Jorge Barrera and Jack Danylchuk
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Mar 18/02) - The view from the top of Pilot's Monument tells the story of Yellowknife through the buildings that serve it as a mining town, transit point, supply centre and seat of the territorial government.

Following the city's aorta from its gridded streets to the chaos of Old Town, Franklin Avenue acts as a time-line for the esthetics of change in a place surrounded by a landscape that marks the passage of time in cycles of millennia.

Up the soft Franklin slope away from Old Town, a thicket of multi-storey office and apartment towers pop from the rolling terrain. Huddled around them barracks-style apartments, bungalows, double-wide trailer-homes and cubed retail spaces clumped like Lego blocks left in the middle of a sandbox.

Up further still, past Northern United Place on the left and Mildred Hall School on the right, up Yellowknife's four-lane, islanded freeway (maximum 40 km/h) is the suburban sprawl of Frame Lake South, turned away from the post-apocalyptic industrial zone of Kam Lake.

Here the esthetics of everyplace prevail: big box stores, gas bars and strip malls, the victory of pragmatic planning, perfect neighbourhoods.

Were it not for the nap of dwarf pine, birch and spruce that bristle from cracks in the glaciated rock, and the way Frame Lake South streets end up like knots of hair in the back corners of the neighbourhood, a traveller dropped into this part of Yellowknife could easily mistake it for any city in the South.

This is the product of a city in the throes of mutation, from mining town to government town and now a Northern centre for multinational corporations orbiting diamonds.

The government boom in the 1960s and early 1970s spawned the need for housing occupied by people who wouldn't stay too long.

Julia Burill, a federal government architect and former designer with Ferguson Simek Clark, believes Frame Lake South was built out of the need for a Southern reminder.

"People built houses in Frame Lake South not thinking about place," said Burill who lives in that neighbourhood. "It's just mass produced. In the summer with all the little lawns, it could be anywhere, it's not representative of any place."

But the construction of Highway 3 in 1967 -- the year the city became the territories' capital -- ultimately defined the type of structures built during the days of Yellowknife as government town, according to Yellowknife architect Wayne Guy.

The highway allowed for the easier transportation of materials, affecting architecture.

"The relative ease of construction has not allowed time in the process to improvise, economize or alter the event of construction to reflect the diversity of its inhabitants or the culture of place," said Guy in an article scheduled for publication in the Canadian Architect Magazine.

"The jazz and dissonance has been lost to affluence and convenience."

In the early days of Old Town in the 1930s, people made due with materials already here, forcing improvisation and creating individuality in every structure.

"If a miner puts up two planks to build his shack, then it's going to be representative of who he is," said Guy, who lives on Latham Island.

Isolation gave each house a sense of place. Instead of fighting or ignoring the landscape, Old Town homes played off the surrounding environment. This gave the neighbourhood a story book charm where the illustrator uses the same lines to draw the hills, trees and houses.

Drive down MacDonald Drive as it turns to a one-way street, past houses with cocked roofs, a little blue cottage and on the right float planes land on skis on the frozen lake in the winter. And on up to Latham Island, across the little bridge, don't miss the houses on Morrison Drive, look to the left at brave houses, clinging to the rock face like strange vegetation.

Shacks clump together in the back corners of this neighbourhood. Tin and wooden boxes, doors scavenged at the dump, windows traded for a stove-pipe.

Architectural anarchy.

"That's why people love Old Town and Latham Island. Those houses have responded to the environment. In Frame Lake no house is thinking about place," said Burill.

Even still, Old Town had a sense of transience, according to Burill. It was only with the development up town that the thinking turned to permanence.

In architect Gino Pin's eyes, those early efforts were more closely attuned to the dictates of the landscape than what was imposed from the south in the form of new town.

It is the new town that gives Yellowknife its skyline and sets it apart from any other settlement in the territories.

Pin is arguably the most successful at interpreting the landscape; other architects point to his work. He designed the territories' legislative assembly.

"As we live here longer we're learning what we need to do build in this environment," said Pin.

Slowly that attitude changed, with the building of the legislature and the Prince of Wales museum, it established a better architecture, said Pinn.

The legislative assembly is an example of a structured attuned to the nuances of purpose and landscape.

The curved form of the legislature's dome is mistakenly traced to the tradition of the snow house and Southern capital buildings.

In truth, Pin said, the form is the natural closure for a circle implied by the territories' consensus style of government.

The intent was not to reflect an iglu or the domes of traditional Southern legislature buildings, said Pin.

"We spoke with legislators and a lot of their feeling about the landscape ... we believe in the need to build buildings that fit into the landscape," said Pin.

Pin had a rare opportunity. Not only did he design the building, but he chose its site as well. The zinc cladding comes from the land as well, although it is not so commonly used as it once was.

It is not a long step from the metal cladding to the industrial look that moves back and forth between commercial, industrial and even residential buildings.

With all of that, the building melts into its surrounding of water, rock and trees.

Pin said the city's planners and developers should readjust their lenses now that Yellowknife is riding the cusp of another expansion and follow the legislature's lead.

"First of all Yellowknife should develop an esthetic based on the culture and landscape in which we exist," said Pin. "We shouldn't be transporting the Southern design solutions to the North. If something is designed for a Calgary social structure and landscape, what is it doing in Yellowknife?"

Pin said the city's planners and buildings do not consider what is unique about Yellowknife and what should be preserved.

Pin is not advocating a return to the heyday of Old Town. He suggests, however, planners, developers and builders should be more sensitive to things they build and its relationship to the physical and social structures of the place.

Blindness to the nuances of place is killing the downtown and sapping Old Town's charm.

"We have a city which fills up with office workers in the day and is barely used on weekends and evenings," said Pin, who lives on Latham Island.

Pin said the city is plagued with the Southern suburban disease of big box stores and barren parking lots; the sacraments of car culture.

"They are without soul. They reek of making a fast dollar and self-destructing in 20 years time," said Pin.

He said the city should take a stronger stand in the esthetics of Yellowknife.

"The city is in a position to say to developers, we welcome you, but you come here and you develop to our game plan and hopefully we can come to some understanding," said Pin.

Dave Jones, city planner, said Pin has a legitimate point, but the realities of politics and business have kept the city from implementing design features in their bylaws.

"We could dictate the size of the window and colour with a bylaw," said Jones. "But how much you can dictate in a bylaw just exactly what design parameters should go into a building?"

Jones said the city has conducted studies on the issue but council has never acted on them. He said there is a fear it could scare away private developers.

It's the government buildings that pay attention to esthetics of place, said Jones. He lists the Department of National Defence, the legislative assembly, some of the schools and the new jail scheduled to go up near Kam Lake as example.

"There is a high degree of design that goes into those buildings but it hasn't translated to the private side where there is more of a money issue," said Jones.