DESIGN INTENT
Before the pen had hit paper, the site had already decided what it wanted to be. A former mobile home park at the edge of a Calgary escarpment with undulating grades, an existing aspen grove, and enough open land to support something more than a standard amenity-rich approach.
The design was rooted in naturalization, establishing early successional plant communities and setting the landscape on a path toward long-term stability on its own terms. Early proposals had treated the open space as more fully programmed, with a climbing structure and irrigated planting, but the escarpment edge and the existing aspen grove argued against it. Forgoing irrigation cut a capital cost and eliminated a long-term maintenance obligation, both outcomes that arrived through design rather than negotiation.
Construction is ongoing, and the escarpment is already making demands. Undulating grades and the preserved aspen grove have required field adaptation from the first week, but the landscape is building toward something the site was prepared for all along.
