What is Being Subverted
1 Additions/renovations
2 Build the minimum versus build the maximum
3 Civic responsibilities
4 Parking lots
5 Perceived vs. real, local culture
6 Elevators
7 Casual/formal architecture
8 Local history’s roles in every citizen’s psyche
Fictional Case Study Questions
How can a recreational building stay relevant and adequate in a growing community?
What is the cheapest way to create more interior space?
How can local culture inspire civic architecture more experientially?
Can civic architecture be simultaneously literal and suggestive?
Dictation
This project came from a public tender call. An older feasibility study commissioned by the client group for the community centre had sought options for a significant addition to their recreation center. The existing building, including an arena and the pool, was built over time. The ice arena and auditorium were built in 1977, and the pool wing was added in 1992. The new proposal call was for a scaled-down scope of work. Applications were sought to design the renovation of some interior public areas and a small addition for gymnastics and other activities.
Squamish, British Columbia, is about an hour’s drive north of Vancouver. It is growing fast because you can afford a house and raise a family for less. It’s a very outdoorsy place at the periphery of Vancouver and halfway to Whistler, British Columbia. Local’s favourite activities are skiing around Whistler, kite surfing on the famously windy Howe Sound, climbing the world-famous granite dome called The Chief with ropes, bouldering on smaller rock faces without ropes, hiking, and mountain biking.
Squamish was born to support logging. Miners also dug copper ore from deep under the mountain at nearby Britannia Mine, which was once the largest mining operation in Canada. At first, getting in and out of Squamish took a lot of work. Slow Steam ships had to come up the fjord. Later, Squamish was at the beginning of a new railway line from Whistler to the province’s centre. Squamish was not connected to Vancouver by road until 1958.
Before modern logging techniques were invented, cable boom lines strung between wooden poles or still-standing trees were used to drag logs from where they were laid to where they could be loaded onto trucks that drove gravel roads. Large loaders or helicopters are used today, saving time. The visual chaos of wires, cables, and boom lines has always been a big part of logging, and there are still retired loggers alive who remember these old ways. These same cable techniques were used to harvest trees all over southern British Columbia. Almost every tree in this region is second growth.
Britannia Mine’s mini railway was the only way to service the drilled tunnels and get rock to the concentrator building for processing and shipment to the USA. As the rail cars entered the 20-story processing building that stepped up the hillside, the carts rolled onto a steep track to be dumped. The idea of railway carts functioning horizontally and vertically has a long tradition in the area.
An essential and eclectic bit of local culture is dying, and no one is keeping the memories of that history alive. Logging is still a significant employer, but many people in Squamish work in trades and services outside the area. Founding stories need to be more celebrated and kept alive.
Seeing the community need to scale down their larger building ambitions for economic reasons between the feasibility stage and the final proposal call wasn’t delightful. What if they didn’t have to, though? Did their consultants explore every option during the feasibility stage? Is a fresh interior paint job enough for a client?
I searched around for the cheapest way to enclose space. Air-supported roofs came up the most. The idea has been introduced previously. Every town has a few white air-supported roofed tennis buildings. They cost about $50-$75 per square foot. Typical commercial or institutional construction costs $500 per square foot or more. These structures are cheaper than a new building, and our mild coastal climate means interior comfort can be maintained inside a “tent.”
Growing communities continue to need more services and amenities. The design, engineering, permissions, and construction process for a new project takes so long that many civic buildings and schools are at capacity the day they open because their size is based on population targets from years before.
The most expensive part of doing an air-supported roof is the ground plane. Typically, a poured and reinforced concrete slab is laid on gravel. It has a thickened edge where the roof’s cables will attach. The average air-supported roof has a distinct shape that tapers in at the sides, like a croissant. It can feel a bit claustrophobic like you’re in a tube or tunnel.
What if, instead of paying for the concrete slab, you put it on the roof of the most significant portion of an existing building? That would be the roof over the ice arena or pool area at Brennan Park. If you pulled the roof’s cables down away from the middle of the space, you could change the spatial quality of the interior, making it more conventionally rectangular in cross-section. This strategy is essential because it makes functional new interior areas on top of otherwise wasted structures. More new building areas can be built for less. Budgets would go much further.
At the parking lot’s ground level, large, weighty boulders can pull out the sides of an air-supported roof above, providing a fun spot to practice bouldering. Parking lots are rarely play spaces, but they could and should be. Yellow tape, cones, or precast concrete curbs would help the mix of cars and athletes of all ages stay safe. Rubber mats the colour of asphalt could surround anchor boulders for junior climbers.
Parking lot boulders should be prominent. Synthetic ones would work, too, possibly sourced by donated money or labour. When new highways cut into a hillside, road builders often use spray cement to stop erosion, painted and faux textured to look like rock. This technology would work well for this project. Squamish benefactors or sponsors could have their names on plaques, and the plaques could be artificial hold points for climbers, too. Every detail should be doing two or three jobs when saving money is the name of the game. It would be quirky if each boulder were a different shape, as abstracted ski hill difficulty symbols. Everyone in a ski town knows what a green circle, blue square, or black diamond means. It’s Morse Code or shorthand for the wintery types. It’s bragging fodder during the snow season. By putting it in people’s faces, civic spaces should take local culture and make it physical. A similar approach was proposed for the library in Vaughan, where activities are programmed to happen in an existing parking lot.
One question outside critics raised about this case study was how the existing building’s roof holds new live loads. Roofs in wet and snowy climates are built to keep a lot of wet snow during the winter. Adding people and activities on the roof is structurally feasible since snow loads often exceed live loads for human occupation. If the existing steel roof trusses reach their limit, this case study proposes that a few new columns running into the space below could work out fine.
Turning the roof into a new floor level starts with new holes drilled through the building, top to bottom. New columns would be easily welded on and drilled into anchor holes in the concrete slab, possibly using Bigfoot post footings if required. It’s not that hard. Yet ramming new skinny steel posts through an existing building is not considered on almost any renovation project. However, if it comes down to choosing between some new space or keeping an existing interior space column-free, the public will likely choose the new space every time. The gymnastics and costs required to avoid columns inside a building are hang-ups that only architects have. Front-row seats at a hockey game (right against the glass) have skinny glass mullions every 5’-6’, yet those seats are considered prime. Nothing is perfect. The truism and cliché “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” apply here.
It’s not a big deal if a few new posts are in the visitor stands. Even a large open pool area can have a few columns. They might even be helpful. Activity rooms might be improved with more structural components to string things up, tie ropes to, climb, or use for lights or decorations.
Railroad Track Elevator
If this project were more normal, people would typically gain access to a new second-story air-inflated roof via a stair and an elevator. The footings would be undermined if a new elevator was installed beside an existing building. This case study proposes a railroad track inspired by the Britannia Mine, held in place by guy wires like historic log boom gear. Like a carnival ride, people will get into a small ‘mining cart.’ As it is pulled up the track, the cart rotates to keep the occupants on the right side up, like a hopper bucket at the mine. The track ends vertically where occupants step out. If it is raining (it often is), there may be a small tarp-like roof over the elevator mine cart, but this would be at the operator’s discretion. The grammar of wires, steel piping, and standard railway ties combine to make the simple act of being lifted to a second level stimulating. History is kept alive when the small moments in someone’s day reflect the surrounding culture and geography. Experiencing technically naked building sections can help Squamish locals better appreciate the rugged beauty of the surrounding raw rock faces and flood-prone valleys by making everything more visceral and less picturesque.
Super Short Sentences
D’Arcy
Air-supported roofs are cheap. The most expensive part of their construction is the concrete slab on the ground. Roofs are free. Why don’t buildings add second storeys with air-supported roofs?
Kelsey
This project will provide more recreational space on top of an existing recreational centre in a recreational town.
Jonny
Background: There is no shortage of nature or space in Squamish, but also, why take up more space?
A shoe-string budget offers opportunities for using less material, or in this case, fabric.
Jesse
How can we increase the interior area with off-the-shelf, affordable, simple construction?
Alex
Cost-efficient roof balloon for an indoor space upgrade to an underfunded recreation centre in an outdoor town.
Mary
With one inflated dome at a time, Squamish Rec reimagines new city-wide roofscapes.
Shane
Gravity is one of the most annoying physical forces to deal with in architecture, and the Squamish Rec Centre project says, “Let’s deal with as little of that as possible.”
Breana
In a town with the highest climbers per capita and some of the best climbing in the country, this project places rocks in a community centre parking lot in hopes of being climbed.
This exploration is part of an ongoing speculative project that began as doctoral research. The collaborative case studies test ideas that will inform future built work. A new design methodology using unconventional techniques explores how to delay aesthetics and form in a search for utility-driven, human-focused projects. Architecture’s status quo is questioned through an optimistic but contrarian lens.
