Noted 'Scapes

 

An urban farm has been taking shape for years at West 5th and Country Lane (actually the alley running beside Maple Street), featuring advanced watering and composting technology, much of it courtesy of The City of Vancouver. Adjoining the Society Promoting Environmental Awareness farm site is a massive community garden and farm stretching along the disused train tracks. This is a Peak Oil solution—come see the future. There’s something beguiling about productive farmland in a big city.
 
 
It doesn’t take much. At 1949 West 4th, a concave glass façade to an otherwise standard three-storey retail-condo building is sufficient to make you stop, look, and say, “Yeah, that looks interesting.” Less has been said in front of prized paintings in the Louvre. If our city is a canvas and the architecture is the paint (as notable author Michael Turner analogized for me last week), it doesn’t all have to be huge masterworks. Small and tasty works sometimes too, like in this case: a profiterole of a building.
 
 
The new public swimming pool at Killarney Community Centre (Rupert and 49th) is open, and in the words of Don Cherry, “She’s a beauty!” A wall of windows faces north from that high point in the city’s southeast quarter, giving a glorious panoramic view of the city and snow-capped mountains beyond while you’re warming in the hot tubs, resting from the sauna, or doing laps across the enormous pool. Stained glass rectangles here and there in the wall of windows gives a slightly churchy feel to it. Too bad the water slide is open-top and not a tunnel like the better ones.