Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind.
Construction has been the backdrop to the entire period of my work life at UBC. The path from where I have lived on campus to my office in the Anthropology and Sociology Building has altered over the years but the likelihood of coming across a big hole in the road, some construction hoarding, or pieces of heavy equipment being unloaded has remained constant over this time.
The process is a constant. The landscape constantly changes. As soon as one build completes another begins and a third is being drafted. Most of the documentation of this process focuses on the plans of what is to come or highlights how what has been done is exemplary in some fashion. Left unstoried are the excavations and trenches of construction - the holes that are a ubiquitous feature of our innovative campus physical plant.
Over the years I’ve accumulated a storyboard of photos of trenches. This story samples the past decade of photos. Here I try to bring into view the aesthetics of campus trenches. For many these are sites of disruption and obstruction. I choose to see the beauty in them. I see the labour and expertise of the people who dig and plan them. They are also permanent fixtures on our landscape, even as these holes and trenches are individually temporary and transient.
Navigating Round the Cairn
The engineering cairn is a fixture on campus -literally and figuratively. In material terms it is so well placed in the ground that campus and community planning had to design the new hot water distribution system around the cairn. At the time I asked how much it cost to build around, rather than remove, the cairn. No answer was provided.
Trenching Binning Road through the trees
As part of a series of land use plan changes to save the UBC Farm, increased density was placed on the eastern edge of Wesbrook Place along Binning Road. To facilitate the increased density a one way exit onto 16th Avenue was created. This required approval from the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure (MoTI).
The strip of trees along 16th Avenue from Binning Road to Wesbrook Boulevard were original planned to be logged. Community pushback in the early 2000s managed to hold the line of trees in place. The extension of Binning Road from Berton Avenue to 16th Avenue cut through this thin forest grove to provide an outlet for increased car traffic anticipated by the development of a wall of 14-18 story highrise apartment towers.
Agronomy Road
The Agronomy Road trench was part of the new hot water distribution project. This view (westward) predates the construction of Orchard Commons (noticeably absent from view).
Integrity in Pink Excavator
The pink ‘integrity’ excavators that were part of the 2022 site preparation for the new recreation facility added a splash of difference in field dominated by caution yellow machines. A worker on the field wasn’t sure why the machines were painted pink; one observer suggested it was part of an anti-breast cancer campaign fundraiser. I couldn’t confirm, but the use of pink in the construction industry does trend toward that conclusion (see also).
From walkway to trench (and back?)
This trench at the Bioenergy Research Demonstration Facility temporarily replaces what was a short interpretive path. This trench is for pipes connecting to a new ‘economizer’ which essentially recovers waste heat from the flue and recirculates it into the system thereby saving energy that would otherwise be expelled.
Cut to Cover
Even though the work of, and in, trenches gets buried and covered over traces remain behind. I know many folks (family and friends among them) who work in the construction trades who take pictures of their work. It becomes a form of documenting their creations and accomplishments. As I walk across campus these places remind me of the wider world I am connected to, people I know and care about, people who have spent their lives building our world.
The pink excavators were a surprising sight. Nice post.
I've been at UBC on and off since 2002. I didn't notice as much construction until after the global financial crisis of 2008. In general I've found it to be excessive, but from a position of relative naiveté. I suspect you've been much more prescient of the pace of construction over the years, but for a few years from 2010 or so I used to joke that at some point a building would be totally surrounded by construction because it was so prevalent. Anyway, it's all been a part of me coming to understand some aspects colonisation, and I really appreciate your writing here to that end. Thanks.