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Kat

@ktxso

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@ktxso
10/ Seeing the tower again today, aged and lived-in, I felt a mix of pride and realism. Some design choices held up beautifully. Others… revealed their flaws. But maybe that’s the point: architecture evolves. With weather. With people. With time. Buildings, like cities, are never finished. They age. They rust. They crack. And in doing so, they become more real 💗 Grateful to have worked on this project and love seeing vancouvers skyline evolve over the years.
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9/ Later, I returned for deficiency work fixing what didn’t go to plan. This phase taught me that architecture is less about perfection and more about repair.
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8/ Should social housing have its own door? Does separation reinforce stigma? Or protect dignity? Architectural decisions like this are rarely neutral. They reflect policy, power, and perception. The façade might be beautiful, but what stories does it conceal?
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7/ For me, the most interesting layer wasn’t materials, it was social. The building includes social housing tucked into the same structure, with its own entrance. It’s a common setup in mixed-use developments. But it brings up hard questions 🤔
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6/ Why corten? It’s self-healing. The rust forms a protective layer that slows further corrosion. It’s honest, and in a coastal climate, practical. I see it as not trying to outlast the elements but coexist with them.
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5/ To speed up the aging, we literally hosed the corten steel entrance down during construction forcing the rust to bloom before residents moved in.
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4/ Wabi-sabi (侘寂) is a Japanese aesthetic and worldview that finds beauty in imperfection, impermanence, and the natural aging of things. A cracked ceramic bowl that’s been lovingly mended, or a weathered piece of wood with a beautiful patina, that’s wabi-sabi
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3/ The material language, especially the corten steel was quite interesting to me. Corten isn’t just a material. It’s a philosophy: → Let things age → Let them rust → Protect by exposing, not hiding A kind of architectural wabi-sabi 🍂
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2/ The corten entrance takes you to the luxury homes. Every home is a corner unit w only 4 units per floor. A lowkey podium marks the social housing entrance.
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1/ Walked past a tower in Vancouver I worked on years ago (pre web3 days) and it reminded me: architecture isn’t just about building up, it’s about layering meaning into space. This is a luxury tower with ocean and mountain views, mixed with a podium for social housing 🌊🧵⬇️:
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9/ So when you feel discouraged by how Web3 looks and feels at times…Remember how brutalism felt. 🧵/end
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8/ Web3 is brutalist at heart. Unpolished, radical, deeply idealistic. It’s not a product. It’s a new kind of architecture. One with transparency in its foundation and liberation in its blueprint. 🧱🌐
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7/ “Great buildings are not monuments. They are instruments of civilization.” Brutalism aged. It cracked. But its ideals never left. Web3 isn’t always pretty but it’s trying. Trying to build something real, grounded, and public.
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6/ Erickson’s Robson Square placed justice below the surface. Not above the people, but within them. Web3 asks the same: → Flat governance → Community courts → Code is law, but law is collective
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5/ “Architecture should flow. It should move people. Not just physically, but emotionally.” Erickson softened brutalism. He added light, water, rhythm. Web3 must do the same: → Human-centric UX → Emotional interfaces → Ritual, not just protocol
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3/ Erickson’s Simon Fraser University wasn’t built to impress, it was built to include with concrete terraces open to sky and student. That’s the Web3 spirit: → Permissionless access → Decentralized knowledge → No elites, just nodes (supposedly)
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4/ “The site is the beginning of the building. Its orientation, its climate, the quality of its light.” Erickson didn’t impose form he co-created with the land. Web3, too, must build in context: → With communities → With culture → With respect for digital terrain
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2/ “Architecture, as in life, is not a question of the obvious but the mysterious.” -Arthur Erickson Brutalism embraced the mystery of structure. Concrete left exposed, no lies, no façades. Web3 is similar: → Transparent code → Public ledgers
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1/ Brutalism wasn’t just a style, it was an ideology. Raw and deeply idealistic. Arthur Erickson, Canada’s concrete poet, believed in designing for people, not power. While I’m currently admiring Ericksons work, let’s talk about how brutalism and Web3 speak a similar language..
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What brutalist architecture can teach us about web3 (featuring Vancouver architect Arthur Erickson) ⬇️🧵:
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