Call for Ideas - Lost Spaces Competition

Here is a really interesting competition coming up:

Design Talks Institute (d.talks), a design advocacy organization, in collaboration with WATERSHED+, a part of the City of Calgary’s Utilities & Environmental Protection Public Art program, aim to address a particular challenge of public space--what to do with seemingly remnant pieces of public property.

The Lost Spaces design competition asks professionals and students in the fields of art, architecture, design, and engineering to respond to the diverse challenges of design, social sustainability, and low impact design improvements. The ideas competition aims to explore alternatives improving the use, public realm and ecological value of a lost space. 

A ‘lost space’ is any space that remains underutilized within our urban environment. They might be leftover pieces, a ghost of the planning past. Lost spaces are part of the public realm, rarely designed to function with both social and environmental benefit to the city.
You may consider a lost space as a passageway, a roundabout, space between two buildings, a highway shoulder, or tenants of the city's history and memory.


Dates:
January 5th, 2015 - Registration opens
March 20th, 2015 - Registration and questions deadline
March 30th, 2015 - Submission due (23:59 MDT)
April 29th, 2015 - Winners announced

Awards:1st Prize: $7,500 CAD
Five field prizes: $3,000 CAD each  Fields include: Water Services, Roads and Transportation, Parks, Planning, and Public Art.
shortlist renumeration fee (up to six awarded): $1,000 CAD each

The JurySusan Szenasy, Editor in Chief, Metropolis Magazine
Shane Coen, Principal, Coen + Partners Landscape Architecture
Pierre Thibault, Principal, Atelier Pierre Thibault Architecture
Shauna Thompson, Curator, The Esker Foundation
Diana Sherlock, Independent Curator

produced by: d.talks
supported by: WATERSHED+ and The City of Calgary
more info: http://www.dtalks.org/call-for-ideas
to register: hello@dtalks.org

The Distance Between Us

The Distance Between Us will be in the next Cahiers intempestifs: Des hommes de caractères, Chronicling the life and work of the great men in Typography. The Cahiers are beautiful publications and we are delighted to be included in this edition. The Cahiers Intempestifs are published in french in limited additions, they can be ordered here - we will be sure to re post once it’s published.

ACAD Panel Discussion

A big thanks to ACAD and the Illingworth Kerr Gallery for inviting us to be part of the Panel Discussion following Jørn Mortensen’s fabulous talk on the 31st of March. It is timely conversation to be had and we found the discussion thought provoking and enjoyable.

This week's talks

The first one is the Watershed+ artist in residence Rachel Duckhouse who will be talking about her work with the City of Calgary's Watershed + program. She will be joined for the talk by Twyla Hutchison, a Water Resources Engineer with Infrastructure Planning at the City of Calgary. Twyla is involved with river monitoring and forecasting, emergency response planning, design of erosion control and emergency mitigation as well as other development in the river valley. Together they will talk about Rachel’s work, data representation, collaboration between engineers and artists and complementarities of disciplines.

Date: Thursday, October 24
Time: 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Location: Faculty of Environmental Design
Kasian Gallery, Room 2145
Professional Faculties building, University of Calgary
2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, AB, T2N 1N4

For the other talk we are very pleased to welcome Kevin Robert Perry from Urban Rain|Design for his first public presentation in Calgary. We first came across his work in a post in Pruned. Kevin will present his approach to green infrastructure visioning and planning developed through experience at the City of Portland’s Sustainable Stormwater Program. His innovative techniques to retrofit the urban fabric with sustainable stormwater management uses the landscape to not only manage stormwater, but to also create highly successful urban spaces.
RSVP to charles.blanc@calgary.ca

Date: Friday 25th October
Time:: Coffee and pastries from 7.30, talk from 8 till 8.45 AM
Location: Bow Room @ the Water Centre
625 25 Ave SE, Calgary, Alberta T2G 4K8

And whilst we're in Scotland we've also been invited by the exciting Velocity to do a presentation at the Lighthouse on our recent projects and our current work in Calgary, Watershed+, about the innovative integration of artists and creative practice in the City's departments.


VELOCITY presents a series of regular talks and conversations inviting international, UK and Scottish speakers to address issues arising from the VELOCITY programme. The events also offer networking opportunities for VELOCITY stakeholders: professionals working in city planning and urban regeneration, creative practitioners, artists, architects, designers, producers and arts professionals.

Worcester Orchard developments

As well as the Bristol Promenade, the University Orchard in Worcester is getting near completion.
In this first phase of the works, the hard landscaping is pretty much finished and the seeding is taking place. The orchard terraces are now clearly visible, now just waiting for the tree planting at the next planting season.

Bristol promenade

After a few developments, our project for the end of the Brunel Mile in Britol is near completion!

It started life as an exploration of spaces and planes defining a public space, and later morphed into a design responding more precisely to the particular man-made conditions to create a landscape specific to the space.

The final design is a boardwalk promenade space along a meadowy landscape fed by the runoff rainwater from the adjacent building. In collaboration with Cullinan Studio Architects and Grants Associates the journey of the rainwater is celebrated with the visible drain pipes, collection dishes and open rills distributing the water onto the grassland slope.
The different growing conditions (slope, orientation, rainwater runoff) are highlighted by the use of a variety of biodiversity and habitats (grasses, damp grassland, marginal vegetation and woodland groundcover). Combined with these conditions the experience of the harbour side (ruderal plants and riparian habitat) is drawn up into the Promenade.



This project was commissioned by Crest Nicholson Regeneration as part of the Harbourside development.

Worcester Orchard

Last week we were in Worcester visiting our project for the University which is under construction. Over the last year we worked with BCA Landscape architects to realise this project, a public orchard in the heart of Worcester. The works are well under way and the land is taking shape nicely, exciting!

Here are a few shots from the day.

A day at the square

We're finishing the last details on an event we're setting up in Finsbury Park (London) on Saturday.
A day in the Square will take place on a purpose built platform at the heart of the main public space in Six Acres. The platform will be in place for just 12 hours, hosting a changing program of free events: talks, screenings, demonstrations, food... The event will directly inform the permanent work we'll be designing for this place, activating the space and engaging people, testing possibilities.

A day in the Square serves as an introduction, a discussion, an experiment, a learning exercise to understand uses and users, and sets the tone of the permanent works to come. This day-long event will celebrate the future of the space and become a pre launch for this public space.

This event is part of The Secret garden Project by Up Projects commissioned by One Housing Group in partnership with Islington Council

Hydrant fountains in action

The fountains were installed on the river front in Calgary for Canada Day last week-end, and people were trying them even before we finished installing them! And this week end the Stampede and Water Services have been working together to get them installed this morning on Stampede grounds, more pictures soon.

In the mean time here are a few pictures from last week end:

Fire Hydrant Fountains

The fabrication shop have been working hard and have been fantastic at making this project happen, they finished the three different fountains and they're almost ready to be put in place for Canada Day this week end. Here's a sneak preview of the two other designs and the first one - "strangers" or the "dating fountain" - being used this morning for a TV interview.

More pictures of them in use next week.

W+ residency call

We just released a call for the artist residency with Watershed+: www.watershedplus.ca/residency/res-call01.pdf Feel free to share it widely! Looking forward to reading through the applications.

Hydrant drinking fountain

First trial of the "strangers" fountain today in front of the water center. The fabrication team did a grand job and it's looking very nice.
The fabrication for the 2 other fountains is now starting, looking forward to see the developments.

watershed+ developments

Finally some updates.
The organisation and the setting up of the first Watershed+ initiatives is keeping us busy. From the initial 10 "deliverables", we now have about 25, which is very exciting but takes time.


The bowls for the fountains have arrived today.

The first of these initiatives to become live is the temporary fountains. We've been working with the UEP Public Art Program and the City's metal fabrication team to develop some fountains that can be fixed onto fire hydrants for festivals and other events. Temporary fountains attached to fire hydrant are a fairly common practice in North America, but often limited to a very functional set up and/or as a bilboard for messaging. For Watershed+ the fountains design became an opportunity to play with their social role as gathering spaces and expressing the invisble systems underground. We've designed 3 different fountains which should be ready for Canada day, 1st July. More soon and we'll post pictures as they get built.

We're also having a blog/documentation/source site being developed for W+ which should be ready before the end of the month. In the mean time you can have a look at our daily picture on watershedplus.tumblr.

Strip appeal

Just before we left for the festive season, we went up to Edmonton to be part of the jury for Strip appeal (http://www.strip-appeal.com/).
Strip Appeal is an ideas design competition, and traveling exhibit, intended to stimulate and showcase creative design proposals for the adaptive reuse of small-scale strip-malls.
The jury was really interesting with some great discussions on the short listed entries. You can have a look at them on http://www.strip-appeal.com/, with a public vote active until Jan 9. The winners of the jury vote and the public vote will be announced on Jan. 16.

Charmouth bridge opening

Yesterday we went to Charmouth, for the opening of the footbridge we designed with the Dorset County Council engineers.
In this beautiful location on the World Heritage Site of the Jurassic coast and the South West Coastal Path the intention was from the beginning not to create a bridge that would become a focal point but to create a place that would enhance the experience of crossing the river and become a viewing point for this landscape. The result is in keeping with the scale of the previous bridge but bows towards the sea and widens in its centre, creating an overhanging balcony over the river, almost a public space in the middle of the bridge.

It has been a really productive collaboration with the design team from day one, and yesterday was a great pleasure to see so many people enjoying the bridge.