The Vancouver League for Studies in Architecture and the Environment was formed in 1979 with the mandate of bringing renowned Canadian and international figures involved with design to speak to Vancouver architects and interested public. The architectural community had long felt the need for the stimulation and dialogue promoted by the lectures of these leading practioners and theoreticians.
While the Alcan Series heightened our awareness of and familiarity with major international influences, many sought a similar forum which would present the work of local architects and provoke discussion of topical Vancouver design issues. In 1981, the Local Series convened at Emily Carr College of Art.
The Vancouver Special Competition sprang from the League's interest in further focus at the local level -- this time in an applied sense. This competition was an attempt to challenge architects with the design of a Vancouver-specific housing typology that few had seriously considered.
The Vancouver Special Competition also addressed an acknowledgement of "change" -- change in the economics of housing, change in the architectural profession and the architect's role, change in society and family structure, and change in urban design.
Many homeowners seek the perceived sense of "newness" and "modernity", as well as the spatial flexibility at budget cost, which the existing builder-designed prototype provides. No alternatives have previously existed.
Enter the architect. In a profession where work has become increasingly scarce, where practitioners have been forced to diversify and where more and more potential projects are community-needs based, why not consider the affordable, single-family dwelling?
Architects are becoming increasingly aware of the hypocrisy of RS-1 zoning. There are presently many functioning alternative models to the nuclear family requiring housing in our neighbourhoods. Residents who, for various reasons remain single longer and cannot obtain mortgages, band together and buy houses jointly. Many single parents who cannot afford to be sole homeowners buy with friends in a similar position and subdivide the house, or buy alone and build a rental suite to help with mortgage payments. Many two-parent families need two incomes, many mothers now prefer to work. One parent may decide to set up an office at home -- necessitating an adjoining studio or work suite. The dilemma of the "illegal" suite has arisen of social necessity and it is time we recognized that RS-1 zoning is obsolete.
Vancouver neighbourhoods have a new street-face. The proliferation of the existing Vancouver Special has brought us to a street facade of flat housefronts and boxy roofless shapes, a longing for materials and details evoking the historical character and context of neighbourhood, and a need for usable, friendly yards connected to living spaces. When densification and the two-family possibility are acknowledged, an opportunity is gained for more diverse and complex siting, articulated massing, and more detailed, less monolithic elevations.
More than imagination and creativity were required on the designers' part to solve the problems of the existing Vancouver Special. Implicit in the programme for the New Vancouver Special Competition was the necessity for competitors to come to grips with the planning and sociological implications in their design solutions.
(From official publication)
Ray Spaxman:
The big question remains: will the new design catch on and replace what we know as the Vancouver Special?
None of the schemes presented solve enough of the challenges to appear as obvious replacements.
The winning design is excellent on its own site. The plan achieves a high level of efficiency, liveability and flexibility, and, on the street, presents a much improved aesthetic over the present Vancouver Special.
It does, however, present severe constraints on its neighbours with its long walls. The back yard is replaced with a small enclosed garden which will appeal to certain tastes. The plan arrangements can still be utilized with as much good or poor taste exhibited in its external design as with current house design.
While it is important to provide examples of good design, to write our by-laws creatively and to give guidance where we can, it is the resources, values and tastes of the community which produce the visual sense of place in our neighbourhoods.
Barry Downs:
The Vancouver Special was spawned as an affordable modern day alternative to the traditional family home -- the picture window, the symbolic front and rear gardens and elevated main floor and carport roof deck its most noteworthy features. A split level or two level plan maximized floor separations and provided room flexibility for a growing family and ultimately a large home for two empty nesters. Today, with the ever increasing life expectancy of the elderly and the return to the nest of adult children after unsuccessful marriages or those suddenly unemployed, there is even greater need for a housing type which will satisfy the requirements of a three generation family.
Many of the competition's entrants addressed this challenge, most re-creating a more up-to-date version of the old model, a few able to tap the innovative environmental and aesthetic opportunities of the new Special. Those that did utilized a building language which was contextually more appealing and aptly symbolized home. Of interest were the floor plans which zoned activity and private places and expressed territorial needs. Other contributors celebrated the special rooms that are still so important to group interaction in the home -- the living room, dining room and family kitchen. Often these spaces were oriented to a rear and private garden considered so essential today in western living. Roof gardens were utilized in some proposals offering a privacy zone alternative to shared ground level open spaces. Most noteworthy were those schemes where space separations, either vertically in a 3 1/2 storey main house or horizontally in an extended plan or studio-carriage house addition, skillfully provided maximum liveability for their occupants. This was the singular most important contribution of the Vancouver Special competitors, for the degree and the quality of separated living space is the one aspect of home environment which will most encourage family members to want to live and grow together again as in the past. With appropriate and necessary zoning revisions, the return of the extended family dwelling could well be just around the comer.
Raymond Burton:
The Competition, it seemed to me, was a marvellous opportunity for architects and aspiring architects to show what they could do as designers to broaden the range of alternatives to the so called "Vancouver Special".
"Within the limitations of the existing structure of the RS-1 City Zoning schedule we have seen evolve a house of banal appearance; it has occured without the benefit of the architects' skills and service. Combined with the economic factors governing development, the city is building up its housing stock with prototypical solutions of the most rudimentary kind. The effect it is having on the urban environment when seen scattered throughout the city and particularly grouped in and around the East Side Neighbourhoods -- is dismal. On the other hand, it has provided affordable housing, particularly because the market has realized its potential to provide the (illegal) second suit for extended-family or rent within a 'single family house ' neighbourhood, lam sure that people who live in these houses, love them as homes and wouldn't share my concern for their appearance, but there just had to be some better solutions for siting house planning and for the disposition and use of private outside space..."
So what did the competition show us? At one level it was disappointing that so many architects did not understand the real issues of the "Special", nor could many of them even design a decent home that equaled the "Specials" unimaginative room arrangements. But having said this, there were others with refreshing ideas, imaginatively developed within the modest constraints of the problem. It was illustrated that there were a number of generic alternatives to what we have seen to date. These alternatives, admirably thought out by the winning entrants, showed that it was possible to build good domestic architecture in Vancouver for a similar cost, to meet developer and market needs with houses that could respond to different neighbourhood contexts. The houses themselves solved the problems of siting and appearance, providing enclosed private outside space and better side yard configurations. The houses were brought "down to earth" again with immediate access to garden spaces, a better scale and house plan was achieved and above all, the extended family and (illegal) second suite could be better handled in an adjoining small building on the lane side.
Congratulations to the winners and the runners up.
Gary Hiscox:
The much maligned Vancouver Special is an ingenious and affordable housing solution which satisfies a range of differing family needs. This characteristic can be attributed to the undeveloped space at the lower level which may be modified to accommodate a range of home activities, to house the extended family or provide a separate suite bringing revenue to the owner and a more intensive use of the city infrastructure. The provision of this undeveloped space however poses its own set of problems such as concerns with fire and noise transmission when the space is used as an illegal suite to a generally poor environment for some activities which are undertaken either inside or outside of the building.
It is however of interest to note that the research which has been undertaken on the Special, although brief, suggests that dissatisfaction with the housing form emanates not from people living there but from neighbours and passersby.
This may suggest that the quality of the Special, the degree to which residents may undertake normal day to day activities, the durability of materials and building systems, the appearance of housing and the association it has for residents and others, the building context both natural and manmade, or concerns of managing and maintaining space are readily traded off by residents in order to obtain a large yet ambiguous and affordable space which can be modified to suit their needs. The value created by the Special in dollar and other terms has been made possible by a supportive development process comprising merchant builders, plans services, zoning and building bylaws, review processes and lending institutions in response to an obvious market demand.
The New Vancouver Special Competition therefore represents a significant challenge to the profession. Surprisingly, few solutions offered by the participants explored the demographic changes that are occurring across the city, the implication this has for family formation or the need for and use of ambiguous space of the type associated with the Special. Concomitantly, there appeared to be few solutions flowing from such analysis in the form of alternative dwelling configurations. However, the competition does suggest the genesis of a new generic solution to the Special based on the re-emergent form loosely associated with the Smithson's "pavilion and route" or more familiarly the "coach house" or "garden cottage" joined to the main dwelling. A reordering of space can therefore be inferred from the four room deep bungalow and on to the narrow lot over an undeveloped space toward that of 1V2, 2 or 2V2 storey dwelling with a universal plan and an undeveloped ancillary building at the rear or the lot.
The validity of this New Vancouver Special now becomes the challenge to those other actors of the development process who have so readily embraced its antecedent. Its value remains to be tested.
(From official publication)
| Jury | Raymond Burton, Professeur associé |
| | Barry Downs, Architecte |
| | Gary Hiscox, Gestionnaire |
| | Ray Spaxman, Directeur de l'aménagement |
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The New Vancouver Special Competition, 1985, Vancouver
Sebastian Albrecht, History of the Vancouver Special, Your Vancouver Real Estate
Benivolski, Xenia, Vancouver Special, The Canadian Encyclopedia, 2017
Vancouver League for Studies in Architecture and the Environment, The Vancouver Special Competition, 1988, Vancouver
Labercame, Curanne, The History of the Vancouver Special, Montecristo, 2017
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