This competition winner was designed as an urban park/plaza that would house the 1988 Winter Olympic medal awards ceremony and serve as a social center for Calgary after the Olympics. The city block site is located the east of the Municipal Building and the north of the Calgary Center for Performing Arts. The design extends the A Street Mall to the Municipal Building, creating a variety of outdoor, recreational and cultural opportunities. Defining the plaza is a glass and steel arcade for craft shows, food dispensing and other activities that require some environmental control. Placed diagonally across the plaza is a colonnade as stage and performance area for the award ceremony and community events. The plaza gently terraces down on two sides with large grass steps framing a 100' x 150' reflecting pool which serves as an ice-skating rink in the wintertime. The grass steps form an amphitheater and when the pool is drained it's bottom serves as a paved urban space appropriate for a variety of civic activities. The plantings are indigenous to the area and accommodate the severe cold climates, as well as the Chinook winds that periodically come down from the north.
