Where is it, and what is it?
This is Yaletown Park (see map), and the sculture is Eros Bendato Scrippolato (Eros blindfolded and cracked) by Igor Mitoraj – a part of Vancouver Biennale. (More here.)
An interesting case where the park is more controversial than the art.
I first blogged about Yaletown Park – part of the public amenity package of the adjacent housing development – back in 2007, just as it was being completed. And again in 2009. Not many of my posts at that time garnered as much opinion, with most commenters disappointed or critical of the design of this hard-surfaced open space. I was undecided.
Not now. I think it fails in a fundamental way: it doesn’t appeal to the people who were meant to use it. Yes, it’s a place “on the way,” as Yaletowners angle across the granite sets to somewhere they would rather be. But it doesn’t entice them to stop awhile. Even the coffeehouse on the dock seems insufficient to add a human presence. And it makes most other kinds of activity difficult or discouraged
The art seems perfect for the space. In fact, if the site were used as an outdoor sculpture gallery, it might really work. So thank you, again, Vancouver Biennale, for animating another of our public spaces that could use a little help.
2 comments
Asked a few questions myself:
http://youtu.be/JtK03NbszbY
The surface of this park just makes me think “ow”, and I always walk around it. It sure looks like a place where you could twist an ankle. I’m sure the rough surface is successful at driving away skateboarders (which all right-thinking people agree should be consigned solely to the dank underbellies of elevated roadways). “The centre portion of the park is a softly undulating carpet of granite setts” indeed. The metal benches with the discomfort strips to discourage people from sleeping (or relaxing) are downright cruel by design. “Soft”: yeah, that’s exactly the impression that this park is designed to leave.
The park is only marginally more attractive than a surface parking lot; all gray concrete, the eye just glides right past it. The sculpture is nice, but it looks like it fell off a nearby colossus and lies there as a warning to future civilizations, as in Planet of the Apes. And the caboose parked next to it makes. no. sense.
Vancouver has amazing parks, and it’s a thoroughly beautiful city. In the course of genius it is necessary to get things wrong sometimes, and this is an excellent example. Yaletown Park is a failure that should be celebrated: it means Vancouver isn’t afraid to experiment. However, this one should be widely publicized for the failure it is, and it should be fixed.