The strange, familiar oppressiveness of falling cherry blossoms in Vancouver.

Video is by my friend Geoffrey. (Sorry about the quality – I wish YouTube wouldn’t automatically upsize small frames – this is meant to be a small image.)

This is part 2 in a series. Lost Lagoon Terrace at 845 Chilco in Vancouver, built in 1972, is another example of 1960s/70s modernist apartment architecture. The undulating patterned concrete tile extends the whole way up the front face. Whatever happened to patterned concrete, and why are the 1970s the most reviled of all decades, when the 1980s are so much more deserving of dislike? I realize not everyone likes it – my boyfriend included – but to me the patterned section has aged really well. This abstract ornamentation is typical of modernist concrete architecture from this era, which tended to be minimalist except for one or two subtle decorative features, often with this primitive look. Once affordable, 845 Chilco now contains million-dollar condos, one per floor. With that most exotic of features, private keyed entry off the elevator.

This series is about a style of architecture that repelled me when I was growing up but that I now find strangely attractive. These examples of brutalist modernism are all from Vancouver, but there are equivalents all over North America. The brutalist hand-etched steel front door of this building is a classic in this style. I’ve always found it odd that concrete brutalism tends to be accompanied by this sort of medieval or Middle Earth/Lord of the Rings decorative treatment on metal (and in furniture), but it works. Is it concrete harking back to stone or what exactly? 815 Chilco Street, built in 1970, was designed by Vancouver’s “father of modern architecture,” Charles Burwell Kerrins van Norman (1907-1975).

The building of modernist lo-rise condos and apartments in the 70s was part of a deliberate move on the part of the city’s planning department to do away with a certain type of groovy downtown living in funky, sometimes decrepit (but affordable) Victorian and Edwardian houses. Read about the politics of this history in curator Scott Watson’s Urban Renewal: Ghost Traps, Collage, Condos and Squats. Despite the politics of their introduction into Vancouver, these buildings have the virtue of being solid and livable, and they’re now prized. This building, which sits right next to the large and beautiful Stanley Park, is particularly pricey these days. See the next post for another fantastic building, right next door at 845 Chilco Street. Vancouver, let’s not knock down any more 60s and 70s architecture.

Pardon my ignorance, but please educate me – is there a non-aesthetic purpose for this, or is it just cool? We don’t have this where I come from. Does it stop water from flowing quickly off the roof, or prevent something from running around up there, or discourage sunbathing, or what does it do, exactly? I want a white roof with little white rocks on it for myself.

I love this house in La Quinta. I asked my California friend Darren why the town is called La Quinta, which means “fifth” in Spanish, and he wrote: “It’s called that because in colonial times, there were haciendas along major commercial routes that were reached every fifth day of travel. As a result, “La Quinta” is actually a fairly common place name in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.” Those days are over, obviously, and this is not a hacienda, but it seems to fit into this landscape more perfectly than many of the reproduction Spanish colonial jobs that flank it.

The house is a three minute walk from this landscape at the foot of the Santa Rosa Mountains:

Road seen from plane over the Sierra Nevada mountains, California.

Eternity or just Palm Springs, one or the other. Either way, you can tell from the tall red capitals it’s a warning.

Photo taken through plane window, upon landing in California. It’s strange that you can get an inadvertent tilt-shift effect by shooting through the curved window of the plane.

OK GO’s ‘This Too Shall Pass” was, I think, made for me. Thanks again to Jessica, via booooooom. See previous posts about marble runs on this blog here and here. I think the cocktail one may actually have influenced OK GO’s marble run.

70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L’Ogre on Vimeo.

Can you identify the unidentified paintings in this video? It’s a music video for the song 70 Million by Hold Your Horses, directed by L’Ogre. Via Jessica via boooom. It was a fun art history test. I had to dig far back into art history class memories and managed to get:
The Last Supper
Botticelli’s Venus
Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson
a Vermeer?
Raft of the Medusa by Gericault
Death of Marat by David
Michaelangelo’s Creation of Adam
(cont’d)

Magritte, The Son of Man
Mondrian
Frida Kahlo, self portait
De Chirico or Picasso?
Munch’s The Scream
Van Gogh’s Self Portait with Bandaged Ear
Warhol’s Marilyn
not sure, shoot! [Darren says this painting of one woman pinching another's nipple is by an unknown artist from the Fontainebleau school of France, late 16th century]
Can’t remember this one either
Salome with the Head of John the Baptist
Manet’s Olympia
Liberty Leading the People, by Gericault
Picasso or Toulouse Lautrec or?
Klimt (followed by reprise of Frida Kahlo, Van Gogh, Mondrian, Picasso?, Magritte, Munch, Warhol’s Marilyns)
Chagall
Don’t know [Darren says this is “Las Meninas” by Velazquez]
Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, I think?

Beautifully done.

There are more tunnels and round things where this came from: see  y o u h a v e b e e n h e r e s o m e t i m e. This photo originally via OWI.