...wanna see some of our favourite public spaces in downtown Calgary?
Fun to photograph - especially at night - these half dozen art and architecture spots include a couple of city parks, open from 5 am to 11 pm daily. We recommend starting this cache a little before sunset for maximum enjoyment of site specific lighting.
You may choose to break this cache up into several outings. But if you'd like to cover all six stops in one trip, we've mapped out a 5.5 km loop that includes city streets, a stretch of the Stephen Avenue pedestrian mall and a section of the Bow River pathway. Walking distance drops to a little over 4 km if you take advantage of the downtown fare free zone and ride the LRT between West Kerby Station and 3rd Street Station (east bound) or between 4th Street Station and West Kerby Station (west bound). Walking is a great way to take in some of the other 60+ public art installations, ever-changing mix of architecture, parks and other public spaces in the city centre. You could even make this a date night outing.
Finding the answer to the question for each location is very straightforward. The D/T ratings reflect the overall distance and time required to visit all six stops by walking.
Created using Garmin BaseCamp
Logging Requirements:
To log this cache, email or message the cache owner answers the following questions:
- Downtown West-Kerby Station Luminous Crossings – What is the sequence of letters/numbers posted in yellow on the street lamppost at the posted coordinates?
- Stephen Avenue Galleria Trees - What is the four digit number posted on the +15 bridge connecting Bankers Hall to the Home Oil Tower?
- TELUS Sky Northern Lights – N/A (a question will be added once construction is completed and the installation is up and running)
- The Bow Building Wonderland – There are five signs embedded in the ground around Wonderland. Four of the signs say the same thing. What do they say?
- Peace Bridge – What is the four digit number posted at the end of the bridge? NOTE: the same number is posted at each end.
- Poppy Plaza – According to the facts engraved in the metal strip inlaid in the wood decking, when was the first of 3,278 trees planted?
With your “found it” log, post a photo of yourself, your date, your GPS or your phone at your favourite stop on the tour.
Read on for some information about each sight. We've done our best to fact check, but if something's not quite right, please let us know.
Downtown West-Kerby Station Luminous Crossings
Location: 10th/11th St. on Seventh Ave. SW
Artist: Cliff Garten
Photo: Mrs. GeoK
Luminous Crossings marks each end of the LRT free fare zone along 7th Avenue SW, with one part of the installation at Downtown West-Kerby Station and the other at City Hall station. Two free-standing towers plus three hanging “chandeliers” are installed at each platform, making for a total of 20 discrete sculptures overall. The hanging sculptures bring to mind a lobby or great hall, intended to welcome transit riders to the city’s core.
Each sculpture is made of brushed stainless steel shaped to suggest tracks, crossings and other elements of the LRT system. Each sculpture is lit by colour changing LEDs, which change interactively with the arrival and departure of the trains.
This installation was funded from the public art budget component of the Seventh Avenue Refurbishment capital project undertaken by the City of Calgary’s Transportation Department.
Stephen Avenue Galleria Trees
Location: 2nd/3rd St. on Eighth Ave. S.W.
Artist: Cohos Evamy Partners Architect (Thanks monkeyturtle for the information).
Photo: Mrs. GeoK
Located outside Bankers Hall, the Galleria Trees sculptures are an iconic part of Stephen Avenue. These ten metal trees were installed in 2000 upon the completion of the 2nd tower of Bankers Hall. They were designed to reduce wind gusts along the block between Bankers Hall and the Home Oil Tower.
The stylized trees are a mix of two heights, rising 26 meters and 21 meters above their steel bases, respectively. The sculptures are anchored to reinforced caisson caps. The caissons themselves extend down 19.5 meters below the surface of Stephen Avenue to resist an uplift force of 800 kilonewtons (180,000 pounds).
The sculptures are equipped with an audio system which plays seasonally themed music as well as specially curated playlists created in partnership with local arts and cultural organizations including Honens, Calgary International Film Festival, Beakerhead and Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra.
While not part of the initial installation, the sculptures have since been outfitted with colour changing LED lights, which add to the street level vibrancy and are programmed for special events and occasions.
The installation was a gift from Trizec Hahn Office Properties to the City of Calgary.
Northern Lights
Location: 619 Centre Street S
Artist: Douglas Coupland
Photo via Westbank, developer and owner
Integrated into two sides of the TELUS Sky building (scheduled for completion in late 2018), Northern Lights will be the largest public art installation in Calgary. Made up of 600 custom bulbs, the integrated LED lighting wraps around the window frames of the building to create ‘pixels,’ that can be programmed with patterns and colour displays inspired by the northern lights. The sequence of lights will coincide with the daily revolution of the Earth, beginning at sunset and playing for 11 minutes. Interspersed in the sequence will be one-minute patterns Coupland has created to highlight the seasons, special celebrations and events. Together, the 12-minute series will loop five times an hour.
Coupland also has designed a free smartphone app that will teach viewers about the Northern Lights and how they work.
The cost of the installation is included in the $400 million overall project budget funded by the building’s owner, Westbank Corporation.
Wonderland
Location: 500 Centre Street S
Artist: Jaume Plensa
Photo: Mr. GeoK
Located at the base of The Bow, the city's second (soon to be third) tallest tower, Wonderland is a white, bent-wire sculpture of a young girl’s head: Anna, from northern Spain, at age 12. Standing almost four storeys tall from the neck up, the sculpture has two openings that allow visitors to walk through the model, “to try to dream about how a head is from inside.”
The artist provided the Calgary-based fabricator with a digital model of Wonderland which was used to create templates for bending and rolling the steel bars that make up the sculpture. Approximately 4,633 linear meters of 22mm and 18mm steel bars were used in the sculpture, which required approximately 12,000 intersections to be connected with saddle welds and approximately 2,100 butt joint welds where two or more rods intersect on the same plane.
The cost of the installation was part of the $1.4 billion overall project cost for The Bow building, funded by owner H&R REIT.
Peace Bridge
Location: Bow River, between Eau Claire and Sunnyside
Architect: Santiago Calatrava
Photo: Mrs. GeoK
The Peace Bridge connects the southern Bow River pathway and downtown Calgary with the northern Bow River pathway and the community of Sunnyside. Opened in the spring of 2012, it’s one of the most controversial public infrastructure projects in Calgary, thanks to its cost, its proximity to other pedestrian bridges, the way the design was single-sourced and awarded to a foreign firm, for the defective welds that delayed completion by 18 months and for its on-going repairs and maintenance requirements thanks to thermal expansion problems as well as vandalism.
On the other hand, it ranked among the top 10 architectural projects in 2012 and the top 10 public spaces of 2012 and is reportedly used more than 6,000 times/day.
The red and white tubular structure is distinctive among Calgary pedestrian bridges. Some think it looks like DNA strands (especially the shadows cast on the bridge deck) and others say it looks like a finger trap.
The cost of this city infrastructure project came in at $24.5 million.
Poppy Plaza
Location: 1101 Memorial Drive NW
Designed by: Marc Boutin Architectural Collaborative and Stantec Consulting
Photo Mrs. GeoK
The Poppy Plaza project transformed an underused open space around a busy intersection at Memorial Drive and 10th Street N.W. into a dynamic public space. The design includes a folded wood deck that incorporates an original Memorial Drive poplar tree, provides seating, space for native plantings and is sheltered from the summer sun by a new grove of Aspen trees. A more sculptural element is the weathering steel wall that features backlit quotations from world leaders and citizens in Canada and around the world. The design uses lighting to stir emotion and evoke a sense of respect, awe and introspection tuned to memorialisation. Two illuminated sentinels across the river contribute to the experience. Poppy Plaza was ranked 4th in the Top 10 World Class Landscape Architecture Projects of 2014.
Poppy Plaza opened in 2013, two years later than scheduled. The City’s budget for the project was $11 million.
Parking Options (information current as of June 2018)
If you choose to drive and park, remember that street parking is free on Sundays. Two Calgary Parking Authority surface lots to consider for evenings/Saturdays are LOT 23 (Zone 9023) at 1101 Memorial Dr. NW (accessed only via eastbound Memorial Drive and LOT 59 (Zone 9059) PRINCE'S ISLAND (accessed from Memorial Drive). These lots have a maximum $2 charge in the evenings (after 4 pm) and on weekends. Parking at LOT 59 will add about 1 km to the walking distance.
Congratulations to behmSquad, who earned FTF on this one!
Virtual Reward - 2017/2018
This Virtual Cache is part of a limited release of Virtuals created between August 24, 2017 and August 24, 2018. Only 4,000 cache owners were given the opportunity to hide a Virtual Cache. Learn more about Virtual Rewards on the Geocaching Blog.