This is a story about Place Making. From a landscape that was once read as placeless, to a new kind of placelessness inscribed upon it, the Canadian Prairie is a region that inherently asks us, what is place, how is it created, and how to do we value it? There is a fine line between a sense of belonging and being lost, a possibility that they are one in the same, and a fear that we are losing our ability to sense either.
These are the stories of a cast of architects, each with particular motives, and a complex web of forces that came together to create places where there were none before. In the act, they built a new kind of placelessness, no longer empty, but filled with ambiguity. In its relatively short written history, the Canadian Prairie is a microcosm of our placeless existence. It witnessed the mass movement of an expanding population, opening its doors as a “new” or “final frontier”. It is a place built entirely by people who came from elsewhere, carrying the weight of previous lives and expectations, and hoping to start anew. It’s a place built on the pursuit of opportunity, preceded by an image, and founded in a gamble.
This is a story that questions our modern paradigm of place, but looks with optimism upon the human spirit. It explores our ceaseless drive to create, to withstand hardship, and potentially to rediscover what we’ve lost.
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