The Globe and Mail

Shoal Point is named for the underwater rocks that guard the entrance to Victoria's Inner Habour. A new Shoal Point — the huge, and hugely-flaky 141-unit condo development of that name — now stands sentinel there, the latest in a series of bad designs that have come to disfigure one of Canada's most scenic cityscapes. This is one shipwreck of housing development. There is, however, some glory in so eccentric a wreck as this. Lifting a number of its ocean and shore fauna motifs from the Vancouver Marine Building's Art Deco embellishments, the $110-million Shoal Point boasts the most lavish integration of representational sculpture into the architecture of a Canadian condo tower. Shoal Point's entranceways, cornices, window surrounds, garden walkway lights, and even bathroom exhaust vents are encrusted with marine-themed concrete casts, each of them mass-produced from Victorian Derek Rowe's clay originals.