Day 7, 8 – Vancouver

I think I want to live here. Too bad that housing prices are insane, with even the relatively small house above B-----‘s basement apartment valued at nearly 2.5 million. She showed me a high-value set of condos on campus, technically ‘student' housing,’ but that sold out on the first day of pre-purchases with values in excess of a million. Professors are being priced out of their town, with a massive housing bubble that’s just waiting to burst.

The university is rather beautiful. It’s very large, with a wide band of trees separating it from the rest of the city. It’s nearly 100 years old, but is mostly modern in appearance. it’s obvious that many of the buildings are very recent. While I didn’t see anything boasting of the obvious star-power of what you might find at MIT, or South Korea’s *****, they’re very good looking buildings that appear to be very functional. The health science’s building had a massive sky-lit atrium with study space on the ground floor, lounges going up the wall on one end, and a wide, welcoming corridors on the other. The Population Studies building was also interesting, with a large, outdoor covered table, with enough all-weather plugs to accommodate several dozen students with laptops.

Something I noticed both on the university grounds and in the rest of the city was the massive amount of seating available. Everywhere I went, there were places to sit and relax, and a fair amount of it was in use. Coming from Hong Kong, where if you want to sit you’re almost forced to go into a restaurant, it was an impressive change.

I did find a few buildings especially impressive. I wish I’d seen the False Creek Energy Centre before doing my Arch 100A studio at Berkeley, or even my Arch 24 studio at CCSF. The building was a hot water heating plant for nearby buildings, providing all of their heating needs without having to use smaller, lower efficiency forced air systems.It was placed under a bridge, utilizing less-useful shaded space. Many of its sides were made of glass panels, with concrete tubes going down below the ground to show the basement mechanical systems. A number of panels on the outside explained the processes and purposes of the system. There was also an outdoor garden and seating associated with the building.

It was also awesome to hang out with B---- again. How many years has it been since the last page reunion? 4 years? It’s hard to get together, now that we all live in different areas across the world, but so much fun when we actually do. With any luck, I’ll get the chance to meet up with a few more pages on this saunter around the US.

Trip Stats:
Total Distance: 0 miles
Total Time: n/a
# of Rides: n/a
Total Cost: $34.50