RESCUE WALKS
DOWNVIEWS PARK: Ideas for transforming open space to public use. Parc Downsview Park, winning proposal for an international competition for a major urban park in the City of Toronto. As part of the cultural consultant team to Rem Koolhaas, Bruce Mau and David Oleson and Inside/Outside Landscape Architects, ARTATWORK and Noel Harding Studio developed a number of approaches to help establish an vital park on this 320 acre former Armed Forces base. David Acheson, Noel Harding, Ian Lasarus and Dyan Marie worked as a team to develop plans for transforming open urban spaces for public use. The group explored the concept of physics as a source of ideas to harness energy for the creation of an engaged, poetic, general-public environment.
ARTATWORK
proposed a series of six pathways seeded with sites and activities to exercise the body, calm the mind and engage the spirit
ARTATWORK
1444 Dupont, Building D, No 31,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M6P 4H3
Telephone: 416- 531-121 and 416 539-8129
Email: dyan@dyanmarie.com
Website: artatworkprojects.com
Spaced along one pathway are a series of activity areas that appear as a sculptural forms. Each site is accompanied by instructions that explain an exercise that is to be acted. The exercise plan would offer stations for standard activities such as chin-up bars, jump bars, parallel bars.... Other stations would direct exercises that offered: calming breathing, directed seeing, enhanced awareness.
EXAMPLE: An eight foot diameter stone is embedded halfway up a small hill.
EXERCISE: Extend your right arm forward and place on the stone, extend your left leg back, push on the stone, hold 20 seconds, repeat with the left arm and right leg. Do three sets. Visualize pushing the stone up the hill.
OBJECTIVE: Releases tension in neck, shoulders and legs, builds strength in arms and legs. Visualization helps calm, focus and instill a positive mindframe.