CREJ - Building Dialogue - March 2017

Civitas Inc./W Architecture: St. Patrick’s Island Park

Once 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 Bow River, is the growing 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 resiliency and sustainability that restores biodiversity and engages urbanites with an authentic nature-in-the-city experience even as it reduces flood risk. With amenities 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.