The ThunderBlogs

Beneath the Cambie Street bridge, at the junction of two sidewalks, an abstract art instillation attracted the attention of two passersby.  The Garde-Temps, a french phrase meaning time-peace, silently recorded its surroundings.  The composition of LEDs was strung together in a shape resembling a large bowling pin.  The object intermittently flashed with light, and bewildered its visitors.

“This artwork is a vessel for the distorted appearance of the place and the passersby,” wrote Tania Ruiz Gutiérrez, the Paris-based artist commissioned by the city to create the installation. “Its surface alternately shows images captured by the nearby close circuit thermal camera and a series of pre-programmed patterns obtained by transforming these images.”

The visitors were unaware of the object’s purpose or abilities.  They stared, briefly questioning its meaning.

Without a label of explanation, Gutiérrez’s work went unappreciated.  As they left, the vessel logged their movement and heat signature with its seeing-eye, unbeknownst to them.  Its tiny diodes illuminated in a sweeping motion, mirroring their image as they walked away, bidding them a silent farewell.

Meanwhile, at the end of the walkway, another thermal innovation went unnoticed.  The passing traffic on the bridge overhead produced a dull thumping noise as the tires rumbled across the concrete slab sections.  The deadened noise softly punctuated the silence of this otherwise vacant, concrete jungle, hidden beneath the bridge.

Steam billowed from one of five tall smoke stacks protruding from a building shrouded in the shadows of the bridge.  A colourful placard affixed to a bridge standard established the building’s purpose.

The Southeast False Creek Neighbourhood Energy Utility provides space heating and domestic hot water to the budding community, including the Olympic Village development, by utilizing a highly efficient sewage heat recovery system.

Southeast False Creek, though, currently consists of more abandoned buildings and vacant land than residential buildings.  The span of property between the Neighbourhood Energy Utility and the Olympic Village, the site of this future community, is a barren wasteland of un-development.  It is scattered with the remnants of a heavy-industry past.  Yet at its peak, the utility will service up to 16,000 residents in the area, when they do arrive.

Until then, the dominant feature of the community skyline is a rusty, corrugated metal quonset, the remains of Vancouver Machinery Ltd., established in 1968.  The decrepit shell of the building is framed by the slick lines of the Olympic Village, forming a distant backdrop of great contrast, and an equally distant hint of things to come.