Editor: Regarding the proposed new city hall, you've got to be really careful with these projects!
New Wave architects know the weaknesses in the approval/selection process and before you know it you've got some harebrained scheme approved by uneducated, philistine councillors, who fall under their spell.
When they do, you end up with Erickson-type concrete bunkers that take 50 years to get rid of. The only positive news I've read is that Burnaby's own gulag city hall will be gone.
Just look at the monsters that have been approved from the "Bauhaus" school and shudder.
If you don't get true classical artists involved, you get places like the downtown courthouse complex in Vancouver which would be more appropriately used as a high security prison than an administrative center.
Then there's Vancouver Public Library, the ersatz coliseum that has no entry or exit, the most badly designed building I've EVER been in
As if that's not enough despoilment you should take a look at the proposed new Art Gallery in the downtown core. It looks like a grain barn from Saskatchewan. and it's going to be made of wood, so they say.
Beware of these "starchitects." What they do can't be easily undone.
William Corden
