One of the defining sights of Vancouver these days is the unfinished buildings at the Olympic athletes village, which seem particularly noticeable at dawn and dusk when the light shines through the concrete skeletons. You notice then how much is left to do because you can see right through the empty floors.
The western Arthur Erickson building (the largest, curved one on the waterfront) is particularly noticeable because it's so tall and because it doesn't have a single window pane on it yet. Instead, it stands like some kind of unusual sculpture at the corner of the site, particularly noticeable when you're driving across the Cambie Bridge.
That building is also attracting attention from other developers, who wonder what the heck is going on with it. I was at the Urban Developers Institute Christmas party last night, a plush affair at the Fairmont Hotel that attracted a whack of politicians, developers and their staffs, affiliated trades companies and lawyes, and the odd media schmoozer such as myself.
Talking with one about the Olympic village project, a favourite topic these days because of all the melodrama surrounding it, one developer said to me he couldn't understand what was happening at the site, especially the Erickson building.
Normally, he said, buildings get windows put on as quickly as possible. The Shangri-La on Georgia was a classic example of how a building should go up efficiently. As the floors got added one by one, the windows would follow soon after, so that there were never more than a few floors of steel or concrete sticking out.
Windows are important in construction because none of the interior work can be done until the windows go on.
So what's happening with the Erickson building at the Olympic site?
What I've been told by a senior person at the project is that they're trying a new method. Instead of putting the windows on from the bottom up, they're going to put the windows on from the top down. They can do that because it's a twisting building, so it doesn't need to have windows from the lower floors supporting windows on the upper floors, the way normal straight up and down buildings do.
As well, the thinking is over there, by starting with the top floors first, the workers won't be tromping their dirty boots and everything else through the finished floors on the bottom as they work their way up. Instead, they'll finish a floor beautifully, seal it off and then move down.
That's the theory, anyway.
So, as you're commuting by on the Cambie Bridge, take a look and see how they're doing with that plan. And don't forget -- only 10 months to go until they have to hand it all over to VANOC.
