Lois Szabo Commons
Client | City of Calgary
Status | Complete
Project Type | Park
Lois Szabo Commons is located in the mixed-use, mixed-density Beltline neighbourhood. Nearby residential buildings range from two to twelve stories. The park design addresses the context of the surrounding neighbourhood and feels like an amenity for all, despite the scale of the neighbouring development.
To create a welcoming amenity, the edges of the park are activated with multiple entry points. Seating opportunities and soft landscaping elements animate the edges, providing a sense of human scale, and encourage entry into the park. The design ensures that sitelines remain open into the park, while the park space is framed with denser plantings along the inaccessible back edges.
Although the park is small, gathering spaces of varying sizes and activity levels have been provided to accommodate diverse uses and users. Passive and active spaces are intermingled as well as set in isolation from one another, serving a variety of park users simultaneously. There are also transformable areas with movable furnishings to facilitate small events or performances. This provides a high degree of flexibility within the space.
