If cities are living entities, each passing through phases of growth toward some kind of mature identity, then Vancouver is now in its gawky adolescence: often too self-conscious, too easily lured by flash, bulking up awkwardly and at a rate certain to shock anyone who returns to it after even a brief time away. This period, says Helena Grdadolnik, an architectural critic and writer who teaches design history at Emily Carr Institute, represents a crossroads for the city.

"We've already been developing at such a rapid pace, and it's just going to get a lot faster, especially with some of these large events that we're going to be hosting-the United Nations World Urban Forum next year, and then the Olympics in 2010," she observes when reached at her office by the Straight. "And so this really is a pivotal time to make sure that people stop and think…[and] start to evaluate different ways to make the urban fabric in this city. We're doing so much of this kind of cookie-cutter condo-building on top of storefronts and townhouses. Maybe we can think of other ways to do it, especially in unique areas of the city like Gastown and Chinatown. Maybe there are other ways to densify the neighbourhoods, or to make these positive spaces for everyone in the neighbourhood, not just for a small demographic."

Grdadolnik is one of the founders of Space Agency, a group allied to the Vancouver League for Studies in Architecture and the Environment, the nonprofit organization that has been sponsoring free local lectures on architecture for the last couple of decades. SpaceAgency's young, ambitious members, however, are committed to moving discussion of our built environment out of conference rooms and into the streets. And their first plan of action goes into effect tonight (August 18) with the opening of FrontierSpace, a three-day public event featuring a large, witty, and uncanny outdoor installation in Gastown's Trounce Alley, a half block south of the steam clock (off Cambie Street near Water Street).

The installation itself, a work by Japanese architects Satoshi Matsuoka and Yuki Tamura entitled Balloon Caught, is composed of nine enormous translucent balloons (the largest of them about six metres across) wedged into the alley's tight quarters and illuminated from within. This blend of levity and simple elegance won over a jury of architects, critics, and academics convened by SpaceAgency last spring to evaluate a set of 38 competing proposals for the Trounce Alley space submitted by designers not only from Canada and Japan but also France, Chile, and the U.S. The effect, Grdadolnik hopes, will awaken Vancouverites of all stripes to the vast but long-forgotten potential of this city's oldest back streets.

"What the jury found in the winning entry," she explains, "was that instead of trying to impose another space on the alley, the balloons themselves make it seem narrower and tighter, and highlight its interesting features. And balloons are also very festive-they make a party atmosphere. And so this isn't something that's esoteric and difficult….We didn't want something that would be inaccessible to the general public. The alley itself isn't going to be masked by this installation; it will really be heightened and elevated by it. By getting people into the area, they can start to see that the alley, once it's cleaned up and the garbage bins are removed, is actually an exciting space to be in."

Highest among SpaceAgency's goals is attracting as large a cross-section of citizens as possible to this experience. That's why the group has enlisted the support not only of the Gastown Business Improvement Society but also the Downtown Eastside's Portland Hotel Society. It's also why the three days of FrontierSpace include a beer garden on opening night (from 7 to 10 p.m.), as well as a family event at 11 a.m. on Saturday (August 20), featuring stilt performers Mortal Coil. (Visit www.spaceagency.ca/ for the complete schedule.) The mix is intended to reflect Gastown's unique position as an intersection of Vancouver's financial district and the Downtown Eastside. And it is crucial, Grdadolnik claims, to repopulating the neighbourhood's neglected byways, a project that means reviving built heritage rather than coating its surfaces in a protective gloss.

"With the development that's been going on so quickly in Vancouver, we're hoping that people don't forget what makes a city interesting-these moments of public space, these moments of various people in the neighbourhood coming together," Grdadolnik says. "We don't want historic buildings to be only about keeping the façades and making the rest completely irrelevant to the initial design. We have to make sure that we're not preserving something as a museum would-that we're preserving the actual, initial intent as well….All those buildings on Blood Alley have street addresses from when they were built in the late 1800s. They were supposed to be front doors. Now it's just being used for secondary access, totally given over to parking and garbage and nothing else. And we're trying to show that these alley spaces could be a new frontier for urban occupation in the city, for people to use them in a different way."

If Balloon Caught's spirit is as expansive and illuminating as its physical presence, and if FrontierSpace helps us to reimagine the places where Vancouver was born and began to grow, then perhaps our city will have taken an important step toward adulthood. After all, only awkward adolescents view the past as something to be abandoned.