Using art to build bridges

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This article was published 12/02/2018 (3154 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A temporary feature on the Assiniboine River is prompting the community to think about what life with a permanent connection between the north and south banks could hold for the future.

The faculty of architecture at the University of Manitoba has collaborated with the City of Winnipeg to create a warming hut on the Red River Mutual Trail at the approximate site of a proposed pedestrian-cycle bridge between McFadyen and Fort Rouge Parks.

Pontagon is a collection of five warming huts straddling the skating trail. The huts are constructed from wood and dichroic filter, a translucent material that both reflects and filters light in a range of colours, and arranged to simulate a pathway between the two parks.

Eduardo Aquino, an associate professor of architecture at the U of M and one of four project leads, said the colourful huts are an invitation for the community to come to the river and participate in the discussion of what a bridge might offer the neighbourhood.

“As you move through the space, in and outside the warming huts, the colours change according to your relative position to that object,” Aquino explained. “Because engagement and participation was part of the project, the dichroic film is a phenomenological way of indicating that the individual’s position relative to the structure is important and specific, which connects metaphorically with what the city is asking: what’s your opinion?”

Over 50 people were involved in the creation and installation of Pontagon, including about 40 students from the U of M. This is the eighth year the faculty has built a hut on the river. Aquino said the project, which took about two weeks from conception to completion, gave students the chance to participate in a full client-based architectural cycle.

“It’s a very complex process because we know we have the responsibility to deliver a design project at high level with the shortest period of time,” Aquino said. “The four of us, myself and professor Terri Fuglem, Liane Veness, and Chad Connery, we have a lot of experience in collaborative processes, so our job is to conduct the whole process to allow the students to unfold their ideas into the best possible way.”

“It’s a nerve wracking process but it’s a process that we absolutely trust.”

Damir Muhurdarevic, the City of Winnipeg’s project manager for the Osborne-Downtown connection study, said the huts will bolster an already successful public engagement process.

Muhurdarevic said over 1,000 online surveys have already been completed by the public and over 100 people attended a workshop on the bridge project in January. On March 1, the City will host a pop-up event on the Assiniboine between 5 and 7 p.m. with U of M students and the City team available to answer questions about the project.

“I think it’s a very unique approach. We’ve never done anything like it and it was a good opportunity because the students were doing the warming hut anyway,” Muhurdarevic said.

“The number of people that pass through the skating trail over the winter is up to a million people, so it’s great exposure for the City, to get people who aren’t necessarily going to the website or wouldn’t know about the project,” he said.

Pontagon not only intends to get people thinking about the future bridge project, Aquino added, but also reinforces that architecture can be about building culture and community, and not just money and materials.

“So what happens with projects like the warming huts, we can bring back the focus of architecture as experience, architecture as poetry, architecture as art, and all those values that the industry tends to put down,” he said. “It’s not only to respond to the ambitions of the City… but it’s a way of recuperating the planning and artistic role of architecture in our society.”

The City’s public engagement process and the preliminary design study will wrap up this summer. More information is available at winnipeg.ca