Trail Memorial Centre

The regeneration of our damaged ecosystem involves not only the development of sustainable energy but the responsible use of that energy; as stewards of our environment, we must better understand our sourcing and deposition of material. For these collage-drawings, industrial influence is represented by acetone-transferred toner on watercolor paper, civic influence is represented by laser-cut walnut, existing context is show in ink-jet printed sepia images, and proposed intervention is printed on recycled mylar over canary trace paper.

Natural and human systems lay down layers of material which overlap at thresholds between zones of contrasting process. This design distills historic layers of a peripheral city and adds a new one, recycling materials and refining memory to create spaces of social meaning.

industry-nature

In British Columbia's district of Kootenay Boundary operates the world's largest zinc smelter, which uses industrial technology to transform ores with hydro-electricity, bringing urban technologies into close contact with wilderness.

greater trail: man in nature

Trail, British Columbia is a city of 22,000 which developed around the smelter, compressed into the Columbia River valley between the Monashee and Selkirk ranges. This city is the story of the relationship between technology and nature. Its space is an “ecotone”, a transition area between two biomes. The space is energized by hydro-electricity, derived from the flow of our most basic necessity, water, and used to animate our most advanced technologies

a story told in layers

The Trail smelter has always been a place of transformation, adding energy between natural sources and urban markets. It is the trail (the route the road the path) where industrial, social, and natural cycles lay down layers of material.

reduced exchange

Trail is layered with the influences of natural systems and industrial ones, but this layering slowed in the late 20th century as smelting operations became more efficient and minimized exchange with natural systems. Toxic emissions and employment decreased, the old Trail bridge closed, downtown Trail became a cul-de-sac, and the “Smoke Eaters” hockey team renamed itself “the smokies”. Old layers are buried in asphalt and legends, but it is true that the Trail Smoke Eaters beat the USSR to win the world hockey championship for Canada in 1961, and it is true that the most decorated Canadian ski racer ever, Nancy Greene, grew up in town.

urban mining claim

It is not on the stagnancy of recent layers the we must focus, but on the essence of place that Trail's stratigraphy reveals and on the possibility to reinvigorate place by digging up memory, refining it, and by drawing on the union of man and nature, so thoroughly explored in this place, to generate in Trail a new livelihood. So I suggest that the The City of Trail lay claim to its most lucrative mine site: The Trail Memorial Centre. The TMC stands at the focus of the city's landscape, between smelter and town, at the culverted confluence of Trail Creek and the Columbia River. All of the forces of this community flow through this space. My intervention draws hydro-electricity from the river, traffic from Trail's main auto axis, and pedestrian traffic from the old city Centre.

aim for exchange

My intervention aims to catalyze a downtown revitalization, increasing exchange between program and landscape. Some of the connections I have established are visual, some are energetic, and some are physical.

layers of the TMC

The landscape of Trail is dominated by a contrast between civic and industrial land use. These zones of contrasting process, of walnut and watercolor paper, have deposited the TMC, and they must be called upon to reinvigorate it. In the 1940s, Trail creek was culverted and the ravine which once divided the city from the smelter was filled with slag. Communities in Bloom planted the once desolate industrial landscape with pansies, poppies, and dahlias. The valley has been transformed by industry while attendants of such processes have long mediated industrial damage to natural systems. In the Smoke Eaters' arena, this same pattern has emerged. The smelting company donated the TMC to the community in 1949. Smelter workers built the arena and lockers of slip-formed concrete and steel trusses. Over time, the Smoke Eaters have painted their lockers orange, carried in plaid couches and hammered up OSB partitions. A curling rink, offices, and a kids hockey rink were built in the 50s. In the 1960s, a basketball court, kitchen and lockers were built of sheet formed concrete on top of the curling club. Fir bleachers hold up the crowds. Under them plastic chairs and hundreds of coffee cups await a banquet. A library was also built in sheet-form concrete. And finally, additional squash courts and offices were added. In this remote corner of the building are posted the schedules, clocks, and prefab wainscotting of the evening league.

material strata

Of all of the materials present at the TMC, four are emblematic of parent and refined, of life and death, of natural and human cycles: Slag, which falls to the bottom of the metal refining process, zinc,- raised up out of the ore to shining perpetuity, stone (concrete)- foundation, and wood- the regenerating skeleton of residential Trail.

programmatic ecotones

Over stratified materials, the intervention establishes visual connections between the hockey arena and the smelter stacks, the Smokies' locker and the river, the skatepark and the alley and stair, etc. Circulation focuses at the core of the intervention, which becomes an indoor city square, entrance for sporting events, and banquet hall. I call this space the social generator. Connections are complimented by icons of culture, which focus circulation and remember the triumphs of Trail's past. I chose four icons from the sports hall of fame: Nancy Greene's ski suit, worn by Greene while winning 7 of the 16 1967 world-cup ski racing events, the Savage Cup, won by the Smoke Eaters a record 18 times from 1913 to present, a series of jerseys worn by multiple Smoke Eaters little league world-championship teams, and a taxidermied big-horn sheep.

the face of meaning

From the exterior, views and program present themselves to the street. Whitewashed slip-form concrete is a canvas for a new layer of the TMC's facade. Recycled wood partitions cling to stone masses quarried from the building's excised structure, and a silvery cloud of zinc spans above.

poles of meaning

Behind its evolving face remains a simple character. The TMC is a mediator between industry and nature. It is the home of the Smoke Eaters. Smelter hill is balanced with the Trail Creek Flats, and light boardwalk structures are grounded with heavy parking structure.

collage tectonics

As collages develop, I calibrate them to plan proportions. Thresholds between these industrial and civic layers concentrate layers and form picture-planes. Circulation navigates the topography formed by old layers and focuses activity at thresholds. For example, four steps reveal the variation in floor height caused by the volume of the original curling space below. The grade change between the street and the social generator produces an ecotone. The veranda is a space for socialization and congregation. The grand stoop of the home of the smoke eaters.

lower plan and landscape

The ground-plane is the ecotone between earth and sky, inhabited by the biosphere. Below the TMC is a great depth of history, so I sliced into it on both sides of the building. On the town side the rift daylights Trail Creek's mouth, allows the Smokie's room to expand, and anchors a wooden path down to the creek in the retained slag fill layer. On the smelter side it bio-remediates runoff from the slag-slip hill.

social generator

Past the grand stoop is the massive beamstone entry, which absorbs the southern sun. It acts as a flood gate for thousands of Smoke Eaters fans and frames the view of town from inside. Like two poles in a generator, the social foci, the sheep and Nancy Greene's ski suit, concentrate the social energy flowing through the TMC. The poles are shining cold aspirations of a higher glory, and the warm necessity of dwelling in the landscape.

Existing industrial-scale elements of the TMC are modeled in basswood, existing civic intervention is modeled in walnut, and proposed intervention is modeled in white painted basswood.

reconnection sections

The social generator, then, is powered by sports enthusiasts who are sustained by the plant and its hydro-electricity. Through the social generator, Smoke Eater fans feed energy back into the city-scape.

empire congress

The social generator is not experienced orthogonally. While ascending from the street, Nancy Greene's incredible series of victories, represented by her ski suit becomes visible. It is backed by zinc sheets, representing her father's work which brought her skis to the mountains. The smelter stack is framed through the gable glazing in a northern sky. The big-horn sheep legs up on a pier of beam-stone warming in the southern sun. Glass doors project axial views down Bay Avenue to hillside beyond. A beast of craggy peaks stands against the stone of the mountainside and honors the inhabitants of the valley. In celebration of Trail’s position as mediator between industry and nature, the social generator is packed with attendants of the empire congress. Every perspective between the zinc heroine and the stone sheep is present.

the value of the obsolete

Recycling is relaxing. It frees one from precious perfection and requires constant re-evaluation of material reality. Collage saturates image with associated previous meanings. Corrugated cardboard is an industrial material which has traveled the world. I inherited this watercolor paper from the modern generation, as was my grandfather's interest in painting modern. The yellow trace represents the collective and traditional role of architects, repositioned between man and industry. And the mylar, recovered from a mining exploration office, represents urban mining: finding value in the obsolete.

Layering as facilitated by plan and section is possibly the most basic architectural technique and the basis for modern structure. This project reaffirms the traditional role of the architect, as a man-nature mediator, but includes human settlement in its definition of natural. The material used to construct this exhibition was harvested from the dumpsters of Vancouver. In the past, the precious timber and ores of the Kootenays were shipped to Vancouver, but in the coming weeks, I will ship this wood and paper, mined in the metropolis, to Trail. There, I hope it will inspire the Trail City Council to make a claim on the TMC. Every project yields some mistakes, and those each yield a lesson. The Great Spirit is a non-sequitur; the door to infinity is not found at a point of perfection, but rather at points of inconsistency. Thresholds become the focus in this project, and ecotones become zones of wonder, connecting one process to a larger system. In the creation of a body of work, some element (a drawing or model for example) must always lead, bringing further knowledge to the project and rendering other areas of earlier focus less relevant. Evolution requires imperfection and urban mining embraces it. Inherent in this project is the celebration of social and physical difference as the basis of fertility, and therefore of earthly health.