A Plague Upon Us - Alain de Botton

I just started reading Alain de Botton's book, "The Art of Travel", so I was stoked to see that he was in town recently promoting his new book, "The Architecture of Happiness". I missed it, but The Tyee got a great interview with de Botton about his thoughts on Vancouver architecture (and the inference of whether or not we are happy).

He says that we have a "condominium plague" and that:

"If you look at the great buildings of the world, they've either been the result of good strong central-government city planning or they've been the result of very wealthy aristocrats, and sometimes very wealthy corporations, though that's very seldom. Whatever your politics, if you care about architecture, you're going to lean toward a more communitarian, left-leaning model of how things get built."

I think it's fair to say that we care about architecture in Vancouver, but possibly not enough. We have some showcase buildings and areas, but the in-between is filled in with ugly condos. Darren Barefoot thinks that this is inevitable, given the huge population gain that Vancouver has seen. New condos are going up every day to house all the new people moving in, and we're still short. Not only that, but this city is expensive enough to live in without having a specialized architect designing everything.

But maybe we could care just a little more... I know that de Botton isn't the only one who thinks Vancouver's skyline is the worse for it's new additions - on my way to work this morning I saw some grafitti outside a new Concord Pacific project that reads simply "eyesore" in bright orange letters.