THE COMPETITION
URB PRK is an organization working with The Emerging Young Architecture + Planning Program (EYAPP) to create sustainable parks as means of revitalizing the urban space along the Whyte Ave corridor in Edmonton, Alberta. 2016 was the first year of the competition and it was sponsored by Café Mosaics, a local vegetarian/vegan restaurant dedicated to using fresh locally sourced produce and herbs. The ultimate intent of URB PRK is to host yearly competitions across Whyte Ave to reimagine a sustainable cityscape.
URB PRK 2016 called for teams of up to 4 people, mostly composed of students or interns in architecture, landscape architecture, or urban planning. The proposal called to design a space on two parallel parking stalls in front of the café that would provide the public with seating, shade, bicycle parking, usable space for buskers, pet-friendly consideration, durability and meet a design-build budget of $2000CAD.
Barn(E) was designed to incorporate the required criteria and include large community organizations into its essence. Among the six proposals, Barn(E) was selected as the winning design by a jury consisting local architects, urban planners, representatives of the City of Edmonton and Café Mosaics, as well as a public poll.
THE CONCEPT
Many argue that Urbanism is dead, and for the majority of North America this holds true. Our infrastructure puts people on the sidelines in an automobile-dominated society. This mentality generates ‘lost space’ in our urban fabric, spaces which serve a purpose but can be reimagined to serve the pedestrian better. We have become lazy in fact. Parking stalls are barriers along commercial corridors that exist for this reason, but they also generate a situation where the activity of the street is shielded away from wandering eyes. There is no reason why these spaces cannot be reclaimed by the public to revitalize the street front providing public space and introducing economic growth at the same time. Certainly, there is balance in this, but right now the fight is for a foothold to draw attention and educate the public about the problem which exists before their eyes.
THE BARN
Barn(E)’s foundation stemmed from the idea of sustainable design. While searching for materials, the Archisaurus team came across the 90-year-old barn, located by Hay Lakes, Alberta. The barn had already been scheduled for demolition due to its decrepit state;the team saw an opportunity to repurpose the wood to provide added life and share its rich rural Alberta heritage with the general public.
THE DESIGN
In the first analysis in determining the problem for the project concerning the site, Archisaurus looked at the various qualities including the typical site lines, local businesses that could be incorporated, adjacent streetscape, precipitation and sun paths during the months of the installation. However, the elephant in the room could not be ignored. With an annual weekday traffic average of 29,000 vehicles along Whyte Ave (2014 statistics), there is a significant amount of noise that is generated by vehicles in the direct vicinity of the site. Noise produced by Automobiles has an adverse influence on the amount of pedestrian activity that takes place on the street.
Addressing this problem guided the team to find the form for the parklet. The design needed to create a sound barrier between the road and the street. The desire was to improve the quality of sound for the café and its exterior seating and the music generated by the buskers. However, this created an additional challenge. A barrier would solve the issues related to sound but would substantially eliminate sight lines between the north and south side of the street. Having repurposed aged barn wood as the primary material for the project, a series of static angulating louvres & slits were proposed to maintain sight lines. Located on the exterior & interior along the Whyte Ave, the Louvers would serve multiple functions including redirecting automobile traffic back to the road, containing & directing café and busker soundscape onto the street, and providing views in and out of the parklet.
The thought process for the overall form is the manipulation of the material to create a mini Amphitheatre for which frames the busker area using the active street & natural vegetation. To a dynamic texture to the parklet, the walls are framed with LED lights that are powered by an electric pedal bike giving the park an alternate character during the night from the daytime. The combination of techniques used through the design is all targeted to create a space which brings the community together.
THE ELECTRIC BIKE
With the design meeting all the criteria of the competition, the question that stood out was what would bring people into this space. After a few discussions, the most intriguing idea that followed the theme of sustainability was an electric bike. After contacting a few local bike stores, the Edmonton Bicycle Commuters Society pointed us in the direction of one of their volunteers, Jan Przysiezniak owner of Jelly Parrot Trashcrafts. After explaining the competition, Jan opted to help build a wooden electric bicycle to be mounted into the installation. Jan’s philosophy toward the projects revolves around the notion of adaptive reuse. Parts used for the assembly all had different purposes at one time or another and were given new life.
THE PLANTS
There were two planter sections implemented in the parklet’s design, meant to hold native Alberta plants to bring life into the space and compliment the barn wood by harking back to the region’s prairie heritage. After contacting many local plant and flower shops, the team received an incredible response from the Edmonton Native Plant Group. They had generously offered to lend a few plants and flowers for the project, while also maintaining them throughout the summer.
THE BUILD
With a one month construction period and a single day to install the parklet on site, it had to be built in an efficient manner that could be easily relocated. The structure was built off-site on an acreage owned by Brad Telford East of Sherwood Park. The frame was constructed first in five modular components that could be detached for transportation. 2×4’s and 2×6’s were used to build the skeleton of the parklet before it was cladded with repurposed barn wood. The team worked 15 hour days for two and a half weeks to complete the structure. The cladding was then dismounted and labelled for easy reconstruction on site. The frame was broken into its five components and loaded into a 30-foot moving truck to be installed. The team, along with a few friendly volunteers, then moved the parts on site and reassembled the structure in front of Café Mosaics.
THE DISASSEMBLY
The structure was disassembled in one day at the end of the summer. To minimize waste, and to keep the project sustainable, Barn(E) was taken apart, and all of the wood was donated to Habitat for Humanity. Habitat took the wood to their ReStore, where they resold it to the public.