Thursday, December 17, 2015

Trump Tower petitions, plus Arthur Erickson

You know, the more I see Trump Tower - which I hadn't realized is in direct view of the Tim Horton's I sometimes do conversation activities with ESL students - the more I'm impressed with Arthur Erickson's design. As an SFU graduate, I'm not exactly a fan of Erickson's; his designs for that campus may have looked good on paper, but the place was kind of grim to attend, like some futuristic prison or something (one of the urban myths about the old AQ - the academic quadrangle - is that Erickson once designed prisons; another interesting one is that the campus has the highest suicide rate of universities in Canada, due to the depressing architecture). But the tower is another matter; it's one of the most interesting newer buildings in Vancouver, by me. The twist in it is quite compelling; it has a beauty that a lot of the anonymous glass columns this city has been spawning kind of lack.

Anyhow, I'm down for it being renamed. Now that Mayor Gregor Robertson has gotten on board, I'll actually sign a couple of petitions to this effect, here and here. I hadn't much thought it a possibility, but what the hell. Why not re-name it Erickson's Tower, in memory of the architect? 

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