t he generic landscape of Killbear Provincial Park, just north of Parry Sound consists of the pink and grey granite of the Canadian Shield, a mixture of coniferous and deciduous veg- etation, Georgian Bay and a plethora of wild- life. The project here is an interpretive centre telling the story of the park’s rich history and showing its extensive natural treasures. In search of landscape specificity, architecture, the interpretive plan and the exhibitions oper- ate in a layered narration of the park’s story through three domains: the snake, the human and the bird. These three cultural plates are the foundation upon which the visitor gains a foothold in the landscape through built form and its capacity for abstraction. Formal abstraction begins with the interpre- tation of the particulars of geology, climate and vegetation and represents them in built form. Twisting volumes characterize the overall massing shaped and sculpted by forces found within the landscape. For in- stance, a large vertical shift occurring within the building telescopes shifts found within the site’s geomorphology. The building’s east and west elevations lean away from the water’s edge as if pushed by the Georgian Bay winds. Perched on a rock ledge, the building stretches itself out parallel to a series of rock folds — biotite gneiss rock plates that cas- cade towards the water’s edge. Idiosyncratic volumes each overlapping the other with their own particular trajectory combine with a se- ries of material bands of concrete, glass and zinc. Much like the landscape below it, the elevation evokes a sense of movement: the delineation of the lower sloped floors cross underneath an elongated sloped pathway, which sweeps up to the upper floor where a third volume shifts overtop to give us daylight illumination. These geomorphologic at- tributes reinvented through built form exist not simply to create metaphors but rather to discover and interpret the language of this particular landscape.
above: the east wall leans as if sculpted by winds from Georgian Bay. below: the building perches on a rock ledge, itself parallel to a cas- cading series of rock plates.
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architecture and land
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