his evening the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) is giving an award to the Vancouver League for Studies in Architecture and the Environment for its years of organizing lectures, exhibitions, and competitions on architecture and design.
Created in 1979 by four local architects, the Vancouver League was a registered non-profit society whose goal is to stimulate a public culture of architecture and design. For many years, the lecture series had corporate sponsorship, allowing the League to invite speakers from all over the world to Vancouver. The sponsors were: Alcan (1980 -1996), MacMillian Bloedel (1997-1999), then Weyerhauser, the new owners of MacMillian Bloedel (2000-2001), and Light Resource (2002- 2007). Each year a local artist was commissioned to design a poster for the year’s series; these posters were found in the coffee rooms of most design offices around town.
In 1984, PFS Studio’s Marta Farevaag was invited to join the directors. Her objective was to include at least one non-architect designer in the series each season: mostly landscape architects and a few planners and heritage experts. It was her pleasure to pick these speakers up at the airport, show them places of interest to them around Vancouver, introduce them to local designers in their fields, and bring them out to UBC for crits and talks with students. Speakers she had the opportunity to host included Delores Hayden from UCLA, Alan Hess from San Francisco, on Googie coffee shops of the Fifties, Adele Chatfield Taylor from Washington, Anne Vernez Moudon from Seattle, Inken Baller from IBA in Berlin, Paul Groth from Berkeley, Harry Dodson from Boston, Peter Calthorpe from San Francisco, Linda Jewell from Berkeley, Bente Lang from Copenhagen, on the colours of Rome, Adrian Gueze from Rotterdam, Robert Yaro from RPA in New York, Kathryn Gustafson from Seattle and London, Richard Haag from Seattle, Walter Hood from Berkeley, Anurada Mathur from Philadephia, Topher Delany from San Francisco, Jeppe Agaard Andersen of Helsingor, and Margie Ruddick from Philadelphia. Kongjian Yu from Beijing was the last Landscape Architect to speak in the series.
The Red Ribbon, Kongjian Yu
For past followers of the series, here is the full list from 1981 to 2007:
