Client: City of Burnaby

Overview

Rite of Passage is a linear park that includes art screens, and two pocket parks. The materials used were Metal, polyurethane coating, mixed media, rubber, scored tinted concrete, lighting, and a water feature with custom nozzles and designed hydraulic fountain components. The Pocket park with the Hammock is named ‘The Eddy’ and the one with the fountain sculpture is called ‘The Delta’.

Goals

Rite of Passage is a linear park that expresses the watershed themes of the Fraser River Delta. Formal language such as: the passage, the confluence, the eddy, and the delta, are made into sculptural forms. The artistic program involves over 400 yards of ‘art screens’ that serve as a backdrop. The Eddy is an undulating steel structure that is at once a hammock, a play structure, and a social hub.Based on swirling river eddies, the sculpture’s centrifugal form is enjoyed by people of all ages. Tying into the woven art screen that wraps around the pocket, the netting of the sculpture reinforces social cohesiveness and interaction.

Process

To provide privacy to neighboring residents and to form a visual backdrop to the greenway, 400 yards of “art screen” is woven into the Willingdon trail. The screens are an evolving narrative. Their forms allude to the Fraser River watershed’s dynamic fluvial topography, expressed through a wave motif of CNC cut fins, while a weave motif of overlapping colored aluminum strips speaks to urban dynamics, and to the delta of islands and tributaries that weave through the greater Vancouver area.

Additional Information

The second pocket park at Charles Street is a place of atmosphere, rest, and calm. This sculptural water feature ascends with a welcoming embrace. The Delta creates a visual and aural screen for the park: calming and replacing the sights and sounds of traffic with cascading water. The sculpture’s white tubes resemble river tributaries, as water flows from them onto shimmering and faceted stainless steel rock-like forms. This sculptural arrangement takes transcendental inspiration from the Fraser River watershed and the mountains in the distance.