WINNIPEG – Nuzzling, blankets, a skybox, a voyageur hut and windshields – this year’s River Trail warming huts designers knew their venue.
The five new shelters to be built along Winnipeg’s kilometres-long skating trail either reflect the Prairie city environment or evoke a feeling of snugly warmth.
The two warming “huts” designed by architects at Toronto’s Raw Design and Workshop Architecture provoke skaters to get involved with the sculpture-like pieces.
Raw Design’s Nuzzles is reminiscent of sea anemones, but the core of the mounds is heated and lit and the reaching appendages are insulated.
Workshop Architecture’s Red Blanket is a series of hanging red felt panels that skaters can wrap themselves in when they stop.
The description Windshield, designed by Vancouver architects Kate Busby and Bella Totino, quotes W.O. Mitchell’s classic novel Who Has Seen the Wind. The sail-like structure will move with the wind so it always provides shelter from Winnipeg’s infamous cold air.
Internationally recognized Winnipeg architect Etienne Gaboury, who designed the city’s iconic Royal Canadian Mint, designed a hut to mark the 45th season of the winter Festival du Voyageur, which celebrates Franco-Manitoban culture. The hut is in the shape of an inverted pair of voyageur pants that are suspended by two helium balloons, one a voyageur carrying a canoe.
The fifth new hut is Skybox, designed by architecture students from the University of Manitoba, which will be filled with material that will reflect the winter sky.
A sixth hut, which hasn’t get been unveiled, is being designed by Kelvin High School students. It will be unveiled when the huts are built on the river in January.
The huts are designed annually by architects who either win a competition to design the shelters or who are commissioned to build one (the case with Gaboury this year).
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