We are pleased to announce YEE-O 2020 – Year End Exhibition – Online edition for this 2019-2020 academic year. This annual event celebrates the hard work and creative achievements of over 500 undergraduate and graduate students from every unit and level in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Manitoba. Unfortunately, COVID-19 led to the cancellation of this in-person event, but sharing and celebrating student achievements must go on!
Dormant Landscape
Instructor: Dietmar Straub
Winter Term 2020
“It’s a curse that all becomes beauty. But it doesn’t mean that you have the sense of the world. You have to construct a sense” (A. Kiefer 2014).
Fallow Land
The students were required to develop tempting designs for a fallow land at the Red River in Winnipeg, based on trees, soils and topography by considering the fluvial dynamic of this former riparian terrace.
Site
The Alexander Docks are located at the west bank of the Red River in the Exchange District. The site has an eventful history as a former wharf and is now owned by the City of Winnipeg. The size of the area is less than an acre. As if slumbering in hibernation, the dilapidated landscape has remained in this state for many years. Landscapes have the right to rest but maybe it is the time for a kiss?
The land has become the place of a community memorial for Tina Fontaine. The commemoration should be an integral part of all design considerations to underline the importance of keeping the memories of the past alive, because there can be no reconciliation without truth and remembrance.
TerrAqua Banks
Nabil Basri
This project aims to capture the city, river, and environment to the Alexander Docks with the topography of the landscape. It achieves this by connecting the neighbouring riparian forest on each side and working with the existing topography. The Diffusion Forest acts as a threshold between the city and the docks. It also bridges the riparian forest that coincides with the river. The unified landscape is a memorial space for Tina Fontaine, which immerses people by gradually pulling them in and leading them to various areas that are set by the topography. The features of the land lead to the refurbished Alexander Docks where people can enjoy its historical, cultural, and functional aspects.
Memorial Meadow
Faith Campos & Chibueze Onyebuchi
To place a design within a space, we need to be concerned of those that dwell on the site, the buildings surrounding the site and the stories that have taken place on the site. The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls crisis has been going on for decades, yet the government has done very little to correct the issue, and it is very disrespectful. Memorial Meadow is an urban meadow, designed in a way that is playful, engaging, and serves as an attraction for our city. Memorial Meadow is a low maintenance design proposal that makes room for biodiversity while providing a space for Tina Fontaine and missing and murdered Indigenous women to be remembered.
Pink Petal Groves and Memorial Garden
Caitie Chornous
Pink Petal Groves and Memorial Garden utilizes the beauty of nature to preserve the memories of Tina Fontaine and the MMIWG while attempting to create a safer, more diverse future. The space features various species of crabapple trees, which are meant to represent and celebrate the feminine spirit with their pink blossoms in spring. This creates a unique experience as they are only in bloom for 6 – 12 days a year. This blooming period would act as a memorial event, occurring once a year and allowing us to remember those lost. Afterwards, the trees drop their petals. These petals would flutter around the site and float down the river, carrying the experience and memories beyond the boundaries of the space.
Driftwood Piazza
Bradley Cottyn
You drive by the site and witness children running, jumping and disappearing between driftwood logs. Beyond this, a lightly wooded forest frames the piazza with the river glistening in the background. Arising to the Piazza you walk under spaced out trees and along light grasses and flowers coming out of the pea gravel. You sit on the driftwood looking at the river from the raised piazza and gaze down at the wood to see memories of Tina Fontaine on the wood; paintings, flowers, and feathers on the driftwood acting like a canvas for the community.
Fleeting Pinks
Laurel Cowley
Fleeting Pinks emphasizes existing features while introducing alluring pink vegetation to the site. A dynamic place created by highlighting the existing topography through terracing while allowing natural vegetative succession to potentially invade the site. The shape of the terraces is informed by the contour lines to reveal landscape features that are usually unnoticed by the average city dweller. The terraces are gravel to allow for scattered growth in the less travelled niches of the paths. This will create an unpredictable and reflective space where transformation, memory, and commemoration can occur. The terraces transform and enhance prevailing conditions to create playful spaces where children can run through a native oasis or where adults and teens can gather, interact, and appreciate Winnipeg’s waterfront.
York Boat Serial Gardens
Carlo Gonzales
The project is about mimicking the York boats that was used by traders in history. It was inspired to remember the past and commemorate Tina Fontaine. The enclosure gardens are a break from the busy and loud city. These are the areas where people could relax and reflect. The gardens are surrounded by three different species of hedges. During fall or spring the hedges have a gold or pink reddish color that provides a whole new atmosphere to the gardens. The shape of the garden symbolizes eternity where we could remember Tina Fontaine in memory. The hedges are maintained in a certain height to be separate from the outside. Each garden has a unique feature, some are designed to get flooded, the garden where the pavilion is located, a garden that is embedded in the Riparian forest. The main feature of the serial gardens is the memorial garden. It is the area where people can remember Tina Fontaine.
Waterfront Beach
Michael Joaquin
Waterfront Beach is designed to be a public park located at the Alexander Docks, east of the Winnipeg Exchange District. Inspired by the traditional sand beach, the idea for the project focused on flexible spaces that could be shared for a variety of activities, offering areas to accommodate community and family gatherings, as well as people simply looking to relax. The existing site of Alexander Docks carries similar characteristics of a beach: it is next to a body of water, its open area experiences higher than average winds and high amounts of unobstructed sunlight. Waterfront Beach maintains these conditions and introduces new amenities such as a plaza, a fountain, playful topography, and trees to attract people into the site. The site can be sectioned into three different spaces: the terraced, the shaped, and the wild/riparian zone.
Thickets of Light
Sabrina Kratsberg & Manuella Villarreal
Thickets of Light is a proposal that aims to revive the natural landscape found in the Alexander Docklands. The project is composed of a series of elevated groves planted with varying tree species including; cottonwood, quaking aspen, hackberry, and white birch. Thickets of Light awakens the landscape with a subtle kiss, it animates the surrounding riparian forest as the groves perform like patches that mend the landscape fabric. Thickets of Light’s main purpose is to act as the seeding ground for the photinus pyralis or the big dipper firefly species. The Alexander Docklands once a dormant landscape is now awakened, not by the human touch, but by the warm delicate lights that guide the heartened explorer deep within the land.
[RE]CONNECT: Alexander Docks a dormant landscape
Mark Luay
Located beside the Red River and Alexander Ave, the project looks to [RE]connect the dormant landscape, Alexander Docks, with the city. This is done by connecting features such the Riparian Forest with the landscape and by working with the existing topography to create an area that brings in the community. Key features of the project consist of: the seating area at the west, the memorial tree, the lookout area at the east, the community kitchen with a water fountain, and the riparian forest that flows through the project.
Rouge Plaza
Jeeth Reteesh
Borrowed Landscape
Chan Tao
Borrowed Landscape is one of the commonly used means of framing in Chinese classical gardens. One of these borrowing scenes types, “Long Vision,” means that on a dock with an open view, overlook the open water and distant buildings, such as the bridge, the human rights museum and the Forks.
The Alexander Docks has multiple pleasant features, first of all, there is a cafe nearby where people can relax and take a break from the hustle and bustle of the city. Secondly, for the foreigners, by looking at the landmarks on the dock, they can be familiar with the local architecture, and the nearby hotel also provides them with a place to stay.
D[e]stressed
Cindy Tran
The intention of this project was to reveal the significance of the Tina Fontaine Memorial through the use of a crumpling affect much like the nature of crumpled paper. Through this method, it exemplifies a distressed landscape to explore the feeling of frustration and negativity but turn that view into growth and positivity. This is done through the use of the crumpled topography and the trees growing from the depressions- rising like a phoenix out of ashes. As the site of the project is on the Alexander Docks, it reflects onto the indigenous views of rivers being “the flow of life”. The river is not an end to life, rather as a beginning of a new chapter. The distressed landscape is a representation of strength and perseverance through hardships, and that everyone is able to become wiser and more positive after tragic events.