Steel and Glass

On the surface, I can't share the unhappiness Carle Steel feels towards the probable demolition of The Plains Hotel, (prairie dog) in advance of another building that will make Regina's downtown even more resemble the set of a cheap and bad science fiction movie. (Chamberlin) The Plains doesn't have as much historical value as a building, and as a business, the major loss will be the loss of another stage for local bands.

First of all, so much of Regina's downtown has changed over the years that there's, unfortunately, little left to preserve. (Skyscraper.com's forum on Regina Through The Years.) For example, the old gingerbread house City Hall was, depending on who you talk to, either too small for the city's growing bureaucracy or was incompetently designed – with, amongst other things, a poorly designed foundation – from the get-go. But what replaced it – the Midtown Centre/Galleria/Alvin Hamilton Building was fugugly, and most of the time empty. Much of the Scarth-Cornwall area between 11^th Avenue and Saskatchewan Drive was in decline in the 1970s and 1980s, but the Cornwall Centre has been, at best, a giant step sideways, doing little to stop the retail flight to the suburbs, first to the malls and then to the big box stores.

The historical aspect of the Scarth Street Mall was ruined by the building of the Twin Towers on the site of the old McCallum Hill building and across the street. Losing the Capitol Theatres was a stake through the heart of downtown Regina's entertainment community (the life insurance company Premier Devine bribed to move into the city couldn't find office space somewhere else?). And while it was better to knock down the closed Met and Broadway Theatres along Broad Street than leaving them vacant (wish there were plans for more than parking lots …), the Broad Street Crossing and Wingate Inn have to rank as the most disappointing, if not the ugliest, pieces of architecture in Regina. And considering all the ugly architecture I've outlined, there's a lot of competition for that …. ummm, 'honour.'

That's the real reason why I'm fearing what's going to be built on the site of the Plains is going to be a disappointment. And you don't need to be Howard Roark (Wikipedia) to realize that. It's also the reason why I think the projected new city central library will either never get off the ground or in the end will be an ugly compromise that will satisfy no one, and the proposed new domed stadium for the Riders will be such an eyesore that within 15 years it will be blamed for the team's decline and the object of an expensive renovation project to bring it up to the standard that they promised to build to in the first place.

This project will almost certainly be downscaled, with whatever aesthetic touches outlined in the proposal thrown overboard in the name of cost cutting, and thousands of Reginans will go to work cursing another ugly steel and glass monstrosity that was erected because City Hall saw dollar signs instead of a community plan.

Oh yeah. His Worship will be calling for another construction boom ... (CJME)

THE ARCHITECTS ARE HERE

I have always said that when the College buildings go, so do I. One sniff of a wrecking ball and I am out of here and never coming back. I mean it.

It was distressing to hear almost the same thing coming from Dakota McFadzean at last night’s Regina Public School Board meeting during his presentation about the coming demise of Scott Collegiate. I didn’t know that Regina’s continual self-destruction depressed other people to the point they start thinking of packing up and moving on, but of course I can't be the only one. Each building that is destroyed is one closer to the limit of what I can stand, not just for the architecture itself, but for the unthinking motivation behind it.

One of the statements that seemed to stick in the Scott supporters' craw yesterday was RBE member Russ Marchuk’s pithy statement “If the horse dies, get off,” in reference to Scott’s supposed failure to support its students architecturally.

I can’t help but think about the hundreds of slum houses around the Scott facility – each a tiny marvel of architecture in its day – that have been used to pump money out of North Central residents and into slumlords’ pockets for decades, with the complicity – if not the outright blessing – of policy makers in every level of government.

Who knew it was all architecture’s fault? Thank goodness the architects are going to come and fix it for us. So glad that's sorted.

Maybe we needed to have the dead horse image planted in our heads whether we want to see it or not. If that’s how the school board sees its buildings, we’re better off knowing.

How do we communicate back to our representatives that the horse isn’t a building, a learning model, or even a school board, but the city itself? Who sees us as we step off and walk away?

NB: One of my recent favorite books is Michael Winter’s The Architects Are Here. The title of the book is fictional shorthand for a kind of impersonal, lurking force of doom, like accidents, distruction, and poverty.

R.I.P.

Sad news in the world of architecture today. (Vancouver Sun)