10830 Jasper Avenue

Model and Building information


Model and Building Information

It was however, a building doomed by its material choices. The drab concrete lattice over the drab brown brick is tough to defend, and the building probably looked tired and dirty on the day that it opened. Maybe if the brick had been red or if the lattice was a shiny aluminum then there would have been more affection for the building, or at least it might have been less disliked. The new version and all of its crazy shapes upholds the quirkiness of the original, but I do wish that they'd somehow managed to integrate the lattice into the new design.

This will mark the fifth shiny blue office building prominently visible from Jasper Avenue (sixth if you count all the way down to 124st). With it's odd shape there is no real risk that it will be confused with any of the others, but some diversity wouldn't hurt. Downtown Edmonton is already a sea of brutalist concrete, and I'm not sure that striking back with a wave of reflective blue monoliths is the way to go. Would another Bell or Canadian Western Bank have been too much to ask?

One nice change is that the windows are a slightly different blue than the spandrel panels below them. This combined with the exaggerated horizontal mullions and the hidden vertical mullions gives it a banded appearance, rather than the uniformity of Manulife or the new Devonian. I think they could have gone a bit further with it though, either darkening the spandrels or making the windows more transparent (humbug to energy efficiency). The banding is prominent but it doesn't quite pop, and on a cloudy day you might not even notice it.

The building is also subject to the same height restrictions that have led to downtown Edmonton's many cubic "high-rises" which are as tall as they are wide. 10830 is actually quite a bit wider than it is tall, but the manic massing tries to hide that. That seems to be the approach Procura will be taking with all of its developments in the area, which should feel more interesting than the duplo-blocks-as-urban-design approach of the government area a few blocks to the south.

It also goes without saying that the new retail spaces will be such a welcome addition to Jasper, in an area that has been a black hole for a decade? More?

Tegler Building (1911-1982)

Model and Building information

My 150th model, and to mark that occasion we have the Tegler Building. This completes my personal trinity of Edmonton's lost buildings, along with the Library and the Courthouse.

I think that for many Edmontonians the Tegler also serves somewhat as the one-that-got-away - given historical designation only to have it taken away again; and imploded only to be replaced by a bland and rather lame piece of post-modernism. Looking at it today makes me realize what the intersection of 101 Street and 102 Avenue once have must been, particularly at street level. How different would 101 Street or Rice Howard Way feel if they were still lined with those storefronts today?

The model reuses textures from all the usual suspects - the Buena Vista, CIBC and Bowker - along with a colourized version of Tegler's lower floors. I really like how it turned out, and when I set out to model some of Edmonton's lost buildings this was exactly what I was aiming for.

Library (1923-1968)

Model and Building information

Another of Edmonton's lost buildings, which again makes use of the all-purpose textures of the Bowker Building and Downtown CIBC, along with roof tiles borrowed from the Annamoe Mansion. There are also a few textures taken from the one colour photograph of the library that I could find. References for this building are tough to find though, so this model isn't particularly good or accurate, but I think it gets the point across.

The Arlington (1909-2008)

Model and Building information

I spent some time on the top floor of the Arlington about a year before it was destroyed by fire. I remember the deceptively large windows (those architects sure knew how to work proportions), the wonderful sliding doors separating the bedroom from the living room, the murphy bed, and the original hardwood floors coated by what seemed like an inch of varathane.

I don't have any photos of the Arlington, so this model doesn't use any textures from the actual building. Instead, the textures are repurposed from the Buena Vista Building on 124st and Derwas Court on 121st.

Court House (1912-1972)

Model and Building information

Demolished before I was born, I've long heard stories of the old Court House. Much as I appreciate Modernism, I do have to wonder how architects and planners of the day could have been so dedicated to erasing the past and replacing it with their shiny concrete modernity. How many buildings were lost because they didn't have air-conditioning, and how ridiculous is that?

On the other hand, I guess that one Beaux Arts building is kindof the same as all the rest. This frankenmodel was thrown together with bits of the Bowker Building and downtown CIBC, and is as accurate as I could make it.