have to speak quickly if you want to fit complex ideas into a 6 minute spiel. But it’s an extremely interesting talk. His comments the challenges facing arts and culture in Vancouver are interesting; he talks about condo development speculation driving unaffordability, as well as the massive, unique-in-Canada massive cuts to cultural investment on the part of BC’s provincial government.

Bianco is himself an artist, having worked many years as an actor after training at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He grew up in East Vancouver.

I guess it’s becoming evident that I watch a lot of Scandinavian television. The Bridge (or Bron/Broen as it’s know in Scandinavia, meaning “bridge” in Swedish and Danish) follows a long murder investigation launched when a body—or, as it turns out, parts of two bodies assembled as one—is found in the middle of the Øresund Bridge that links Sweden and Denmark. In fact, the bisected body parts are carefully placed either side of the exact boundary between the two countries. Two detectives, one Swedish and one Danish, take the lead in the investigation. What follows is, among other things, an extended tour of Copenhagen and Malmö.

If you can ignore the increasingly common trope of the sexually attractive, socially and psychologically impaired, and intellectually brilliant female sleuth teamed up with a crusty male sidekick (Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, The Killing, Homeland), you might find the show’s setting and narrative arc interesting.

I’m only concentrating on exteriors and interiors because this is after all a design blog and for any designer it’s hard to ignore the architecture, urban planning and interiors in Bron/Broen. It’s also enjoyable to see the sheer amount of IKEA involved; I have those water glasses. Do Danish detectives have better design sense than North American detectives do? Well, obviously.

It’s notable that there are only eight high-rise towers in all of Scandinavia, and most of them not very tall. There are only two in Sweden—one in Stockholm and the one in Malmö. Featured repeatedly in The Bridge, it’s Santiago Calatrava’s white Turning Torso. It’s Scandinavia, so it’s quality without quantity; the opposite of what we do in Vancouver.

Kim Bodnia as Danish detective Martin Rohde in his house, with son.

Sofia Helin as Saga Norén, Swedish detective from Malmö, Sweden, in Martin Rohde’s house in Copenhagen

Statue of The Little Mermaid in Copenhagen harbour. Vancouver’s Girl in a Wetsuit, located in Stanley Park, is an homage to the Danish original.

Animation from a kinder, gentler, classier time. Designed by R.O. Blechman and animated by Willis Pyle, 1996, for CBS Christmas station identification.