PROJECT Market Lands Southern Parcel design competition, Winnipeg, Manitoba
ARCHITECTS Daoust Lestage; DTAH; Saucier+Perrotte Architectes with Gustafson Guthrie Nichol; DIALOG; 1×1 Architecture Inc. with drMM and LDA Design
TEXT Lawrence Bird
A small city block in the centre of Winnipeg?the 2.4-acre-sized Market Lands?has long been a central (if in some senses marginalized) urban space. Its future is the subject of an international design competition that has attracted some of Canada?s best design talent.
1906 Market Square: Buildings framing the public realm – Insurance Plan | Archives of Manitoba
When the site was acquired by the city in 1875 for use as a civic market, its deed stipulated that part of the block should remain ?in public use? in perpetuity. This mandated civic role meant it was to play a part in the dramas that shaped the urban character of Winnipeg over the next 150 years. Because of its proximity to City Hall, the market was a site of political protest, including for the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919. Eventually, the need for a central civic market waned, and in 1966 it was replaced by the Public Safety Building, part of a new, high-modernist-styled Civic Centre. The Civic Centre was the first of many projects intended to structure and breathe life into a downtown from which life seemed to be dwindling. As the middle class moved out into burgeoning suburbs, downtown Winnipeg came to share the fate of city centres across North America: isolate...