The topic of the research is "Understanding Vancouver's Inner City Housing: An Adventure in Multifaceted Post-Occupancy Evaluation." In the first term, fifteen students developed methods to be used to evaluate housing in Vancouver's inner city False Creek North neighbourhoods.

My participation in this project was generously funded by two Vancouver developers: Concord Pacific Developments (see www.concordpacific.com) and Hillside Developments (see www.hillside.ca).

The project is now complete and all findings have been published. For the short report, please go to Gordon Price's, "Price Tags", Issue 104, June 2008: http://pricetags.wordpress.com/2008/06/30/price-tags-104-false-creek-north/
For a copy of the full evaluation report, please contact me: wendy@sarkissian.com.au

Summer intensive
A highly successful summer intensive in Vancouver in June focused on the parks, plazas, playgrounds and other public spaces in False Creek North, as well as lessons learned from the earlier development of False Creek South. In this work I was assisted by several generous colleagues, including planner and criminologist, Greg Saville, of Alternation Consulting (www.alternation.ca) and Adjunct Professor, University of New Haven Other lecturers included post-occupancy evaluation specialist, Professor Jacqueline Vischer, Professeure titulaire, Groupe de recherche sur les environnements de travail at the University of Montréal (see www.gret.umontreal.ca), Vancouver-based architect-planner David Ellis and Pieter Rutgers of the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation (see www.vancouver.ca/parks). In the third term, which began in September 2007, my students began conducting evaluations of components of the housing developments. This research is continuing into 2008 under Larry Beasley’s direction.

Our new house and office are currently under construction: foundations poured, sub-floor constructed, most of the roof on, a huge 4-metre wide verandah built, two gigantic rainwater tanks and a Biolytix water management tank delivered. The wall frames and wall and bracing are up, decking completed, flooring down in some rooms and some windows and doors installed. We are waiting for the rain to stop so that the box gutter and the rest of the roof can go on. Karl, fortunately an experienced welder-boilermaker, is currently welding the under-floor bracing and brackets for the box gutter. We hope to move in by mid-2009.