For those who haven’t been following along, the above is what Vancouverites call a Vancouver Special (see previous post to learn more about this house style). All of the houses below are, believe it or not, updated Vancouver Specials. They were part of a recent tour organized by the Vancouver Heritage Foundation. It’s nice that the denigrated Vancouver Special house style is now being viewed as heritage, because until recently, heritage in Vancouver has fairly narrowly meant Edwardian and Victorian housing. As you can see, the Vancouver Specials below vary in their degree of divergence from the original house style, with the last house shown varying only slightly from the original, while the first varies the most. Thoughts? Perhaps because of the example set by this famous VS restoration, everyone seems to be using the combination of dark charcoal grey with unpainted wood. Unfortunately, interior photography wasn’t allowed.

My favourite is the house below, and not just because it was updated by my friend Scott.

The last house, below, is interesting just because it was fixed up with very little alteration. A paint job, removal of some plaster lions, very little waste, and very little money spent. Most of the renovations just involved opening up the interiors; in this one, the only wall removed was between the living room and kitchen. On the exteriors, the distressed faux brick was painted charcoal and the soffits were stripped down to the bare wood.

The house above at centre, a lowly style known as a Vancouver Special, is shown here prior to its renovation about six years ago by Vancouver architects Pechet and Robb. This renovation was one of the earliest of a current spate of Vancouver Special overhauls, and it’s probably still the most famous. See Canadian Architect magazine and also here. As the previous post explains, the Vancouver Special is a generic, mass-produced contractor’s house design unique to Vancouver. A great number of these houses were built between about 1965 and 1985 until finally the City of Vancouver began to actively suppress them. Now, thanks to their lower prices and the fact that their simple shapes lend them to easy modernization, they are undergoing a revival. Their boxy shape makes them feel surprisingly large, especially when interior walls are removed. You can see from the interior shots below how easily the exteriors and interiors can be switched over from cheesy 70s suburban to something almost midcentury modern. The Pechet and Robb house has an almost Scandinavian modern feel – you’d have to be familiar with Vancouver Specials to know how different this feels from the original. The bottom photo shows the garage. Photos are from pechetandrobb.com, where there is also a description of the renovation. See also more photos of this house on Flickr.

PS. As you’ll see in the next post, it seems to be almost standard practice with Vancouver Special exterior makeovers to go with a combination of dark charcoal-grey paint with unpainted Douglas fir wood facing. It may have been Pechet and Robb who started that trend with this much-publicized house.

This house, as any Vancouverite knows, is what is known as a Vancouver Special. It’s a type of generic builder’s house, built mostly between about 1965 and 1985, that is entirely specific to this city. While it’s slowly gaining a sort of ironic or retro fan base, it’s not generally viewed as Vancouver’s best contribution to architecture. All of these photos were found on the amazing archival site Vancouver Special, a project of artist Keith Higgins. Not only is the site amazingly complete, but he’s set it up so that can cross-index these houses depending on whether you want to see all the Vancouver Specials on corner lots, or only the ones with lions, or with only vertical siding, or with stonework. It’s strangely mesmerizing.

A few years ago, a small number of Vancouverites began to figure out that these deprecated houses are actually smart purchases. For one thing, they tend to be cheaper than average (granted this is still not saying a lot, given Vancouver prices, and it probably won’t last), and for another, it doesn’t take much alteration to fix them up. Vancouver Specials have a relatively modern shape, something that’s otherwise nearly completely lacking in Vancouver, and while these places often don’t look all that prepossessing on the outside, inside they have a liveable and spacious layout. The next posts, titled Vancouver Special: After, will show some of the improvements people have been making to these places. Note: the house directly below is 2 doors to the west of me.