Thesis (D. Min.)--Trinity International University, 2007. / Abstract. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 251-254).

This thesis project, a Museum of Contemporary Architecture in Vancouver, offers solu tions to architectural design problems resulting from the placement of an institutional use, the museum, within the social and physical framework of the city. The emphasis of this project is to integrate two polar opposites. On one hand resides the bureaucratic elite of a cultural institution: the curatorial machinery of contemporary architecture. On the other hand are the contradictory forces of the city: the wandering of the diverse population through the site, the intrusion of other uses within the body of the building, and the shifting of museum uses onto adjacent noninstitutional structures. The method of research has been through a three month iterative process of reading, draw ing and modelling, following consultation with the thesis committee. Represented here is the third version of the project, in it’s most resolved form. For a record of the thesis preparation, please see the design study, directed by Professor Sherry McKay, held in the Architecture Read ing Room. The conclusions of this thesis project resulted from aggressive reworkings. First, the uses of the building were interrogated and then condensed into their simplest form. This involved deleting most of the traditional museum functions. Libraries and bookstores, meeting rooms and cafes and staff offices were transplanted offsite or given away to other businesses. This allowed a new underground film room and night club to intrude in the basement, and an estranged office and residence to hover over the small exhibition spaces. Second, the massing of these uses needed separate identities. Finally, out of a desire for an open urban expression, the building mass was reduced further to introduce empty floors between uses, and a two meter setback between the building and the next structure on the block. Light and air, infiltrating these intersti tial spaces of the design, emanated towards the street. A concrete structure holds this composi tion together, with steel struts bracing against earthquake forces. A double row of street trees filter the resultant vision, layering the building in the urban context. The subject of this thesis was prompted by a comment by Thom Mayne’s during his visit to UBC in 1993. Mr. Mayne felt that the traditional scope of contemporary architecture could be improved, especially when contrasted to the breadth of issues in the fine arts. This project helped me to investigate the architectural possibilities of institutional expres sion in the urban core.

In the pursuit of originality, some interventions consciously stand in opposition to the existing. The approach I've taken is more holistic; rather than pursue the novelty of the moment, I've taken the stance that creativity in art and architecture is part of a continuum. With that in mind, I've attempted in this project to make this evolution apparent by bridging the existing to the new without reverting to historical mimicking. My design is not a heritage preservation project. I wanted to take what exists, re-think it, and build upon it. My proposal is for a downtown student residence for both individuals and families. It would take advantage of new developments in the area such as the new S.F.U. conference center, the new B.C.IT. complex, and other institutions already in place such as the S.F.U. at Harbor Center, and the Vancouver Community College. This student residence would be an inter-university residence, accepting students from all of these educational institutions as well as U.B.C. and Emily Carr. Its aim would be to establish greater social and academic links between the city's post-secondary educational institutes. This project feeds on what has already started to happen in the area and can re-introduce a residential population to the city core, generating new life and new activity which in turn will contribute significantly to the wealth of the urban fabric. In short, one can imagine the formation of a lively downtown university quarter. My proposed residence would be one seed sown in this larger vision. Besides feeling that I felt the project should be a dense urban scheme, it appeared imperative to me that my design foster a real sense of belonging, permitting the development of a small community within a community. In addition to public commercial space, the new program demanded realms of privacy, and more importantly a core, or center, around which a community could begin to form. From this organizational idea of a core the design started to take shape. The existing building opened up in the rear toward a court. A lane intersected it providing access and making it a space that could be both place and pathway for activity. The program turned towards this space marking it as the center, and animating it with the activity of daily life. The existing urban aesthetic informed my design language. Urban context is characterized by wall as a dominant element, tall vertical spaces, steel stairs and railing, hanging wires, and a strong demarcation between front, sides and rear accentuated by a change of brick at the corners. All these elements were to some degree absorbed, assimilated and reinterpreted in the work. The relationship of 'part to whole' became an important part of the process. Likewise, terminology in how I started to speak and think about the project. Words like old vs. new stopped being used as they aggravate the dichotomy between the parts. An effort was made not to mimic the existing building which would have produce a neo-historic building, this was not my goal. An effort was made not to objectify the existing building, rendering it a precious object. Nor did I deliberately attempt to contrast it, this would be counter-productive to the concept of the whole. Contrast aggravates the gap between then and now, disavowing integration and synthesis. My approach was rather one of complementing and complicity. Complicity is an interesting concept because it implies that two or more parties or parts come together toward a common goal, It also implies a dialogue. This is very different from contrast, for example, that is unidirectional. A dialogue receives and gives, and both parts form and are informed.

This thesis addresses the subject of organizational effectiveness in municipal governance. It specifically examines the possibility that urban planning agencies may resolve complex social problems more effectively when using a management approach characterized by "transformational leadership," teamwork, flexibility, and creativity; an approach that fosters the development of innovative planning policies, procedures and/or designs. Successful, innovative, and creative business enterprises that endorse such a holistic management approach have been called "learning" and "well-performing" organizations. The management and transformational leadership attributes that encourage an organization to "learn" relies on a combination of techniques, including non-hierarchical communications, enhancement of job satisfaction, continuous learning, emotive and motivational psychology, and team approaches to creativity and problem solving. A popular term has been coined that captures the essence of successful implementation of these attributes in combination: Excellence. The rationale for examining the concept of Excellence in the context of urban planning agencies' organizational effectiveness derives from assertions made in the planning and governance literature suggesting that such a business management approach may significantly improve government operations. Some writers argue that a new approach to governance is sorely needed. The concept of encouraging attributes of Excellence in local government planning practices has been extolled as a cure for economic and political inequalities, restricted avenues of communication, outmoded operating procedures, "turf wars, and various motivational barriers to innovative practices that limit the effectiveness of governments (and urban planners). Many of the innovative practices lauded in the business management literature as attributes of Excellence appear similar to the community development concepts of individual empowerment, citizen participation in local planning and decision making, collective effort to resolve local issues, consensus building, and visionary leadership. This thesis studies the case of the City of Vancouver's Department of Social Planning and Community Development from 1968 to 1976. The two primary research methods used are: analysis of archival documents concerning Vancouver's social planning department; and, open ended interviews conducted with sixteen key informants familiar with the history, practices, and planning approaches used by department personnel during the study period. The findings of this thesis are that: 1) the social planning department originally exhibited elements of innovation, flexibility, teamwork, transformational leadership, and other attributes associated with the concept of Excellence; 2) in some cases, these attributes may have temporarily overcome various barriers to effective planning and problem solving by developing innovative solutions to minor urban social problems; 3) those innovative elements were not unanimously supported nor encouraged in other municipal departments or community agencies, thus indicating that diffuse innovative practices throughout other organizations was a difficult endeavor; 4) over time, attributes of Excellence faded from the social planning department as the early excitement and energy of planners wore off and new planners were hired to replace the original social planners who had decided to move on to other projects. The important lesson learned is that these supposedly "new" management practices, introduced into business enterprises to help overcome barriers to productivity, efficiency, or effectiveness, are themselves vulnerable to similar organizational, political, or behavioral barriers over time. Constant vigilance, monitoring and evaluation of values, goals, communications strategies and structures, and organizational results are required to sustain Excellence. Greater promotion of Excellence concepts that explain business success may legitimize the expansion of participation of individuals in goverment institutions and result in improvements to their effectiveness. Urban planners, and social planners in particular, should therefore be interested in concepts like Excellence and Learning Organizations as heuristic usable in their search for effective planning, organizing, and management practices toward intentional interventions in social welfare. Without a systematic approach and understanding of the complex variables and dimensions involved, concepts like Excellence may be treated simply as catch-words and trendy marketing ploys. However, as the thesis will show, planners may discover that further research into the qualities and attributes of individuals working in a collective organizational environment, may yield positive strategies for furthering institutional reforms that view workers as factors of human development rather than as units of productivity and efficiency.

Gastown, Vancouver's birthplace, is a small historic district embedded within the broader community of the Downtown Eastside. Over the past 25 years Gastown has been slowly upgrading; refashioning itself as a loft style residential neighbourhood and central tourist destination. Over the same period the Downtown Eastside's reputation as the city's "skid road" has become firmly entrenched. The pace of this community's upgrading and downgrading has quickened over the past five years and resulted in a current geography where we find loft-style condominiums, cappuccino bars and rising affluence interspersed with needle exchanges, homeless shelters and deepening disadvantage. What we see within the Gastown/Downtown Eastside community is a convergence of the spatial processes of social polarisation and the kinds of conflicts and negotiations that result. Polarisation, most broadly defined, describes a growing socio-economic and spatial divide between the "haves" and "have-nots" of Western societies and cities. While considerable attention has been paid to polarisation's conceptual meaning and empirical definition at the national and intra-urban levels, little focus has centered on how the process can be identified and analysed at the intra-community level. In the same way that polarisation at broader scales of analysis can be viewed as the sociotemporal coincidence of pauperisation and professionalisation, this dissertation defines intracommunity polarisation as the simultaneous occurrence of socio-spatial upgrading and downgrading. Using quantitative data from the census tract level, this dissertation investigates the empirical evidence of social polarisation within Gastown/Downtown Eastside. Using qualitative data the study explores the extent to which both revitalisation and deterioration are competing for the community's future and this polarisation is being experienced and negotiated by the varied residents and stakeholders of this urban community. Ultimately this dissertation sheds light on how the characteristics and causes of community based polarisation differ and parallel those at other scales of inquiry. It also outlines the truly local factors that affect polarisation's development, entrenchment and impact and illuminates the process' inconstant character and the time lag that exists between its qualitative experience and its quantitative identification.

The Exotic World Museum is a small amateur ethnographic museum created by Harold Morgan and founded on his extensive tourist travels with his wife Barbara. It consists of over 500 pictures, photographs, labels and artifacts which cover the walls and ceiling of the back room of Alexander Lamb's Wunderkammer Antiques, where it is currently housed. Through this museum, Morgan has created an identity for himself as a world traveler and a learned man. As such, the collection stands as a narrative of Morgan's life, portraying the identity he has projected for himself. Morgan constructs this identity by establishing authenticity through the Museum and tourist experience, by using the National Geographic as a projection in which to place himself, and by creating an encounter between Self and Other. As such, the study of Exotic World has larger implications in the context of the history of museums and of collecting in general.

Increasing cultural globalisation and the assertion of cultural identities present an interesting opportunity for cities in the postmodern Western World. An increasingly multi-situated polity must better reflect and serve an increasingly self-aware and heterogeneous population in search of better planning, community and social justice. A great deal of research in diversity issues has been conducted in various disciplines, but there is little integration of this theory and even less instruction as to its application. This thesis attempts to address the deficiencies - providing some rationale and some guidance towards the diversification of civic culture as a model of incorporation. Diversification requires a significant shift in our understanding of culture, identity, community and self - an end to mainstream and its hegemony. It places the onus for change on local institutions and operates on an assumption of difference, a desire for meaningful incorporation and a commitment to equality as equity. These principles translate into the pursuit of increasingly differentiated benefits, inclusive participation, varied discourse and inclusive definitions. For the transformation to be truly meaningful and systemic, it must take place in all agencies of civic culture: government, civil society, business, the media and family. A conceptual, prescriptive and evaluative framework for cultural diversification is thus elaborated. Change will require deliberate purpose and action. This thesis attempts to provide some direction by applying the discussion to a level at which most urban leaders, planners and cultural producers work. A local organisation in Vancouver, Canada - a reputed leader in diversity - is selected as a case to illustrate application of the developed framework and to enrich it with an initial investigation of how practitioners work towards the diversification of their individual institutions and their larger socio-cultural environment. It is hoped that strategies learned here, and in future applications of this research, can provide guidance for other organisations and that numerous small efforts will be rewarded with the gradual transformation of the whole.

The project began with a comprehensive investigation to discover and define the crucial elements of design in high density housing that foster a strong and rich sense of community. Both historical precedents and current Vancouver projects were studied to determine their attitude toward community in dense housing situations. I found the designs that were most successful in preserving a traditional sense of community demonstrated a far greater respect for one's individuality. They provided a strong frame for variable urban living, which reflects the pluralism of urban life. The program for this thesis was a live/work community and one live/work building within that planned community. The site for this exploration was South-East False Creek. The resolution of my proposal began with developing a new housing fabric, a prototype that could be used at South-East False Creek or in other areas of the city. The fabric I developed is a more intimate, finer slice of the existing Vancouver city grid. By maintaining some of the critical dimensions of Vancouver's city grid, the design of the new fabric can either fit into the existing grid or occur next to it. The community plan provides several distinct adjacencies for the buildings: live side, work side, park side and street/parking side. My concern with the design of the building was to identify a set of possibilities that are inherent in the community fabric, which show the diversity of the building itself as well as the flexibility of the space within the units.

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False Creek has been both the poster child and the ground zero of Vancouver’s acclaimed ‘urban renaissance’ – the transformation of the city from resource town to world-class metropolis. This study explores the interplay between urban redevelopment and the loss of industrial land and blue-collar work in False Creek in the 1970s. I investigate how city officials, urban experts, local workers and business owners viewed and made sense of the transformation of False Creek from an industrial site to a commercial, recreational and residential district. An examination of the testimony of local workers and businessmen as well as of the visions of municipal authorities is necessary to demystify the loss of inner-city industrial land as a natural and inevitable process. I demonstrate how the demise of the industrial sector in False Creek resulted in part from state policy, and from changing understandings about the place of industry in the socio-economic life of the city. Finally, I make the case that while the redevelopment project incorporated innovative planning practices, and brought countless benefits to many Vancouverites, the transformation of the area is inextricably linked to a story of displacement. / Graduate