Client: YWCA Calgary
Location: Calgary, AB, Canada
Completion date: 2019
Project Team
Design Director
Chris Herringer, Entro
COMMISSIONS - ROOM IDENTIFICATION ART COMMISSIONS – FIBRE, WEAVING, EMBROIDERY, RUG HOOKING AND INDIGENOUS BEADING
Ilse Anysas-Salkauskas
COMMISSIONS - ROOM IDENTIFICATION ART COMMISSIONS – FIBRE, WEAVING, EMBROIDERY, RUG HOOKING AND INDIGENOUS BEADING
Alaynee Goodwill-Littlechild
COMMISSIONS - ROOM IDENTIFICATION ART COMMISSIONS – FIBRE, WEAVING, EMBROIDERY, RUG HOOKING AND INDIGENOUS BEADING
Sharon Johnston
COMMISSIONS - ROOM IDENTIFICATION ART COMMISSIONS – FIBRE, WEAVING, EMBROIDERY, RUG HOOKING AND INDIGENOUS BEADING
Sharon Rose Kootenay
COMMISSIONS - ROOM IDENTIFICATION ART COMMISSIONS – FIBRE, WEAVING, EMBROIDERY, RUG HOOKING AND INDIGENOUS BEADING
Diane Krys
COMMISSIONS - ROOM IDENTIFICATION ART COMMISSIONS – FIBRE, WEAVING, EMBROIDERY, RUG HOOKING AND INDIGENOUS BEADING
Rachelle LeBlanc
COMMISSIONS - ROOM IDENTIFICATION ART COMMISSIONS – FIBRE, WEAVING, EMBROIDERY, RUG HOOKING AND INDIGENOUS BEADING
Linda McBain Cuyler
COMMISSIONS - ROOM IDENTIFICATION ART COMMISSIONS – FIBRE, WEAVING, EMBROIDERY, RUG HOOKING AND INDIGENOUS BEADING
Liv Pedersen
COMMISSIONS - ROOM IDENTIFICATION ART COMMISSIONS – FIBRE, WEAVING, EMBROIDERY, RUG HOOKING AND INDIGENOUS BEADING
Jillian Roulet
COMMISSIONS - ROOM IDENTIFICATION ART COMMISSIONS – FIBRE, WEAVING, EMBROIDERY, RUG HOOKING AND INDIGENOUS BEADING
Caitlin Thompson
COMMISSIONS - ROOM IDENTIFICATION ART COMMISSIONS – FIBRE, WEAVING, EMBROIDERY, RUG HOOKING AND INDIGENOUS BEADING
Allison Tunis
COMMISSIONS - ROOM IDENTIFICATION ART COMMISSIONS – FIBRE, WEAVING, EMBROIDERY, RUG HOOKING AND INDIGENOUS BEADING
Diana Un-Jin Cho
COMMISSIONS - ROOM IDENTIFICATION ART COMMISSIONS – PAINTING, WATERCOLOUR AND WOODCUT
Neepin Auger
COMMISSIONS - ROOM IDENTIFICATION ART COMMISSIONS – PAINTING, WATERCOLOUR AND WOODCUT
Lisa Brawn
COMMISSIONS - ROOM IDENTIFICATION ART COMMISSIONS – PAINTING, WATERCOLOUR AND WOODCUT
Elaine Funnell
ART LOANS - COLLECTION OF THE ALBERTA FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS – FIBRE, PAINTING, DRAWING, PRINTMAKING AND MIXED MEDIA
Ilse Anysas-Salkauskas
ART LOANS - COLLECTION OF THE ALBERTA FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS – FIBRE, PAINTING, DRAWING, PRINTMAKING AND MIXED MEDIA
Joane Cardinal-Schubert RCA
ART LOANS - COLLECTION OF THE ALBERTA FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS – FIBRE, PAINTING, DRAWING, PRINTMAKING AND MIXED MEDIA
David Garneau
ART LOANS - COLLECTION OF THE ALBERTA FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS – FIBRE, PAINTING, DRAWING, PRINTMAKING AND MIXED MEDIA
Hazel Litzgus
ART LOANS - COLLECTION OF THE ALBERTA FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS – FIBRE, PAINTING, DRAWING, PRINTMAKING AND MIXED MEDIA
Jeff Nachtigall
ART LOANS - COLLECTION OF THE ALBERTA FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS – FIBRE, PAINTING, DRAWING, PRINTMAKING AND MIXED MEDIA
Katie Ohe RCA
ART LOANS - COLLECTION OF THE ALBERTA FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS – FIBRE, PAINTING, DRAWING, PRINTMAKING AND MIXED MEDIA
Liv Pedersen
ART LOANS - COLLECTION OF THE ALBERTA FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS – FIBRE, PAINTING, DRAWING, PRINTMAKING AND MIXED MEDIA
Alayne Spafford
ART LOANS - COLLECTION OF THE ALBERTA FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS – FIBRE, PAINTING, DRAWING, PRINTMAKING AND MIXED MEDIA
Jennifer Wanner
ART LOANS - THE CITY OF CALGARY CIVIC ART COLLECTION – FIBRE
Murray Gibson
DONATIONS - THE COLLECTORS’ GALLERY OF ART – PAINTING
John Snow RCA, ASA, CSG
DONATIONS - WATERCOLOUR
Elaine Funnell
Sign fabrication and installation
WSI
Art framing
Jarvis Hall Gallery
Art installations
Kyle Beal Art Services
Printing
Grafitti Imaging
Printing
Resolve Photo
Printing
Emerson Group
Printing
ABL Imaging
Art Curation
Mary-Beth Laviolette
Overview
Designed to be ‘a cohesive, supportive environment for women and their families’, the vision for the new 127,000-square-foot YWCA Calgary is to provide a safe, healthy and caring environment where women in crisis may heal, recover and grow. Together with independent curator, Mary-Beth Laviolette, we fashioned a unique program that blends art and design with social need and service – to create a home-like environment that is welcoming and inviting. We developed a master plan to determine how works of art could integrate with wayfinding – be used as landmarks, room identification beacons, or as the backdrop to activity spaces and for donor recognition.
Goals
Along with the principles of trauma-informed design and community engagement, this vision resulted in six design drivers that were applied to every facet of the project: well-being, connected, inclusive, beacon, comfortable and safe. Invited by the YW to design the wayfinding system for their new Hub facility, our team wanted to echo this intent for the facility while providing innovative opportunities for storytelling and human connection. It was clear to us that art, and its power to celebrate culture, diversity and community, could be a key piece in realizing many of these drivers.
Process
In collaboration with Project Director, Lori Van Rooijen, we set a thematic approach for the commissioned works that would primarily celebrate local women artists. Fibre, textiles and Indigenous beadwork were chosen for the majority of the program because they have long been traditional art forms made by women. This was later broadened to include painted and mixed media works.Altogether, the YW commissioned nineteen Alberta-based artists for sixty room identification pieces and seven larger works. An additional selection of twenty-three long term loans was curated and made available through the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, The City of Calgary Civic Art Collection and the Collectors’ Gallery of Art. Donor recognition in the main welcoming space features a series of portraits by Janice Tanton, which represent various ages and ethnicities of women who use or work at YWCA. All of the donor names are projected across the portrait banners in a randomized order and scale that avoids a traditional donor hierarchy.
Additional Information
The inclusion of original art serves to create an environment which is less institutional and more sympathetic to the individual. This unification of art and design supports YW’s desire to create a homelike, inclusive setting for the women they support. Van Rooijen hopes that other socially-focused organizations see this program as a model for their own facilities: “Art is for all – it is something everyone should have access to and it creates sense of welcome. The number one comment we get is that the building is amazing and the art adds to the warmth and overall wellness of the spaces.”