40 Replies to “Winnipeg, Immigrants, Architects”

  1. So how did the “Projects” work in inner city America? Any idiot should have seen it coming but government always employs special idiots.

    Coop housing for Muslims who don’t want to pay interest? There’s already a special place for Muslims who don’t want to pay interest – it’s called the shithole world. When in Winnipeg do as the Winnipeggers do.

    1. Coop housing for Muslims who don’t want to pay interest.

      Yep, that part really had be shaking my head.

    2. Gee, I would love not to pay interest, too.

      Can I get special favours form everyone?

      Everything the governments in this country do are jokes.

      1. They pay interest, they just don’t call it interest. They borrow a sum of money and eventually pay it back, and then in a separate transaction give the lender a “gift” to thank him for his generosity and zakat.

  3. The story reminds me of Blunderbird Thunderbird House in Winnipeg, award winning design, now having its copper roof sheeting stolen, and sold for scrape.

    1. I thought I was the only one who noticed that. I’ll bet it is condemned within 10 years.

    1. There must be a mistake regarding those 911 calls, the religion of peace that we continually hear about would have zero requirement for such situations. They would be too busy calculating the amount of money they were saving by not needing to pay interest. This country is so screwed when one segment of the population gets special treatment because their religious beliefs allow them to get interest free benefits. Another segment of the population can block a main railway line for several days and vandalize pipeline equipment without penalty, and then of course Quebec that can without any input from the federal government can treat any citizen that can t speak French like a person whose human rights are invalid.

  5. “The three-storey(sic) apartment layouts prevented single parents from using the kitchen while watching their kids, Guenther said, and the open areas outside demanded a security fence.”

    OMG!! They sound like death traps!!!

    There seems to be some missing context to this story. If these buildings are safe, they could probably fill them up in a few days with some eager lower-income renters. But, my guess is that there will never be a reasonable solution to this… because government is involved.

  6. Indeed missing context, they managed to say absolutely nothing about the design deficiencies of the complex beyond the one kitchen comment.
    One can only surmise that it’s rife with antisocial behavior. For we know that anytime the CBC doesn’t describe the subjects, they are not of Pallor, when the CBC doesn’t describe the “problematic behavior” it’s illegal or antisocial.
    So it makes sense that they should throw the Architects under the bus for the end users behavior

    1. was thinking the same but too ashamed to ask as I figured I wasn’t smart enough to suss out the problem from the article. It seems as though CBC writers are specialists in saying and doing nothing, J school grads indeed. The article didn’t answer the basic 5 W’s.

    2. Only those familiar with Winnipeg will get the full understanding (“Balmoral Avenue”).
      All other readers are (purposely?) left in the dark.

  7. Like others, I have no idea what the actual problem with this complex is that it can’t be occupied. We raised twin boys in a house with open areas and where we couldn’t see them from the kitchen and they have both lived to see their 7th birthdays. Like, given some of the absolute dumps I lived in when I had no money, this place looks pretty nice. In fact, finding a newish place like this cheap is basically hitting the jackpot for an apartment.

    EDIT: Just reading some other stuff and it sounds like the complaint is that the units and rooms are small. Well, cry me a freakin’ river. My apartment in Greenwich was like 500 square feet and the floor was so crooked you could fall over standing up. I lived in a basement suite with rats for a year in university. Seriously, even the desperate and poor are entitled.

  8. Government should not be in the business of housing, since it’s uniformly bad at it.

    Government is very good at putting roadblocks in the way of housing however.

  9. I’d love to see a floor plan that separates kitchen from living spaces. The complaint sounds like nonsense. BTW … I don’t know ANY parent of small children who doesn’t own a baby monitor, so they can spend time out of the child’s bedroom. My own daughter lives in a two-story condo and supervises her son via monitor while he’s sleeping upstairs … otherwise he’s downstairs playing in the Family/Dining/Kitchen area … WITH the family. Don’t tell me these floor plans prevent that?

    Judging by window size/placement, it appears as though the living/Kitchen level is on the second floor. This is hardly an unusual arrangement of a 3-story vert. stack. What I really find ironic is that the Architect would make some awful attempt to design a “middle eastern” style of architecture in Winnipeg … but completely ignore “middle eastern” floor plans and cultural living patterns. And the “middle eastern” design idiom is a response to climate and building materials … and cannot be suitably imposed in an Arctic climate. What an architectural retard.

    Sorry middle eastern Muslims … when you come to Canada … you should EXPECT to LIVE LIKE CANADIANS !!! You’re no longer middle easterners. Adapt … or else. Or else go homeless.

  10. Well …

    As things socialist are, the building and demolition of publicly funded buildings is a zero sum game for the public services departments.
    You have them built, you get the commissions and everyone gets freely paid by the socialists. Don’t know anything about the building, though would say without error that it went handsomely over the budget.
    Never fear though.
    Demolition?
    No problem the same bureaucrats get paid more money, they got a few raises after all in the 12 years.
    The demolition will go over the budget, guaranteed.

    So there you have the summary of socialist economy. Where is the money coming from?
    Well, you just pay more taxes, that’s where.
    Isn’t socialism great?

    Heh …. all the socialists get rich and the working people get poorer.

    Gotta love them socialists.

    1. As long as the socialist owned companies get the contracts both ways, it’s all good…………..

  11. So basically the Gov’t is saying that tiny houses are useless crap. Still I knew an engineering student in Saskatoon that put himself through school while living in a small travel trailer (even through some brutal winters!). So give’em to some enterprising engineering students to fix up and make live-able. If anyone can do it, they can.

  15. What kind of idiot architect would purposely maximize external wall surface area in a windy city which spends so many days at -20ºC?

    1. A Brutalist architect from the 60’s and 70’s. Winnipeg was a world leader in that style at one time.

  16. Anyone who has driven by those eye sore housing developments knows how soul destroying they are. I can’t imagine anyone living in them, particularly if you’re from a sunny place or somewhere near the equator. One winter in them and I’d be ready to slit my wrists. Based on what I’ve seen of them up close, I’d ignore the ethnic angle and simply thank God if they get bull dozed. I wouldn’t wish the place on my worst enemy.

    1. Paint ball practice would improve the look immensely on the outside…

      1. Its an ugly, impractical design in a high crime neighborhood and it doesn’t fit with anything else in the area.

        1. In other words…
          “It’s perfect!”, according to government flacks and social advocates.

    1. Jail cells with an orange ceiling just to enrage the prisoners. Idiot floor plans. The floor plans also make the ground floor plaza DEAD … and DANGEROUS. And it’s nice to see garages have been eliminated. You’ll WALK … and like it.

  18. https://www.winnipegarchitecture.ca/centre-village/

    “As implied in the project’s moniker, the structure has a village-like aspect, one accentuated by its courtyard, exterior staircases, balconies and alleyways. On the one hand, with its irregularity (in plan and elevation) and materiality, this appearance recalls vernacular arrangements such as historic mediterranean Greek settlements and even urban complexes found in Africa and the Middle East. On the other, Centre Village also looks something like the early modernist constructions such as the Stuttgart housing project the Weissenhof Estate, thrown in a blender. As at Stuttgart – and in Greece – the use of humble stucco here is a gesture to economic necessity, but this choice is also aestheticised. The neo-modernist irregular design also recalls the divergent modernism of post-war architects such as Aldo van Eyck, even as a core functionalism echoes more closely modern practices of the interwar period. The use of orange as a punctuation mark and the unusual array of windows also speaks to contemporary trends and practices, paralleling Los Angeles condominium development Habitat 15 by Predock Frane Architects, winner of a 2009 American Institute of Architects Design Award.”

  19. “On the other, Centre Village also looks something like the early modernist constructions such as the Stuttgart housing project the Weissenhof Estate, thrown in a blender. As at Stuttgart – and in Greece – the use of humble stucco here is a gesture to economic necessity, but this choice is also aestheticised. The neo-modernist irregular design also recalls the divergent modernism of post-war architects such as Aldo van Eyck, even as a core functionalism echoes more closely modern practices of the interwar period.”

    Modernist architects ruin everything.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldo_van_Eyck

    https://www.archdaily.com/212826/habitat-15-predock-frane-architects

  22. You know when you see those defensive blockhouses? And they have overhangs to allow defenders to drop rocks on anyone trying to break the lower floor, and jut out features to allow enfilade fire on attackers?

    sorry – unrelated tangent. Completely unrelated. Not sure what made me think of them.

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