Lead: Tawab Hlimi, Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture at the University of Calgary
Completion: Phase 1 Conceptual Design and Tactical Intervention — July 2017
The project involved Grade 6 students and the local community in designing improvements to a dead-end street hidden under a flyover. A “whimsical walk” painted on the asphalt surface invited pedestrian participation through play and reclaimed the road as a public space. Consisting of curvilinear coloured bands circumnavigating brightly coloured circles, the graphic scaled the road down to pedestrian pathways. It also anticipated the road’s future conditions through the delineation of components such as bio-retention planters.
Photo: Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary
Photo: Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary
Photo: Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary
Photo: Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary
Photo: Kim Fisher
“The 4th Avenue Flyover project successfully reclaims an incidental roadway into a vibrant nature-play environment using a tactical approach of community action and inexpensive materials. This project is foundational for transforming other incidental urban spaces that share similar complex issues of urban transportation, regional ecology, and social dynamics of a place. Great imagination and activation and another example highlighting the power of community collaboration.”