Arpent
A unit of length and area, equal to about 192 English feet or about 58.47 meters, and characterizes land divisions by French settlers along navigable rivers and streams that are long and narrow.
Abstracting the Vision
Flow and shelter are integral elements within the complex series of exchanges that make up any ecosystem. They conjure associated terms like dispersal and collection, and diffusion and concentration, extremes essential to conceptual thinking about circulation, built form, or even ecological infrastructure. Additional words such as backbone and village introduce a dynamic between varying densities and invite broader references. Flow and shelter, are therefore well suited as design constructs within Southwood, as well as the larger context of the University, the adjacent neighborhoods, and links beyond. The foundation for this approach is largely and unequivocally that of landscape architecture, in its capacity to integrate concepts and ideas from many fields of thought.
This design's conception is not only for a set of forms, but a system of exchanges and dependencies that is a template for life, as a hierarchy that promotes stability and growth. This exercise required an interpretation of the present state of the campus and beyond, followed by an intellectual discussion on its future thinking of all precincts as a connected network of spaces linked by corridors of green that draw reference from the natural history of the site and the Red River. Plainly stated, we believe the mandate required a frank assessment of the campus from the point of view of the portfolio of buildings, plantings and the collection of trees, pedestrian and vehicular circulation, as well as the traces of a historic master plan, and intervening planning missteps. In the presence of a new adjoining landscape, we see this not only as a highly promising departure point, but as a highly influential life force on all the precincts. What we propose is an ecologically thoughtful, community-based urban design strategy that is grounded in the reality of the site and that embraces the inherent environmental conditions that have made the people of Winnipeg so resilient and pragmatic.
(From competitor's text)
The project promotes the most appropriate, robust, and promising long-term strategy for the re-generation of the site. It successfully proposes to maintain and strengthen the qualities of the existing Core Campus understood as the heart of any future development. The project manages to re-frame the stadium as an object embedded in a park that follows and reinforces existing site conditions. The scheme suggests a pattern that combines both landscape and urban elements, which establish strong visual and spatial connections to the river a form of landscape-urbanism that neither follows the structure of typical downtown developments nor of mono-functional suburban neighbourhoods.
Promoted instead is a place of living in the prairie
The Southwood district is based on a rhythm of dense and open zones, defining open edges on Pembina Highway and along the Red River a striation of fields traversing a central green. The building sites are carefully conceived as filters in the East-West direction. Similarly, connections are established between the small-scale development to the North and the Core Campus to the South.
High value is given to a variety of well-designed places and open spaces, with great attention given to proposed uses and the articulation of boundaries. The park successfully creates an open field that provides a counterpart to the large-scale object of the stadium. The smaller spaces between the buildings in the Southwood district serve a series of functions, including nature preservation, educational uses, and recreational areas. Smart Park receives a new identity through a green axis and an open water canal.
The Southwood plan offers what the Core Campus does not have a place to live and interact with nature. Consequently the scheme proposes a densification of the existing Core Campus and a dense urban framework for Smart Park. The insertions within the Core Campus strengthen the role of the university as the central urban nucleus of the site, articulating its edges and defining clear transitions to adjacent precincts.
(From jury report)
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