Early on in the development of St. Patrick’s Island Park just beyond downtown Calgary, community members told its designers at W Architecture and Landscape Architecture and Civitas that they wanted a park that was both wild and accessible, a place to play and learn. This short video by Civitas offers commentary from Barbara Wilks, FASLA, and Mark Johnson, FASLA, and gives viewers a first-person view of what this naturalistic sense of experimentation looks and feels like, with requisite drone shots and GoPro-enabled immersion. Designed to flood, and surrounded on all sides by the Bow River, the park has permeable borders that let in the water and city life beyond.
Posts Tagged ‘Calgary’
NO PLAN IS AN ISLAND
Posted in CITIES, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, FEATURES, HABITAT, PARKS, PLANNING, PLANTS, PRESERVATION, REAL ESTATE, RESIDENTIAL, RESILIENCE, RIVER RESTORATION, SOIL, SPECIES, THE CLIENT, WATER, WILDLIFE, tagged Aboriginal, Alberta, anglers, Barbara Wilks, beavers, benches, Blackfoot Confederacy, Boardwalk, Bow River, breach, Brian Barth, bridge, Calgary, Calgary Drop-In Centre, Calgary Municipal Land Corporation, Canada, Canadian prairie, Civitas, Clare LePan, community revitalization levy, concrete, Cottonwoods, development, Diana Krecsy, displacement, East Village, erosion control, fire truck access road, flooding, food trucks, gallery forest, gentrification, great horned owl, habitat, homeless, housing, Huckleberry Finn, Hula-Hoop, Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park, kayakers, lamppost, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, maintenance, Makhabn, Mark Johnson, Michael Brown, National Post, natives, osprey, Park, pavilion, Philadelphia, playground, plaza, Race Street Pier, rafters, recreation, RESILIENCE, riparian woodland, riprap, river birch, river channels, Rocky Mountain, sculpture, shrubs, spring melt season, St. Patrick's Island, Tampa, tax increment financing, urban explorers, W Architecture and Landscape Architecture, wetland, wildflower, willow on January 14, 2020| 1 Comment »
BY BRIAN BARTH
A flood-friendly park re-creates a resilient landscape in Calgary’s Bow River.
FROM THE JANUARY 2020 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.
In the summer of 2013, catastrophic flooding in southern Alberta killed five people and forced 100,000 to evacuate. With $6 billion in property damage, it was one of the costliest natural disasters in Canadian history. The swollen Bow River, which flows from glacial headwaters in the Rockies to Calgary, left much of the city’s urban core underwater. The inundated area included St. Patrick’s Island, one of several islands in the downtown stretch of the river, where Barbara Wilks, FASLA, and Mark Johnson, FASLA, had just kicked off construction on a new 31-acre park. A new pedestrian bridge to the island, which was partially built at the time, suffered significant damage. But for the park itself, Wilks and Johnson—the founders of W Architecture and Landscape Architecture and Civitas, respectively—say the floodwaters provided positive reinforcement of their design.
This was not the initial reaction, however, of the folks at the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation (CMLC), their client.
“Our client called and said, ‘Oh, God, you have to get up here; we’re going to have to change the design,’” said Johnson as he, Wilks, and I strolled across the bridge to the completed park on a clear spring day.
“The whole island flooded!’” Wilks recalled members of the CMLC team saying in an urgent and distressed call. “We said, ‘It’s going to be fine; there’s nothing to change. We designed it to flood—this is what’s supposed to happen.’” (more…)
LAMCAST: ST. PATRICK’S ISLAND PARK
Posted in CITIES, COMPETITIONS, ONLINE ONLY, PARKS, tagged bike-cam, Calgary, Canada, Civitas, ecosystem, LAMcast, Park, redesign, restoration, St. Patrick's Island, W Architecture & Landscape Architecture on February 18, 2016| Leave a Comment »
After two years of construction, St. Patrick’s Island Park in Calgary, Canada, by Civitas and W Architecture & Landscape Architecture, recently opened to the public. In these two short videos by Civitas, some of the project designers talk about the main components of the project, such as a tall hill called the Rise that opens views of downtown Calgary and doubles as a giant sledding hill in the winter, and why they are so important to creating the island oasis at the heart of the city. A large path, called the Transect, cuts across the island through four different ecosystems, creating a strong architectural element in the design, and acts as the stage for a bike-cam spin through the park in the second video. For more information, please visit here.
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ILLUMINATION BLUES
Posted in MATERIALS, NOW, STREETS, tagged blue, Calgary, Canada, cancer, Civitas, Clanton & Associates Lighting Design, Denver, design, LED, light, lighting, Linnaea Tillett, luminaires, Mark Johnson, melatonin, Nancy Clandon, National Cancer Institute, red, serotonin, St. Patrick's Island, Tillett Lighting Design, Timothy A. Schuler, W Architecture & Landscape Architecture on July 14, 2015| 1 Comment »
BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER
The coming conflict between two separate environmental issues.
From the July 2015 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine.
Correction appended March 2, 2015.
People often equate energy efficiency with environmental sensitivity, but a recent trend in LED lighting, namely, the uptick in what’s known as blue-rich white light, has the potential to divorce these goals and put the lighting industry on a collision course with those aiming to design healthful public spaces.
Over the past several years, an increasing number of LED manufacturers are turning to blue-emitting diodes, which are coated with phosphor to produce a clean, white light. Blue LEDs can handle higher-than-average power densities, which greatly increase efficiency. The technology is so revolutionary that the physicists who developed it received the Nobel Prize. But blue LEDs also pose a threat to the welfare of wildlife and human beings.
Light in the blue spectrum (between 460 and 480 nanometers) isn’t bad during the day; in fact, it helps our bodies produce the hormone serotonin. At night, however, it prevents our bodies from producing another hormone, melatonin, which regulates sleep. According to the National Cancer Institute, a lack of melatonin may contribute to breast cancer in women. Blue light also has been shown to disrupt animals’ circadian rhythms, which mimic our own, and cause adverse effects in animal behavior. (more…)
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