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Eldon Beck: Nature as the textbook

The Whistler story is rife with bigger-than-life characters. From Myrtle Philip to Hugh Smythe, from Pat Carleton to Andree Janyk, the list of individuals whose hard work and dedication have contributed to the success of this place is impressive.
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Eldon Beck

The Whistler story is rife with bigger-than-life characters. From Myrtle Philip to Hugh Smythe, from Pat Carleton to Andree Janyk, the list of individuals whose hard work and dedication have contributed to the success of this place is impressive. But few have had a bigger impact on the way we live and play in this valley than Eldon Beck.

Hyperbole? Beaudry embellishment? I don’t think so. For nearly four decades, the California-based architect has been at the forefront of mountain resort design thinking. Combining equal parts soul, whimsy and a profound respect for nature, the soft-spoken Beck has successfully applied his mountain-town vision to projects around the globe. Yet for all his international acclaim, there’s one job that he’s still most intimately associated with: the master plan he created for Whistler’s original village back in 1978.

And he never tires of talking about the principles that animated that plan.

“Good mountain-town design is all about experiencing the senses,” explains the 73 year old. “Successful mountain communities celebrate their environment. They find ways of connecting with their natural surroundings — rather than trying to overwhelm it.” He pauses. Smiles — and I catch just a hint of an old-school elder in his bearded visage. “Nature is a great teacher,” he continues. “All the answers are there. And that’s formed the basis for what I’ve focused on all my life as an architect: How to create the ultimate connection between people and nature.”

Finding ways to nurture that connection, insists Beck, has never been more important than it is today. “What we’re seeing in modern culture,” he says, “is how much the impact of all our high-tech ‘stuff’ is drawing people away from nature. Mountain towns, by their very location, offer a relief valve from the intense technological pressures bearing down on city dwellers. The greatest value we can provide to these urban refugees is a natural setting not overwhelmed by city-inspired designs.”

Funny, isn’t it? Were it not for a fortuitous meeting between Beck and a few Whistler councillors, the pedestrian village that we now all take for granted might have never happened…

So how did an American landscape architect — a lecturer in urban planning at Berkeley, for goodness’ sake — ever get involved in a project in the great north woods of B.C.?

“We have to go back all the way to 1972,” he recounts, “That’s when the firm I was associated with was hired by the town of Vail to create a new valley-wide master plan.” In those days, he says, Vail was being clobbered by vehicular traffic. “The town manager was Terry Minger. And he was quite a visionary. He was one of the first in the country to understand that a mountain town like Vail couldn’t survive strictly as a winter resort. He knew, ultimately, that its success rested on how the resident community developed. And to do that, it had to become a people-friendly, four-season town. His solution was to transform Vail into a pedestrian village.”

For the next seven years, Beck worked as a planning consultant for Vail. During much of that time, he was the sole member of the town’s design review board. And though the job of re-creating the town was never easy, he says now it was that experience that really put things in context for him. “That’s where I learned a tremendous amount about mountains, mountain environments and the difference between good design and bad design,” admits the lifelong backpacker. “I remember sitting beside Gore Creek and being fascinated by the richness in the interface of creek and shore.” Beck uses the term “ecotone” to describe such habitat edges. And it’s his contention that an ecotone (where water meets land, for example) features a richer environment than either of its compositional parts.

It makes sense. Whether river estuary or forest edge, riparian zone or desert fringe, so-called ecotones certainly support more diverse life forms than do their monotone neighbours. But what does this have to do with the design of mountain towns?

“It’s all about texture and light,” he explains. “And ecotones offer a richness of texture that is very appealing.” He lets me mull on that for a moment before continuing. “Think about it,” he says. “A pedestrian walkway is very much like a creek. So the challenge is to create the same kind of textural richness on the edges here that we find in nature. How do we texture the meeting of building and walkway to stimulate people’s curiosity? How do we encourage them to slow down and connect with their surroundings?” Rather than seeking conventional architectural solutions to the town’s issues, Beck increasingly focused on creating a design model that celebrated the richness of the habitat edges found throughout the Vail Valley.

And it worked. Witness Terry Minger’s words on Beck’s style: “Eldon’s signature is that his villages look as if they belong. They look as if they evolved, that they actually grew out of the land. He connects with the landscape in an almost spiritual way. He sees things in the landscape and the mountains and streams and earth forms that others don’t see.”

Slowly but surely, Vail began to transform itself into a people-friendly community again. “Great places often get strangled by their own success,” says Beck. “And that had been the case with Vail. Once we got folks out and walking — once we freed them from the module of their automobiles — it was much easier for them to connect with other people, the environment etc.…”

Meanwhile, Minger had migrated north to Canada to become the first manager of the fledgling Whistler Land Company. His job: to get the new proposed townsite up and running. On a 1978 research trip to Vail with a couple of Whistler council members, Minger “happened” to introduce Beck to Al Raine. “Coincidentally,” recounts Beck, “Al had the master plan for the new Whistler townsite and he told me: ‘I’m not comfortable with this new plan. Could you look at it and tell me what you think?’”

Intrigued, Beck took a closer look. “To me,” he says, “it was a plan transplanted from the city to the mountains. It didn’t reflect at all what I thought a mountain community should be like. So I told him that.”

It was exactly what Raine wanted to hear. And then he asked the question that would change Eldon Beck’s life. Could he come up to Whistler and speak to the rest of council on this subject?

“I still remember that first trip rather well,” says Beck. “It was September of 1978. The weather was wet and very chilly. In fact, I hadn’t been that cold in a long time. But it was surprisingly invigorating too. The forest was magnificent — totally different than Vail.”

He laughs. “Although I couldn’t see the mountain summits, people told me these too were quite spectacular. And that’s when it hit me. Whatever happens here, I thought to myself, has to belong to this place. However this new townsite is developed, it has to evolve from the natural setting here.” He pauses for a moment. A shy smile flutters on the edge of his features. “And that set the guiding philosophy for me — the basis for critiquing the original plan.”

Beck’s consequent presentation to council was successful beyond his expectations. Impressed by his quickly-sketched concepts and his quiet passion for their project, council members immediately decided to dismiss the original master plan and start again from scratch. “And that put me in something of a delicate position,” he says. “For now I had to go and meet with the architect who had designed the plan and see if I could change his approach.” But when Beck presented his case, the Vancouver-based designer just shook his head. “He told me: ‘This just isn’t my style. This is not what I do.’ So I was given the job of re-creating the master plan.”

“Two months later,” he says, “the new plan was complete and the first proposal calls were ready to go.” What? Two months for a brand-new master plan? You can’t even get a construction permit in that amount of time now. “It was a different era,” he says, noting my incredulity at the speed of the undertaking, “it was a different process. Besides, we were a very small working group,” — he cites landscape architect Don Vaughn and urban planner Neil Griggs among a few others — “and that makes it much easier to decide things quickly…”

It was the beginning of a Beck/Whistler relationship that has endured for 30 years. And it will endure for some time yet if Eldon has anything to say about it. “It’s been an remarkable affair,” he says. “Seldom in one’s professional life do you stay on one job for this long. The thing for me — to realize that I sat at my desk and designed this thing and then got to be directly involved as it grew and matured, I’m totally amazed by it. Honestly, it still feels absolutely unbelievable to stand at a spot in the village and see how it all came together… humbling too.”

Next Week: Eldon takes us on a historical tour of the development of Whistler Village. What worked out? What didn’t? What were his biggest challenges? What were his biggest surprises? And how does he see Whistler’s future. Stay tuned…