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IN BRIEF

THE E XPERT

Doctor of Design

As director of Emily Carr’s Health Design Lab, Caylee Raber works to turn the often dehumanizing health-care experience into something better.

Michelle Cyca

Q: A:

What does “humancentred design” mean?

It helps to have these outsiders come to facilitate in a different way.”

It means making sure that the things we’re designing are grounded in an understanding of the people who are going to be using them by involving those people in that design process.

Q: How does that method look in practice, when you’re working on a project?

A: We’ve had a group of students working with the St. Paul’s redevelopment team on how we might consider the front entrance experience of their new hospital. Part of that work was designing tools to facilitate conversations, so not just going in with flipcharts and a boardroom table, but thinking about how we can create interactive tools to engage people in drawing out their desires and needs.

We’ve used everything from string and wooden blocks to collage materials and disposable cameras.

Q: So design isn’t just about the final product; it’s also about the process.

A: Exactly—that’s a really big part of the work we do. Sometimes we’re just designing tools for conversation. In this case, we designed a tool kit that included a set of icons, inspirational photo cards, Post-it notes and a grid template in order to engage participants in the making and expressing of an ideal floor plan.

Another part of our process on this project was doing onsite observation at hospitals across Vancouver—just spending an hour sitting and observing how people interact in that space.

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Q: What kinds of things did you notice during that observation?

A: The notion of “wandering” as a positive activity and form of distraction. Not everyone likes to sit while waiting. One group incorporated a wandering loop into their floor plan design, while another created an art gallery space. Another insight was that most hospitals have very large welcome desks at the front, but these often end up being vacant or unstaffed.

We observed that having an empty desk actually feels less welcoming.

We brainstormed ideas such as having smaller desks located directly beside selfserve orientation stations, as well as the idea of pop-up stands, or moveable desks for when greeters are actually available and most needed.

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Q: Every time I’ve been in a hospital, it doesn’t seem like people thought much about design and comfort. Are these new concepts for hospitals?

A: It is work that architects do and have done for years. But I do think there’s an opportunity for different design methods that architects aren’t necessarily familiar with. That’s what’s been fun about this project—the opportunity to do that.

And when you only have health-care professionals involved in trying to make the system better, their perspective is impacted by their experience as working professionals and what they know. They can no longer really put themselves in the patient’s shoes. It helps to have these outsiders come to facilitate in a different way and have a different perspective.

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personal care and aesthetics-focused businesses are particularly fertile ground.

Many new immigrants also don’t have or can’t get credit cards in Canada when they first arrive, so being able to pay through WeChat is an advantage for them, he points out.

As well, they’re just more familiar with WeChat than with other social media platforms.

“The recent immigrants aren’t in the habit of using Facebook or Google, so if you want to get their business, you need to do it through WeChat,” says Cephivenus, who is originally from Taiwan. “And they still store their money in China.”

That would be people like Barton Li, a realtor who has lived in Vancouver for 18 years but still travels back to his hometown of Guangzhou frequently and maintains a bank account there.

“Before, I would have to bring cash back from China. This is very convenient for me. I use WeChat a lot, so it’s always in my hands.” Li uses WeChat Pay mostly for small purchases—when he goes to the grocery store, for example—and spends about $500 a month using that system.

No one has exact statistics, but Cephivenus estimated earlier this year that about 4,000 businesses in Vancouver and Toronto are using WeChat Pay, with about 700,000 users in Toronto and 400,000 in Vancouver. In general, businesses like it because it helps them attract those customers who don’t yet have credit or sometimes even a bank account in Canada. As well, it’s seen as being as secure as Visa or Mastercard. And the charges (about 1.5 percent of each purchase) are lower than some credit cards.

(Businesses are also interested in Alipay, another payment system from China associated with the Alibaba empire that was created

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WeChat had almost a billion users in China. Vancouver, which functions almost as an outpost for China, has a significant number of those users circulating throughout the city. originally to help customers make payments to the Amazon-like company’s online shopping site.)

There are limitations, however.

WeChat Pay, which is part of the Tencent Holdings multinational based in China, can’t be used to buy items seen as investments, says Cephivenus. It can be used to pay for the legal fees associated with buying a house, but not for the house itself.

Nor can it be used for insurance.

And it can’t be used to get around China’s limit on taking capital out of the country, currently set at $50,000 (U.S.) a year.

While some people who have used WeChat Pay aren’t sure about the exact legalities, immigration lawyer Richard Kurland is. He is sure that the system can’t be used to get around the currency controls.

“WeChat would normally want to keep annual tabs on totals exported, to ensure compliance with currency export controls,” he said in an email.

“I’m not trained in Chinese law, but it seems that WeChat might be held

VA N M A G . C O M S E P T E M B E R /O C T O B E R 2 0 1 8

liable for infractions.”

Of course, that’s a reminder that there’s always the surveillance aspect of the system, as users around the world have discovered with all social media platforms. Lotus Ruan, a researcher with the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, observes that the platform does bring that issue with it. “We released a report on how WeChat applies a different censorship policies to users who signed up with a mainland Chinese phone number versus those who signed up with an international phone number,” says Ruan. “In a nutshell, censorship on WeChat is enabled only to users signed up with a mainland Chinese phone number, and it persists even if they later link their account to an international number. This can potentially affect students abroad, tourists, business travellers, academics attending international conferences, and anyone who has recently emigrated out of China.”

In spite of that, fans continue to pile into the system. Toward the end of 2017, WeChat had almost a billion users in China. Vancouver, which functions almost as an outpost for China, has a significant number of those users circulating throughout the city. And more and more businesses want access to that market. Yes, the high-end ones like Holt Renfrew and the luxury car dealerships. But also those as mundane as parking companies. EasyPark boasted last November that it was the first parking organization in B.C. to offer this “motion pay” service. And it bubbled about its future expansion.

“EasyPark has plans to extend WeChat Pay and Alipay to all their Vancouver locations, including highvolume tourist centres like Stanley Park, Queen Elizabeth Park and Jericho Beach.” Can Translink and McDonald’s be far behind?

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Taste THE DISH

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BRINE O’CLOCK The sTory seems Too Twee To be real. Two expats find themselves in our fair city, and everything is going great save for one thing: where are the good pickles? So Scott Kaylin (a New Yorker) and Chris Hobson (a Torontonian) set up to rectify this egregious blind spot. They brainstorm, they taste and, sure, they brand as Kaylin and Hobbs, and in no time they and their green-aproned charges are running the hottest stall on Granville Island. And this summer, they repeated the experiment at Lonsdale Quay with equal success. Perchance proper pickles are a perfect present? And as for which way to go, taste-wise: the mustards are dramatic, the jalapeño lively, but we’ll take the middle ground with horseradish—a crunch, some heat and plenty of nostalgia. Granville Island Market, Lonsdale Quay Market, kaylinandhobbs.com

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Sweet E’s Barra 41

Secret Garden

Jinya

scene with its thin-crust pizzas, buffalo carpaccio and plucked-off-the-Wildebeestmenu smoked olives. It’s also one of a handful of places with a happy hour. Other dinner options include Minerva’s side gig, 7 Barra 41 (2407 W 41st Ave., barra41.com), for B.C.-centric wine and beer (and classic cocktails, naturally), and ramen temple 8 Jinya (2129 W 41st Ave., jinya-ramenbar.com), where remarkably rich vegan broth is as good as traditional pork-based tonkotsu.

GETTING BUZZY

For all the jokes about Kerrisdale being sleepy, there are plenty of places to get a caf-

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feine fix. The seemingly fish-out-of-water that is 9 Honolulu Coffee (2098 W 41st Ave., honolulucoffee.com) brews Kona coffee beans from the café’s own plantation. While Honolulu is popular with the spandex set (the quinoa- and acai-heavy menu probably helps), local microroaster 10 Rocanini (5631 W Blvd., rocanini.com) attracts the MacBook mafia.

Easily overlooked on the western edge of Kerrisdale, 11 Rose House (5687 Balsam St., rosehousevancouver.com) is the only Canadian outpost of the Taiwanese chain’s artmeets-tea concept. In addition to teeny treats for afternoon

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Honolulu Coffee

tea, there are iced options and a full menu of items that require utensils. Then there’s the venerable 12 Secret Garden Tea Company (2138 W 40th Ave., secretgardentea.com): stick out your pinky in the airy new tea room, or get miniature desserts to go and scarf them on your couch while wearing stretchy pants.

SWEETS GALORE

Speaking of stretchy pants: for truffles and a mean hot chocolate, hit up 13 Gem Chocolates (2029 W 41st Ave., gemchocolates.ca). Just across the street, 14 Sweet E’s (2032 W 41st Ave., sweet-e.ca) proffers North American treats without

Rose Tea House

Ajisai

the tooth-aching sweetness.

We’re especially fond of the statuesque cakes baked in petite pans, layered sky high and decorated with restraint, as well as the lilac dresser that sits under the cash register. Local mini-chain 15 Faubourg (2156 W 41st Ave., faubourg.com) got its start in Kerrisdale with authentic French-style cakes and pastries, including what are arguably some of the best macarons in town. Finally, 16 Michèle Cake Shop (6033 West Blvd.) excels at Chinese-style baking, with pillowy sponge cakes, pitchperfect cocktail buns and flaky egg tarts—traditional or brûléed in the Portuguese style: it’s your choice.

Benjamin Moore’s Honeybee

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VA N CIT Y DESIGN

A great city doesn’t happen by accident. Nature gave Vancouver its stunning backdrop, but it’s pure human ingenuity that shapes our urban experience. As our global reach grows and our skyline evolves, we’re celebrating the creatives who work to make our life here beautiful and the planners who quietly shape how we navigate and interact with the world.

This is a city by design. portrait photography by Evaan Kheraj grooming by Melanie Neufeld

The Gang’s All Here Some of Vancouver’s most interesting design minds, photographed in front of The Polygon Gallery: clockwise from top left: Marianne Amodio, Jane Cox, Juno Kim, Harley Grusko and Joleen Mitton.

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VA N CIT Y DESIGN

From the Ground Up 44

VA N M A G . C O M S E P T E M B E R /O C T O B E R 2 0 1 8

Though the Vancouver skyline is rapidly evolving, it’s not actually starchitect projects or recordsetting skyscrapers that make a city great: the change that creates an engaged, active community and improves the quality of life happens on the ground level—on street corners, in our parks, around public spaces. Are our urban planners thinking small enough?

by Frances Bula

Green Rush Once the viaducts are removed, landscape architecture firm James Corner Field Operations will be swooping in to reshape the False Creek waterfront with 13.75 acres of new parks and open space as well as an events district.

COURTESY OF THE CIT Y OF VANCOUVER

A

sk an architect or urban planner about the changing look and feel of Vancouver, and they’ll usually talk about buildings. The sensational Vancouver House, climbing to the sky next to the Granville Street Bridge—an aggressive aluminum-tinted flower that starts on a slim stem and blooms outward on the upper floors. The parade of ever-more-adventurous towers on Georgia and Alberni Streets, as developers flocking to (mostly) international architects try to outdo each other in boldness after three decades of filling downtown with uniform glassy condo buildings. Among them, Westbank’s Kengo Kuma tower, Bosa’s Buro Ole Scheeren Jenga-like building, and local architect James Cheng’s proposed monastic-

looking obelisk for Brilliant Circle Group which will sit where Georgia meets Pender.

But ask regular Vancouverites the same question, and the view changes abruptly. No more imaginary craning of the neck to look up.

No assessment of the skyline or silhouettes or massing or materials palette. Ask on Twitter what they love, and it’s the small details at ground level. The new children’s playground next to Science World, says one. Benches along the Comox bike route in the West End, from another. The growing number of linear parks through the city: the new Arbutus Greenway, the routes along the Kitsilano beaches. They verge on the poetic. “The landscaping, pedestrian realm and cycling infrastructure around the new Emily Carr is very high quality. Seems like someone scattered wildflower seeds around the adjacent empty lots as well, and they’re

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VA N CIT Y DESIGN

all in bloom. Great idea,” tweeted software engineer Tavis McCallum, who cycles through the area regularly, about the best new things in Vancouver. And there are also the small changes they hate. “The white monolithic vault-esque style of houses going up in Dunbar/Oakridge/ Kerrisdale,” is urban-planning student Laurel Eyton’s top visual annoyance.

So when anyone talks about design in the city, it’s clear that it lives in different places for quite different sets of inhabitants. There are the increasingly noticeable towers that get Vancouver mentioned in the architecture magazines and attract the tourist photos.

But there’s the almost subliminal design in the city, the kind many people barely notice, except for a mist of pleasure or comfort that comes over them as they experience it. That divergence in assessing the city’s texture is not surprising for those who have analyzed it.

Researchers who study the way regular people use cities know that what matters most to them is the environment that they can see and enjoy right around them. And the design of that environment produces powerful social impacts.

“The feeling of psychological ownership in

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public spaces is very important,” says Colin Ellard, a University of Waterloo neuroscientist who specializes in studying the psychology of people’s interactions with cities. “And we need those when we have to live with thousands and millions of others. How do we solve those problems of failure of social capital in cities, of loneliness? It’s public spaces and green spaces.

They’ve been potent to the way people feel.”

It’s not that urban citizens reflexively hate towers, says Ellard. “Generally, we like iconic landmark buildings.” But that’s not actually what most people look at as they navigate the city. “As an urban pedestrian, what you see is in the bottom two to two and a half metres. What matters there is complexity and variety. And even a small parkette with a bench and a tree can be really effective in changing your mood.”

Of course, some notice and assess both Vancouvers: the one in the sky and the one on the ground. Late on this sunny afternoon, at a time when the construction crews have gone home and all is quiet again, boomer couple Bill and Kathy Moore sit at a sidewalk tables outside Tartine Bread and Pies with their out-of-town visitors, facing one of Vancouver’s biggest

ARIANA GILLRIE

The Hub Olympic Village Plaza is a prime example of development that actually affects dayto-day life: a bustling public square with people crossing paths en route to the seawall or Tap and Barrel, or kicking back with their food-truck lunch in the sun.

Juno Kim Chef and stylist, Juno Kim Catering

The way to keep progressing our scene in Vancouver is to keep the talent here and make sure that we help each other grow.” —j u no k i m

He may have made his name on Instagram, but food stylist and chef Juno Kim (@jun0k) is a design powerhouse offline, too. Besides running his eponymous catering business, he’s also shaping the visual language of our food experiences through work on film and TV projects (iZombie), print features (Western Living) and pop-up dinners (or brunches—Kim doesn’t discriminate) all over the city. His textured, colourful dishes, each served up without pretension, spotlight not just the joy of cooking but also the power of a visual feast to bring people together.

Why is design important?

I think design can be powerful.

From an intellectual standpoint, for example, most designers can design a door handle in a way where people understand that you have to push or pull without explicitly telling them— good design is something that we maybe take for granted at times.

THE DESIGN MINDS

How would you describe the design scene in Vancouver?

I think the talent is here; we just have to develop that culture and appreciation for it. The way to keep progressing our scene in Vancouver is to keep the talent here and make sure that we help each other grow, because we are a younger city compared with New York, L.A., Toronto.

How do you think your work specifically has made an impact on the city?

I think where I may have had a bit of influence is through my love of collaborating. I love working with other people—celebrating each other’s strengths and even weaknesses at times.

I think every industry benefits from people coming together and working together rather than being ultracompetitive, and so I try to do my part to celebrate our combined love of cooking food.

EVA AN KHERA J

What does a food stylist do?

We usually make the on-camera food you see when you see a movie scene where people are dining or there’s food on the table. We’re the ones that create the food that’ll match the script and the context. We also create different foodscapes that will translate really well for print media.

What do you love most about styling foods and being a chef?

I like the ability to take a bunch of ingredients and transform them into something they weren’t before. —As told to Sam Nar

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Marianne Amodio and Harley Grusko Architects, MA+HG Architects Sure, architecture power couple Marianne Amodio and Harley Grusko are serious designers, building intelligent, functional spaces throughout Vancouver, like the APT co-living space on West 12th, the upcoming low-rise Tomo House in South Main or the Hollywood Theatre renovation. That doesn’t mean they aren’t a little playful, too—bold colours and whimsical lines are their calling cards.

How would you describe your approach to design?

M: Working with homeowners, our approach is different from working with developers. Homeowners tend to be personal and more collaborative.

H: We want to work with people as much as we want to work with buildings.

M: With developers, they trust our instinct. The approach becomes more about how we envision the site, how we think about the urban context, sustainability, et cetera.

H: Our hearts lie in looking to aid in the affordability crisis. This leads us to projects that tend to be more about multi-family dwellings.

THE DESIGN MINDS

You focus on smaller, smarter living spaces in your residential architecture.

M: We’re responding to a real need.

When I started, one of the first projects I got was the MAD (house), and that was the first inkling of this affordability crisis: eight members of a family deciding to live under one roof. We work this way because our spaces have to get smaller, and we need to unpack the idea of how much space we really need.

What impact do you think your work has had on how Vancouverites experience the city?

H: We feel we’ve created success when people find some whimsy in our buildings, even some relief from the daily rigours of life. —As told to David Kitai

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IMAGE EVA AN CREDIT KHERA J

What is missing from Vancouver’s architecture?

M: There are a bunch of awesome young architecture practices out there, but a more youthful voice is missing. Vancouver is a very conservative city, and we want to show the city what we’re capable of—breaking down barriers of what we do and the way we always do it.

Inviting firms like us and even younger practices has been missing for a while.

VA N CIT Y DESIGN

We want to show the city what we’re capable of— breaking down barriers of what we do and the way we always do it.”

COURTESY OF WESTBANK

—m a r i a n n e

a modio

construction sites. Vancouver House, the city’s most distinctive building in the making, looms over them on Beach Avenue.

Their visiting friend, Wisconsinite John Reid, has taken pictures of Vancouver House from several angles on his holiday, intrigued by the way the building appears to be a conventional square from some angles and an engineering-defying curve from others. His pal Bill, an engineer who moved to Vancouver about half a dozen years ago to work on major infrastructure projects, jokes that he hopes the building’s engineers have done their work properly and nothing will come falling down.

They agree with what some of the city’s pre-eminent visual analysts say about the tower’s striking presence and what that means for Vancouver. “It lessens to some degree the glass-city perspective,” says Barrie Mowatt, the man who brings public art to the city through the Vancouver International Sculpture Biennale. (He’s brought art to unusual public spaces, like the Trans Am Totem near Science World, the A-maze-ing Laughter statues in English Bay, the painted silos on Granville Island, and, coming soon, a three-dimensional piece that looks like a large red anvil to the underused Leg in Boot Square.) “It changes from whatever angle you’re looking at it,” says Mowatt.

Lance Berelowitz, an urban planner and author of Dream City, the 2005 book that plumbed Vancouver’s built-form identity, calls it “a game-changer, with its complexity and the way it’s so self-consciously boastful.” It will noticeably alter the skyline, to the dismay of some Vancouver residents who resent the intrusion of towers into mountain views or the developer’s reputation for selling heavily to offshore buyers.

But the Moores and Reid are just as interested in what will be on the street someday around

Up in the Air Bjarke Ingel’s Vancouver House design may be striking from a distance, but its true impact will be felt on the ground level, where retail and restaurants will frame a pedestrian square beneath the Granville Street Bridge.

the tower. Will there be any shops? What kind?

What is going to go into that space right across the street? Will there be a gas station to take the place of the one that used to be here, its historic presence marked by an ancient small neon sign?

The long-term plan from Ian Gillespie—the Westbank Corp. founder and CEO who obsessively curates everything that accompanies his developments—is to create a hip retail hub that will rival Granville Island across the water, complete with a chandelier designed by artist Rodney Graham that will hang from the underside of the bridge. That’s what is likely to charm and pull in pedestrians, not the tower above.

There’s much more in the works or on the horizon, at both the skyline and ground level, continuing this city’s transformation from what it was only four decades ago: a dumpy Pacific

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VA N CIT Y DESIGN

Pedal Power Though bike lanes have long been a hot debate topic for NIMBYs, the fact is that designing a city with cyclists and pedestrians in mind improves quality of life for everyone, supporting public health (mental and physical) and reducing congestion.

Northwest village attached to an industrial harbour; a larger, slightly warmer version of Port Hardy or Prince Rupert, with hectares of sprawling, unremarkable middle-class housing surrounding a tattered inner city. A place that wasn’t so far removed from the Ethel Wilson Vancouver of the 1940s: rain-soaked streets filled with sagging small shops and workingclass bungalows. The city’s design, if it could be said to have one then, was its orderly grid of streets and its deference to its backdrop of mountains. There was no distinctive architecture that advertised, as has happened elsewhere, that one was unmistakably in Montreal or Baltimore or San Francisco.

Now, close to the end of the second decade of the 21st century, that’s no longer true. There are unmistakable identifying marks on the city’s body. The ubiquitous glass towers and podiums of downtown Vancouver. Bike lanes and walkways along various waters’ edges— Burrard Inlet, False Creek, the Fraser River— that are rigorously bucolic, where commerce (or any place to even buy a bottle of water) has been

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ghosted. The view obsession: condo towers that are built to maximize them; the ongoing public complaints about too many towers in front of mountains. The hundreds of simple-rectangle Vancouver Specials—a builder hack that created the affordable housing of the 1960s.

Green is now part of the city’s defined identity. Trees on the tops of buildings, a nod to former forests and to the city’s aspiration to be the greenest ever. Greenery everywhere, really, incorporated into balconies, inner courtyards, street boulevards, creating a level of lush vegetation that noted urbanist Richard Florida once said made him think differently about what is possible in even the densest urban environment.

And then there are the city’s increasingly idiosyncratic public spaces. Small parklets, streets shut down to form open-air hangout spots—the Jim Deva Plaza on Bute, the new plaza planned for 14th and Main, Robson Square’s expansion—and car-free festivals.

But there is more change to come as Vancouver continues to morph.

Joleen Mitton Founder, Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week Vancouver’s first Indigenous Fashion Week (VIFW) may have extended its runway only last July, but this display of the city’s Aboriginal roots left a strong imprint on the local fashion scene thanks to the work of VIFW founder Joleen Mitton a former model of Plains Cree descent. After working in Asia for years, she thought she was done with the fashion world—until she realized she could use this part of her to inspire Indigenous youth.

THE DESIGN MINDS

How did you start up VIFW? The idea came up about seven years ago, and it came into fruition last year for Canada’s 150-plus excursion. It was kind of timely for Canada’s 150th birthday—to have the fashion week during that time [when there were protests all over the country that highlighted Indigenous history, culture and rights].

Do you ever want to coordinate with Vancouver Fashion Week?

We can definitely talk about collaboration, but I think Indigenous fashion and the regular fashion world don’t really go together in terms of sustainability because the fashion world is a dirty place…a very dirty place. The fashion industry is the second-largest polluter on the planet, between clothing waste and the water that’s used for mass fabric production.

How do you think that your work specifically has impacted the way Vancouverites experience the city?

It makes us [Indigenous people] visible. I guess it’s too soon to tell— like, we just had our fashion week.

It seems like people want it again, which is a great feeling. Indigenous ways of being can help a lot of people, and not just First Nations people. They can help everyone.

EVA AN KHERA J

How would you describe the style and design scene in Vancouver?

Vancouver doesn’t really have an identity. It’s still a young city, so it’s kind of figuring out where it’s supposed to be. It’s still in its teenager stage for sure.

How has your view of design changed since starting VIFW? Seeing the city and watching it turn more Indigenous with art—when I was a kid, I didn’t see that stuff. So having the Survivor [Totem] Pole that was raised a couple years ago in Pigeon Park and seeing more Indigenous stuff pop up, it just makes me feel more comfortable in a city that’s Indigenous because I’m Indigenous.

—As told to Laryssa Vachon

Vancouver doesn’t really have an identity.

It’s still a young city, so it’s kind of figuring out where it’s supposed to be.”

— jol e e n

m i t t on

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Jane Cox

There are different perspectives coming into the city all the time, and there are opportunities for mashups, which I think are the most exciting things in design.” —ja n e c ox

THE DESIGN MINDS

Principal, Cause and Affect; board director, Vancouver Design Foundation Though she hails from Vancouver Island, Jane Cox spent years working for corporate design firms in London, England—and now she blends her West Coast roots and English sophistication to make change and inspire others through connection and culture.

How would you describe Vancouver’s current design scene?

People are operating at a global level now. People are travelling more; people are online more. So you’re not just facing inside your community, you’re connecting everywhere—all around the world. There are different perspectives coming into the city all the time, and there are opportunities for mash-ups, which I think are the most exciting things in design.

When I came back to Vancouver [from London in 2003], there wasn’t much of a connection between the disciplines. So I saw this opportunity to not only connect the design industry to itself—like to other designers to create interesting things—but also to look at the city.

I looked at Vancouver itself as a project. Like, what can I do? How can I help design this city better?

What’s your history with Vancouver Design Week?

Design weeks happen all around the world, where the city dedicates a week to celebrating design in their city. And we thought: Vancouver is ready for that. We have the content here; we have the talent. The design community itself doesn’t have opportunities to connect to each other. —As told to D.K.

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EVA AN KHERA J

How does your work affect the way Vancouverites experience the city?

I would say that the two things that drive me are culture and connection.

When I think about a city, I look for opportunities for organizations that I think are doing things to make the city better. There’s a process involved to educate the public on changing their behaviours, or we have to do things differently to make something better. What that causes is people in a city seeing that new thing and then being excited about it because of the way I’ve thought about designing that experience.

People don’t like new sometimes; they don’t like change. How do we make things that are different and new but are better for the world? How do we make them really inspiring and attract people?

Even though it’s changing the way someone might behave or be used to doing something, they’re actually excited to do it because they feel part of making the city better.

VA N CIT Y DESIGN

COLIN PERRY L ANEFAB DESIGN/BUILD

Laneway Love More than 3,000 laneway houses (and some laneway apartment buildings) now exist in Vancouver’s back alleys, creating much-needed housing options that are “thickening” our city rather than forcing a sprawl.

Laneways are one part of the transformation.

Those streets that European cities don’t have, the backyard roads that provide a second navigation plane in the city. “For me, the most exciting trend is the discovery of the alleys,” says Bill Pechet, an architect, artist and urban planner who participated in the Venice architecture biennale in 2006. “Vancouver doesn’t have to move horizontally, but we can thicken instead.”

More than 3,000 small homes have now been built facing Vancouver’s alleys, bringing more life to these hidden pathways. Besides the laneway houses dotting Vancouver’s traditional single-family-house zones, the already dense West End is seeing new small laneway apartment buildings emerge, two and three storeys with a handful of units apiece, facing alleys that are as wide as city streets, adding landscaping and lighting and even new names like Rosemary Brown Lane and Eihu Lane, memorializing the area’s activists of previous decades. And an initiative by the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association has resulted in two alleys—one behind Hastings, one behind Granville—being

repurposed as outdoor party spaces, with vivid paintings on the asphalt and building walls, and pop-up dance events scheduled for them.

(These alley experiences even have their own hashtag: #moreawesomenow.)

The idea of the laneway is going to expand, if the ambitious and almost utopian plans for Northeast False Creek are realized. That undeveloped swath of land between Chinatown and the water, the escarpment and Main Street—the last big undeveloped piece of downtown—is supposed to be transformed into the kind of central-city neighbourhood that Vancouver hasn’t seen before. Restaurants, bars and entertainment along the waterfront, for the first time, at the foot of the new Georgia Street that will be engineered to come down to the shoreline. In the section west of a large new park, Concord Pacific plans to build a cluster of buildings that have laneways running through them, with small independent shops. Another new Vancouver conjured out of nothing.

And it will come with a park, part of the growing network of green or leisure spaces that are becoming part of the city’s identity.

The park in Northeast False Creek, while not

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P E R S O N A L S PAC E

Spin Me ’Round Treana rescued this vintage jukebox from the Boys and Girls Club in Hanna, Alberta, where she and Ryan used to go as kids. “I wound up working there as a teenager, and the organizers said it didn’t work.

I took it home and replaced the needle, and it worked!”

It’s still full of the original records from the club.

Sofa So Good A pair of cozy Restoration Hardware sofas have a primo view of the killer whales that often pass through Howe Sound (above, right).

True to Type A painting of a typewriter (far right)

by Canadian artist Andre Petterson inspired Ryan to create a real-life replica (right) as a gift one Christmas.

Steal the Throne The unique horn-andleather chair—tucked in the corner next to a vintage speaker and a shelf stuffed with records—once belonged to Treana’s mom. “She’s still alive; I just don’t get to see her much. There’s no sad story to it,” she laughs (far right).

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I Spy The Peakes keep a pair of binoculars at the ready for whale watching from the breakfast nook (here you can see Treana photographed in prime position). A photo of Treana’s dad sits on the tabletop, too.

SMALL WONDER

Obakki founder and philanthropist Treana Peake finds that homey feeling in her little West Van beach house. by

Stacey McLachlan Janis Nicolay

photographs by

Coming home used to look a little different for fashion designer and philanthropist Treana Peake. “We had an 8,000-square-foot house with an infinity pool with doors that opened up wide. It was such a beautiful house, but it didn’t feel homey,” she explains.

She travels constantly for work (her clothing brand, Obakki, takes her to New York and Japan; her charity, the Obakki Foundation, takes her to Sudan to drill and monitor wells), and husband Ryan Peake is on the road regularly, too, touring in a little band called Nickelback, so having a home base that felt like home was critical. “I wanted a house where people didn’t need to take off their shoes and could come over with their dogs,” says Treana.

Two years ago, they found just that: in a quiet West Van neighbourhood, the couple and their two kids (aged 13 and 15) settled in to what Treana calls “just a little beach house.” She’s being modest—the bright-and-airy Craftsman home, with its panoramic views of Howe Sound, is hardly a shack—but there is a beautiful humbleness to this space. It eschews flash to let the cliffside locale do the talking, and the Peake parents have added personal touches inside in the same unfussy vein: a twin set of overstuffed

Restoration Hardware sofas covered in slouchy linen; a bay window lined with a dozen cacti; built-in shelves brimming with well-thumbed cookbooks; personalized art projects gifted from Ryan to Treana tucked into the corner.

On a Sunday, you’ll find Treana in the kitchen all day, coaxing one of the kids into helping her with a tagine recipe (she’s an avid cook), or out in the fire-heated cedar Japanese bath she set up in the backyard. Ryan might be in his studio, the kids in their rec room upstairs.

On warm summer nights, the family paddles around together in kayaks or dives into the ocean right off the rocks. Treana’s work raising money and building wells in Sudan through her foundation can be demanding—“it’s such a special place, but pretty challenging,” she says—so time spent in tranquility with family is particularly important. “Sometimes I have music, but usually I’m listening to geese and hawks and eagles. It’s so mindful,” says Treana.

“This house makes you slow down and spend more time together.”

For more information on the Obakki Foundation’s clean water initiatives, go to obakkifoundation.org

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