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100 Views
View Towers, the ostensible subject of these 100 photographs, has occupied a strange place in Victoria's physical and cultural landscape for the last three decades. It's construction in 1982 was a bonafide event; the first of what were to be two immense towers on the same city block. But upon completion, its imposing scale shocked most Victorians, many of whom were alarmed at the dominating effect the building had on the city's skyline. Teetering above its one and two story neighbours, it literally looked misplaced; an 18 story monolith accidentally dropped onto the corner of View and Quadra by a clumsy cosmic planner. Investors fled, saddling the highrise with an empty, building-sized lot to it's rear and the awkward, misleading name it carries to this day.
A recent surge in downtown development has reduced its visual incongruity, filling in large portions of the skyline that formerly served to accentuate the tower's prominence. While still noticably at odds with its environment, it now seems more evocative of the past than the future. As neighbourhood prices soar, its continued low-income status registers as a distant echo of the utopian ideals once present in the works of modernist pioneers like Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, and a small number of Victorians- most of them children when the tower was built- have developed a grudging affection for it.
Although I don't live there, the tower is an undeniable component of my daily perceptual experience. It's apartment patios are clearly visible from my living room, and I pass directly beneath its south face when walking to and from the downtown. I buy beer from the liquor store located in the shadow of its east flank, and groceries from the market one block north of its front entrance. Perceptually, it's as much a part of my day to day life as the smell of my downstairs neighbour's cooking or the hammering of my apartment's antiquated plumbing. Its shape is a constant presence in my peripheral vision.
Jamie Tolagson, 01/08/07
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