• Transforming a former storage space into an exhibition hall, “Gesamtkunstwerk” opens this weekend, showcasing Vancouver’s architectural coming of age.

  • Gesamtkunstwerk will provide visitors with an opportunity to look at the city through its building design—past, present, and future.

  • Bjarke Ingels’s $200-million twisting Vancouver House starts as a triangle at the base but turns into a rectangle higher up.

  • The exhibition, designed by the Bjarke Ingels Group, includes scale models, see-through drawings, videos, 3D wall texts, and recorded narration from city-building visionaries.

  • A 1955 pencil sketch imaging a “futuristic” Vancouver by visionary architect Arthur Erickson (top right) headlines the free exhibition.

  • “We wanted you to lift up the hood of the car and look under the engine, so to speak,” says Ian Gillespie of Westbank Projects Corp. “Think of this exhibition as an archaeological mine.”

  • Vancouver House, a 52-storey twisting tower to be built by Westbank Development, will rise above the city next to the Granville Bridge on-ramp at Pacific and Howe streets and will include 500 units and commercial space.

  • This scaled model includes the the public artwork Spinning Chandelier by artist Rodney Graham. The 4 x 6-metre chandelier will be on public display at the Gesamtkunstwerk exhibition beginning on March 22, 2014.

Gesamtkunstwerk

Designs for the future.

A 1955 pencil sketch imagining a futuristic Vancouver by renowned architect Arthur Erickson headlines “Gesamtkunstwerk”, an exhibition showing Vancouver’s architectural coming of age from the 1950s through 2018. The exhibition takes its name from a German word coined in the 1820s and popularized by composer Richard Wagner; it means “life as a total work of art”. “Gesamtkunstwerk” was curated by design historian Trevor Boddy and developed by Westbank Corp. and the Bjarke Ingels Group, who also designed Vancouver House, a defining 52-storey twisting tower that will rise at the north end of the Granville Bridge in 2018. The multimedia exhibition delves into the evolution of our city’s skyline and offers a prelude to changes ahead.

“Gesamtkunstwerk” runs from March 22 to May 18 at 1460 Howe Street in Vancouver. Entry is free of charge.

Photos by Joshua McVeity.

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March 21, 2014