Excerpt: Who will live in Vancouver House? The good news is it includes at least one family-friendly three-bedroom unit. That one, however, will put you back $6.9 million plus a $1,547.70 monthly maintenance fee. Then again, you also get five bathrooms and pets are allowed. Another unit, while smaller, sells for millions more.
Gillespie says he has “no idea” whether Vancouver House buyers will be local or global, though units have sold in at least 16 countries and reportedly come with an “asset management” program that insures managers test taps and appliances on behalf of distant owners.
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Vancouver House, as it leans over the city, simply reminds all beneath that to the rich go ever more exclusive spoils.
Famed architect César Pelli, who passed away earlier this year, provided advice for any community offered towers of power by their modern Medicis.
As we are dazzled, we should ask, “This is good, but is it right?”
“It is a great responsibility for any architect to be given a piece of a city to design, however small it may be — and it is clear to me that the obligations of a building to be a good piece of the city are greater than its obligations as an art object or as part of an architect’s oeuvre,” wrote Pelli in Architectural Digest.
“That is, the city is more important than the building, and the building is more important than the architect.” [Tyee]
Nov. 11, 2019 The Tyee – https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2019/11/11/Vancouver-House/