Mislabeled Goods: Panache

Anyone who lives in Edmonton, or has spent any time here, or has seen any pictures of the city, can probably surmise that the quality of our city's architecture leaves something to be desired. A singularly profit-driven land development industry with a seeming obsession with mediocrity and a generally apathetic public have for years danced in a gruesome waltz, and our municipal government has done very little to stop them. As a result, we live in a city where uninspiring, bland, and many times out-and-out horrific buildings are not even tolerated so much as they are accepted as a matter of course.

Although not as apparent when nobody was building anything, this phenomenon has become painfully visible during the recent building boom. The fringes of our city have swelled with row upon faceless row of stucco- and vinyl-clad "communities" while condominium towers designed to do exactly nothing aside from maximize developer profit mushroom in the city's core. Although there is the occasional spot of good, it's generally overwhelmed by a torrent of bad -- which is, on occasion, so awful or ridiculous that one can only find it humorous.

Which brings me to the focus of this post (which will be the first on an ongoing series): the often hilarious incongruity between a condo development's marketing campaign and its built reality. This can take many forms -- the condo below, for example, was described by its developer as "very metropolitan as far as the styling... almost like you'd be living in downtown New York" -- but this series will focus specifically on names. I've never been entirely clear on why condominium and apartment buildings were given names, but I'm certainly glad that they are, as the vast chasm between the image these names evoke and the turd they're nailed onto are often a project's only bright spot.

So, without further adieu, I give you the first building in the Mislabeled Goods series: Panache.

Seen a condo or apartment building with a ridiculously inappropriate name? Click the "email us" link in the left sidebar and tell us about it.

Comments

[Conan Oberon]

Great idea for a series. It's about time someone starts to point out the obvious - Edmonton is hideous outside of the core and Old Strathcona.

Edmontonians are like non-smokers were in the eighties - so immersed in toxicity that we don't even notice anymore. What is an architectural crime to a European or even a Vancouverite is just another strip mall/power center to an Edmontonian. "Look, a new 7-11, good stuff. That asphalt sure looks pretty."

Panache. Hilarious.

[One Alberta Voter]

Great stuff, AGRDT.

My favourite in this vein is the suburban developer who plows under a meadow with a brook in it and builds a bland series of cookie-cutter houses called, of course, "Meadowbrook Way" or some such thing.

Keep 'em coming.

[arinn]

HAHA, hilarious! The outskirts of Edmonton are sooooo bland. Er, I mean, New Yorky. Yeah.