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First Person: Eldon Beck

The architect of Whistler Village looks back at the principles behind the design and how the village must continue to evolve

He is a soft-spoken, down-to-earth American. And as he sits in a meeting room at municipal hall he can’t help but ponder the intricacies of the village beyond the windows – a village he helped create.

His musing takes him back more than 25 years, to a time when the view outside was the forested valley and the imposing dark head of Fissile Mountain staring down Singing Pass. It has been a long, wonderful journey, he says, from that pristine scene to today’s bustling ski mecca, a journey dear to his heart.

This is Eldon Beck – the mastermind behind Whistler Village.

It is his design, his vision, which is brought to life in the vibrant village streets.

When the news leaks out that Beck is back people want to stop and say hello. Former mayor Drew Meredith pops in to shake his hand. Mayor Hugh O’Reilly comes in next to pay his respects and welcome him back to Whistler.

Beck is an unassuming landscape architect based out of California, but since the mid-70s, when he was asked to design a ski resort in the midst of a forested valley, he has been forever linked to Whistler. Of all the mountain villages Beck has designed, and it’s a prestigious list including Vail and Mont Tremblant, he considers Whistler special and unique.

On a recent three-day visit, where he took part in discussions with municipal staff about the future of the village, Eldon Beck sat down with Pique Newsmagazine’s Alison Taylor for a trip down memory lane and took time to mull over the future of this award-winning village creation.

Q: You had a blank slate in the mid-70s to design a village from scratch. Tell me about some of the design principles behind Whistler Village.

A: The starting point is invariably looking at the land and dealing with a lot of curiosity about what grows here, what the views are like and, it’s a nebulous term, but what is the "spirit of place," what's the feeling that it has. And always the question is: is it possible to take a beautiful natural site and rearrange it with a lot of structures but still keep the sense that it’s the place that it should be?

So the very first thing to do was to understand the drama of the view of Singing Pass and the whole relationship to that wonderful valley. And so I stood on Village Gate, which was a little road, and walked in and I climbed a tree to look up and see what I could see and that kind of set the early structure of the village.

And as the design evolved, it was then realizing (the importance of) sunlight in mountain places. When you have the sun shining on you and the wind sheltered, you have just a wonderful comfort that you often don’t find in other places. So we began to modulate the sizes of structures so that they wouldn’t block the sun in the public places. The basis of the village design was views and sun. This is what we’re repeating again and again and again. After 25 years we’re saying that theme has tremendous validity and I think we're proving it over and over again.

Q: I’ve heard that the streets are supposed to represent streams. Explain that concept to me.

A: Prior to working in Whistler I was a consultant to the town of Vail for about seven years. Through Vail is a delightful stream called the Gore Creek and I would go sit by the creek after difficult meetings. One winter the creek was black and the rocks and everything were white, covered in snow. It was a diagram. I had read a lot about the life in creeks and about habitat areas. I had also read about eco-tones – this is where one habitat, in this case water, meets another habitat, land, and comes together in an eco-tone which is richer in life than either of the habitats by themselves….

I just kept looking at this and realized it was possible to translate that as a pedestrian system. If the creek were a walkway, then somebody could walk as quickly as they wanted to down the centre, and by having the edges and the catchments on the side, those tended to slow you down, not necessarily physically but more mentally. They were the points of stopping and resting and observation, just watching the crowd go by. So if the fish were to do that they would find those spots and wait for food to come by. That really is the social diagram of a pedestrian lane. In my view the success of a village or a pedestrian lane was how we controlled the edges, and how much texture they had…. For me it was a very powerful design, understanding how to connect people to the place where they are when you slow them down and let them stop and watch. Then you connect people to people, people to place. Planning villages, to me, is all about connections – connections to nature, connections to culture, connections to who else is there. So the village really is a social experience and kind of an emotional experience.… In a way real estate is less important. It’s really about how people finally connect to the place where they are.

Q: When you look back to what you originally planned 30 years ago, is it what you had envisioned?

A: Parts of it. And others are less so. The section that goes from Whistler Centre, from the Starbucks towards Village Square, that particular corridor has all the things that I think we’d envisioned with the village. It’s the collection of rather small buildings and the small buildings are important because they’re a symbol of personal ownership and individuality. And the pedestrian lane has enough wiggle to it and edge quality that has a very nice texture. That particular section really seems to have the size and the width and the proportion that are really delightful. When you turn from Village Square (Citta's) to Mountain Square, and you go by where the Crystal Lodge is being remodelled… those edges have some of that character but they're harsher. The walls are bigger and there's less penetration of the pedestrian walk up to the shop fronts, the steps step up too severely, too quickly. They’re kind of scrunched in because they were respecting old property lines…. There’s not a lot of graciousness to that.

It’s become a harder channel than I would have hoped for. It’s pretty good but it really doesn’t have the delight of the other part. So as I walk around the village I find pieces that are pretty neat and others that are not.

Q: The commercial core zone (also known as the CC1 zone) stretches from the Tantalus Lodge in the south to Village Gate Boulevard in the north and Blackcomb Way on the east. Originally all the buildings in the CC1 had a covenant, setting them at a certain size. There’s some debate now that those buildings can expand. If they expand, I’m assuming that wouldn’t fit in with your original design?

A: Mostly that’s true, particularly along Village Stroll where the heights in particular are probably just about where they have to be. Our task now is to look at all the buildings and go back to the original principles of solar access and views. We must look at the shapes and sizes of all of these buildings as carefully as we can and say "have they reached the absolute limit of where they can be? If they were to change in form or size a little bit would we lose quality of any public place?" If not, then there would be flexibility to expand. So there might be some buildings that can have some greater size. (But) I use the term "limited" because there’re not many instances like that. My personal sense is that the village is pretty close to where it needs to be… but there is some flexibility.

Q: If the buildings cannot expand, what can store owners and property owners do to improve their buildings and make their businesses more appealing?

A: Oftentimes it’s colour – colour and light…. Also, I think we’re a bit deficient on the accessibility of the public corridors to storefronts. There are a number of places where I think that could really be improved. Another option is to look at ways that shop owners might be permitted to have outdoor displays. Instead of always being behind their glass window or their door, can we permit them to open up and move further out so that they begin to engage the people? The public places might be more like market lanes as opposed to being only places to walk…. So in a way private enterprise must look very carefully to see how well they are doing and ask themselves, are they really up to snuff? Then on the public sector side, I think the goal is to look at all of the public corridors and assess whether they are really as good as they should be.

Q: One of the problems we have are the late night drinkers coming out of the bars and congregating, particularly in Village Square. How do you go about fixing the noise in the village?

A: Mostly you live with it. In a way it’s accepting that rich and lively places have noise. Oftentimes the source of the noise is in the club, which I think has been totally solved here. In many villages that’s a historic problem – the club door opens and the noise blasts out, people hear it a half mile away. So that’s not the problem here. The problem here is people enjoying themselves extremely. That, I think, is a fact of life in the villages. It’s a summer problem more than a winter problem because you have open windows.

I’ve never encountered a place that can put up ordinances to lower your voice late at night. Hopefully it’s common sense but common sense and good liquor doesn’t necessarily go hand in hand. It’s finding a way, I think it’s the Zen way, of accepting certain aspects of life.

Q: There’s one big chunk of forested village land left, Lot 1/Lot 9. Have you thought about what could go there?

A: Oh yes. The original plan for the Northlands was an ice arena. It was to be a place where the valley wide community could come to the shopping centre and to a major recreation facility, which they would use consistently. The north end was the place of inviting the local community to attach itself to the village and this would be a place of coming together of visitors and locals. That was seen as a healthy thing. Part of the vitality of the community is the inter-mixing of everybody instead of being an exclusive place for visitors or an exclusive place for local people… Also looking at the climate of Whistler, and the success of most mountain recreation areas, the greater diversity you have of recreation possibilities, (the better). You're going to have some lousy days, it might be either too cold or too wet (to ski)… and if you can give families an option of recreational opportunities, then you’re filling a broad range of needs. (The arena) just seemed like it was an addition of a delightful experience that would be typical of Canada and would appeal to people from all over the world.

But it’s interesting that when you come back to a place over time and you keep looking at it and looking at it, you say was that the right decision? Is there another way to do that that maybe lets some of the forest remain, because I’ve grown very fond of the trees there. They’re very delightful. That’s a place where the forest is truly part of the village. So is a recreation ice skating venue possible in the trees… instead of it being a performance theatre with lots of seats? Could there be a family recreation skating facility with some shelter and some warmth that would be unique to that location? So instead of a formalized arena to play hockey on, it could be an ice skating pond of some type… So you must look at all the options but consider that family recreation in Whistler is so essential.

Q: You’ve mentioned that family recreational opportunities may be missing in the village. Is the village missing anything else?

A: That’s an important and serious question and the only way to answer, I think, is to take a part of the population that visits and look at each age range and say "have we provided stuff for them?" And it may be that we have.

It is important to consider the variety of recreational and cultural activities and events, throughout the year, for all ages of visitors and residents. For example, the village lacks a high quality children’s play area for little kids, perhaps an adventureland for older children, half court basketball places for teens, bolles courts as seen in European cities for all adult ages, and perhaps other facilities. In the winter, is there a lighted tubing hill? Ice skating would be great in the village. What is needed, and perhaps it is already in place, is a systematic evaluation of what has been provided for all ages during all seasons. And then, determine if there are deficiencies. In addition to active recreational facilities, consider passive places. Are there delightful quiet sitting places under trees? Are there quiet ponds? Are there enough trees? I think not. The landscape has not yet achieved the proper level of beauty, the goal of having a village in the forest has not been realized.

Q: When you were designing the village there was thought given to making the stores small and compact to encourage local small businesses. Does it add to the flavour of the village to have chain stores here?

A: In the village in particular I (hope) the scale of shops and the character of the shops and hopefully the ownership of the shops doesn’t change. I think that’s a strength of the village.

The thesis of village planning is that it’s different than everyday life. And that to bring the trappings of everyday life into the mountain resort community seems to be the opposite of what the community’s about. I look on that with great hesitation. And I would take that "different than everyday life" comment as being a very serious statement and one of the principles that guides villages. People are here for another kind of experience. It begins to change if you have a more permanent community and that’s where Whistler is on an edge of growing to a permanent community with everyday life versus the visitor population that’s after not everyday life. That’s a really hard one then to judge – at what point are we denying the permanent population things that are common to many places? I have to admit to a great bias against the big box type facilities because I think they’re the opposite of what villages and small towns are about. I think they’re the exact opposite and if anything they are doing more to destroy communities than to create communities….

Q: The village has been called our "jewel" by many people. So how should we protect this jewel?

A: I think you protect by encouraging continued revitalization. Protecting is almost the wrong word because protecting sounds like you’re going to preserve it, box it in and not let it do anything. And it has to maintain life and vitality and evolution and change and creativity and ongoing rejuvenation. If it doesn’t do that then it’s going to die. So it’s a jewel in process; consider that it’s never done.