Boomer and Helo outside of Moishe Safdie's main branch of the Vancouver Public Library in the "Bastille Day" episode of Battlestar Galactica.
Films and TV shows have long been shot in Vancouver for the financial savings, North American cityscapes and significant natural beauty it offers. So it was little surprise to see the city in the “Bastille Day” episode of Battlestar Galactica I watched last night. As the characters Helo and Boomer, marooned on a scorched interstellar colony called Caprica, now run by the robotic Cylons, made their way through the deserted city, they came upon one of the worst buildings the city has to offer: The Vancouver Public Library. I’ve had mixed feelings on architect Moshe Safdie for some time. His claim to fame, and still his best building, wowed me when I saw it a couple years ago on a Dwell trip to Montreal. His Habitat 67 is unlike anything else in the city, a tessellated mound of geometric modules piling up cheek by jowl that served as housing during Montreal’s 1967 World’s Fair. It’s still the architectural hallmark of the city, and the work that catapulted the 24 year old Safdie to the international stage.
Moshe Safdie's wonderful Habitat 67.
I saw other Safdie work while in Montreal, including an underwhelming department store that was little more than an exercise is aimless post-modernism: A tossed-off thing by an architect whose star was on the wane but still had plenty of brand recognition in the town that helped make his reputation.
So as I came to the Vancouver Public Library last summer I had a feeling that it would make or break my impression of the architect. Needless to say, I was underwhelmed. The blandness of a facade of beige concrete and high, opaque windows is only barely mitigated by the structure’s gentle nautilus curl. I appreciated the open-air arcade that allows one to pass through the structure while staying outdoors, but the high galleries inspired less awe than boredom. Enthralled with his homage to classical forms (one can’t help but think of a Greek amphitheater or the Coliseum) Safdie failed to say anything about the here and now. And considering what a milquetoast city Vancouver is architecturally, with slowly patinating copper condo towers dotting the skyline like stripped pine trees and elevated freeways marring the waterways, I held Safdie responsible for a severe lack of imagination. Not only does the library loom over a pedestrian mall, but it says little to the buildings around it, instead rising from its considerable plaza with an undue hauteur.
Why then did I like seeing it so much on Battlestar Galactica? I think it was because it managed to look at once futuristic and arcane. Like so much science fiction set in a galaxy far, far away, BSG manages to at once suggest the technologies and environments to come, while drawing heavily on antiquity for cultural touchstones (Caprica, Apollo, Thrace, Gemenon, Sagitarion, Cyranus and Agathon are the names in play), and human drama. Vancouver offers that well-scrubbed urbanity that we like to think the distant future holds, while still retaining styles and structures that many of us hope never to lose. Shot in heavy sepia tones, the lonely VPL, in its expanse of concrete, appears like a temple and a relic bereft of any recognizable iconography, an ancient form repurposed for advanced times. Though I’m not sure what he aims to do or say about present day Earth, Safdie, unbenownst to him, I’m sure, turns out to be the ideal architect for post-nuclear, Cylon-controlled Caprica. Though those commissions, one presumes, are far tougher to get.