Can we build livability, walkability, sustainability, and residential density around the shopping mall, along the retail strip, beside the rec centre, down the street from bungalows? The City of Surrey presents an ideas competition, as previewed by re:place.
Text and photos by Sean Ruthen
With a year almost past since the onset of our present economic slowdown, and still no consensus as to whether the recession has in fact bottomed out, we find ourselves in an international epidemic of unemployment in architecture and its peripheral practices (though the Architects’ Journal has just announced that this is the first month in the UK where there was actually a decrease in architects applying for unemployment insurance). With many fatigued interns and technologists wondering when the other shoe is going to drop, there is the distinct possibility that many may abandon the profession entirely, forsaking the prospect of being able to design and make ends meet. One does not simply go off to the granite quarries when it comes time to pay the bills.
So likewise does the City of Surrey presently propose TownShift, a new international ideas competition to be launched November 2nd. With some of the organizers from FormShift on board, including Trevor Boddy and Scott Kemp MAIBC, long-time Surrey residents Allen Aubert MAIBC and John Sprung have assembled an international jury to select the best submissions for a future vision of the city. Situated around five of the six major town centres in Surrey – Semiahmoo, Cloverdale, Fleetwood, Guildford, and Newton – architects and citizens alike will be asked to choose from one or all of the five urban design challenges, each one unique in its own way. With a total cash purse of $75,000 in prize money, it is sure to attract both a local and international draw of schemes for the difficult urban situations affecting the city’s historic town centres.
Mayor Dianne Watts, along with general manager of Surrey planning and development Jean Lamontagne, are cognizant of the fact that Surrey has a long way to go in creating a discernable identity in its urban landscape, realizing that the success of Bing Thom Architect’s Surrey Central City to create an instantly recognizable Surrey monument has the potential to be realized on numerous other sites across the city. So hoping to build on the success of Bing’s tower, Dianne and Jean are pursuing many different initiatives, including a new City Hall and facelift for Cloverdale, with TownShift set to round out the trio, itself intended to showcase the city during the Winter Olympics. It is hoped that as the world is watching Vancouver and Whistler for sports this March, the same international broadcasters will look to Surrey to report on the international designers that have entered this competition.
For, as Trevor Boddy recently discovered while presenting a preview of the competition to a group of architecture students in Buenos Aires, the problems of Surrey’s town centres are the problems of town centres the world over, with many people wanting to offer their own ideas of what can be done. The issues of the suburb in Surrey are the same issues as those in Mexico City, in Karlsruhe, and in Shanghai, and then so again does this Petri dish of urbanism and architecture known as the Lower Mainland present a model for densification in the modern city. With the world’s attention presently to be focused so intensely on this corner of the globe, the City of Surrey will present an exhibition of the best entries for the five town centres in the heart of SFU at Surrey Central City during the Olympics.
And there is lots to sink one’s teeth into: an unidentifiable urban strip of road in need of markers, a hectare of asphalt with a deceased grocery store at its center, a new transit node ready to transform a disparate collection of civic and commercial spaces, a massive shopping mall in need of ‘softer’ space at it periphery, and a geriatric community in need of new, young density. All five scenarios, each a little different from the other, are representative of five of Surrey’s town centres, and the competition entrants may choose to grapple with just one of the scenarios or all five in the two months between the competition’s launch next week, and its closing on January 6th.
For the selection of the winners, the TownShift organizers have selected a formidable jury up to the task – David Miller AIA of the award winning Seattle firm Miller Hull Partnership, as well as the director of the architecture school at the University of Washington, joins Toronto based Steven Teeple OAA, Vancouver based landscape architect Jane Durante, Concord Pacific Senior VP Peter Webb, and City of Surrey architect Mary Beth Rondeau MAIBC. These five surely will have a monumental task, given the draw of the first prize of $25,000 compounded with our present economic slowdown. And, as is the hope of Mayor Dianne Watts and the rest of the organizers, the results may very well present buildable solutions not only for Surrey, but suburbs across the continent and beyond.
As part of the challenge of the competition for the entrant will be understanding the urban landscape of Surrey, so have the organizers provided numerous tools with which to navigate the town centres, including aerial photography, 3D SketchUp models, along with numerous maps of streets, transit, and bike paths. All this information, for all five sites, is to be made available for one $50 registration fee, and it is open to everyone, from architects and planners, to concerned local citizens. Solutions are to be submitted electronically, with all entries to be available on the competition’s website prior to the selection of the winners. Of the five sites, one first prize of $10,000 will be awarded to each, with an additional $15,000 for the best of the five. The remainder of the prize money will be awarded to the runners up, with honourable mentions as per the jury’s discretion.
With exhibitions planned of the jury’s shortlist in all five town centres, the organizers also plan to publish a book of the competition, intended as a legacy of Surrey and its commitment as a forerunner in the current paradigm shift presently occupying our cities. The competition itself will launch with a press release by the mayor herself from Cloverdale this Monday, in which she will most certainly speak to the need for one of the province’s fastest growing cities to be smart in how it manages its growth – the future lives in Surrey.
Visit the beta website at http://www.townshift.ca/, which goes live November 7th.
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Sean Ruthen is an architect working, living, and writing in Vancouver.