The Calgary stroet-levcl Arcade preceded the Mall as a place of public exchange: During the
first half of its history the covered arcade acted as a buffer between the public street and private
interior. The arcade extended me.vitality of the city street to the pedestrian. It was shelter from bad
weather and vehicles, and a window into another world of consumable items. A shopper could
peruse the 'just out of reach' at the Hudson's Bay or wait for a street car under the measured
punctuation of the covered arcade. The public nature of the arcade reconciled.the individual to the
group. It mediated the transition from the busy street'.to the beckoning shop window.
Today merchandising strategies promise to develop a more efficient circle between shopper and
commodity. Mall spaces are connected above ground with a maze of raised public walkways. Crisscrossing
the original grid of streets at a height of 4.5 meters is the raised "Plus 15 System." Over the
last twenty-five years, Calgary has extended one of the largest semi-private systems in the world
through it's downtown core. This system replaces the public street with an interior analogy that is
neither public nor private. Ground level street-life suffers a slow but definite decline and is not
replaced. As the city experiences a period of extreme growth the opportunity arises to remedy the
decline of the public realm
In the process of development and gentrification a temporary set of urban artifacts becomes
visible. The building crane, the site trailer, construction hoarding - this language of urban expansion
is as tenable as the "architecture'' of the city itself. This thesis project will invigorate boomtown city
growth with a new public architecture. The site is the back lane between 8th and 9th Avenues and
Centre and 1st Street in the heart of downtown Calgary. This is one of many blocks yet to complete
the Plus 15 labyrinth of public access-ways. Mid-block pedestrian bridges connect the south and
east sides of the site with the rest of the city's Plus 15 system. Low-level heritage buildings and
Stephen Avenue pedestrian mall wall the north side of the site while the giant Pan Canadian Building
dominates the south. Running through the Pan Canadian Building is an existing public right of way.
Using current development as a spring board this project will suture the internal world of the Plus 15
to adjacent public and private fragments of the city. A steel "Frame" will accompany the current
developer scheme for a hotel high-rise on the site. This frame reconciles the horizontal dimension of
the original property width of Stephen Avenue Mall and the new vertical layering of the "floorplate
skyscraper." Inserted into this ordered web is a temporary housing system of pre-built trailer boxes -
- an appropriation of the familiar objects of construction: The ATCO trailer, construction hoarding
and a "take-apart" kit of frame components provide a fertile base for the growth of the public
"tube". They furnish a temporary architecture while the new public walkway asserts its presence.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/8277 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Sully, Nick O.W. |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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