Only in Manitoba do we have to build hills,? says Peter Sampson,  co-principal with Liz Wreford of Public City Architecture. Although Saskatchewanites might commiserate, it?s true that the flat topography of Manitoba in general, and Winnipeg in particular, limits sledding  to river banks and artificial structures. As a result, one regional typology that has thrived here is the toboggan run. These spaces between artifice and nature also bridge the rural and the urban.
Resolving that condition here entailed a further challenge: at the urging of its Universal Design Coordinator Judy Redmond, the City of Winnipeg decided to make this their first universally accessible toboggan ramp, at St. Vital Park in the south end of the city. The Public City team seized the opportunity to develop a design that speaks, appropriately, of movement. The ramp shoots out over an existing gentle hillside. Halfway up, among the treetops, wood decking gives way to a galvanized steel grille, emphasizing the leap through space. Beneath, a dizzying array of stilts touch the ground; the space between accommodates the informal sledding that predates the formal program of two toboggan chutes. As inclusive-design consultant Marnie Courage observes, ?the ramped structure allows access to the first slide allowing kids with  toboggans, families with strollers and people with mobility devices  to access the slide the same way.? Though she adds that either  a second ramp or doubling the width of the exist...