CREJ

/ BUILDING DIALOGUE / MARCH 2017

nce used by buffalo and Canada’s aboriginal people as a crossing, the 31-acre St.

Patrick’s Island in the center of downtown Calgary’s scenic BowRiver, is the grow-

ing city’s oldest park. But with decades of neglect the island had become derelict.

Over a period of four years, Civitas and W Architecture redesigned St. Patrick’s

Island as a wild retreat for Calgary’s thriving mixed-use Rivers District and East

Village neighborhood.

Located in a floodway, the new St. Patrick’s Island Park is a model of resilien-

cy and sustainability that restores biodiversity and engages urbanites with an

authentic nature-in-the-city experience even as it reduces flood risk. With ame-

nities ranging from a calm channel for water play to an ideal winter sledding

hill to a preserved cottonwood forest and wetland ecosystem woven with hiking

and biking trails, the successful park has won numerous honors, including most

recently being named Canada’s 2016 Great Public Space.

PROJECT DETAILS

PROJECT BUDGET:

$20 million

CLIENT:

Calgary Municipal Land Corp.

CIVITAS/W SERVICES:

Master plan and construction

oversight of 31-acre island park

transformation

Postcards

ne of the oldest search and rescue organizations in Colorado, Mountain Rescue

Aspen is a 100 percent volunteer-based nonprofit that provides services for

Pitkin County and other counties in the region.

is designed to reflect Aspen’s mining heritage and includes a large training space,

locker rooms, vehicle shop, command center, map room, boardroom, emergency op-

erations center, bunkrooms and a caretaker apartment. A four-bay garage is attached

to the facility to accommodate rescue vehicles, trailers, ATVs and snowmobiles, and

a training tower on the southwest corner of the building is used for equipment test-

ing and rescue technique training.

Studio NYL: Mountain Recue Aspen

PROJECT DETAILS

ARCHITECT:

Charles Cunniffe Architects

GENERAL CONTRACTOR:

Mountain Resort Construction

STRUCTURAL ENGINEER:

Studio NYL

MEP:

aec (Architectural Engineering

Consultants)

Ross Kribbs