Downtown ribbon display adds to Vancouver's urban fabric

Anyone passing by the park space outside the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre at Burrard and Nelson in downtown Vancouver isnt likely to miss the fuchsia-coloured fabric partly wrapped around the trees or ribbons of fabric gently blowing in the breeze above its waterfall feature.

Its as if a fuchsia highlighter has been applied to the parks main elements.

And thats exactly what the team of volunteers from the B.C. Society of Landscape Architects intended for their temporary park art installation, called Project Urban Fabric.

The temporary park makeover serves to both mark the societys 50th anniversary, and act as a gateway to the 3rd B.C. Land Summit conference happening at the Wall Centre from Wednesday through Friday. The B.C. Society of Landscape Architects is one of the conferences five sponsors. (The others are the B.C. Institute of Agrologists, the Real Estate Institute of B.C., the B.C. chapter of the Appraisal Institute of Canada and the Planning Institute of B.C.)

We wanted to find an interesting way to engage the public, said landscape architect Jacqueline Lowe, president of the society and chairwoman of the art installations organizing team.

Lowe said about 10 landscape architects on the team donated more than 1,000 hours of time and spent six months organizing the installation, which also has white lights wrapped around trees and white lanterns to represent ephemeral elements. The colour blue was used to represent how people move through a space. Blue painters tape was used to cover the stairs and blue fabric covers milk crates brought in to serve as seats. Theres also a blue stage that has been created for the use of the public and 10 new blue Adirondack chairs.

We wanted people to understand what landscape architects do and we said theres this beautiful park, of course designed by a landscape architect back when the Wall Centre was constructed. So we highlighted the design in the space, she said. Anything form-related like an object or an element has been highlighted in fuchsia.

The B.C. Land Summit, first held at the University of B.C. in 2004, runs every five years. This year, more than 1,000 people are expected to attend, according to B.C. Land Summit Society chairwoman Tara Culham.

She said the four main topics to be discussed include water and the land, law and the land, food agriculture and natural and built environments.

Its about collaboration and connections. Its the five land-use organizations coming together to share ideas and solutions so we can better understand each other, she said.

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Downtown ribbon display adds to Vancouver's urban fabric