Off the Field: Reimagining Sport, Community, and Landscape at Polo Park, Winnipeg

Throughout history, sports have played a fundamental role in shaping and reshaping how societies forge a lasting sense of cultural belonging. Physical culture in the development of the modern city has developed both the structure of civic consciousness and the processes of urbanization. Architecture as a vessel of collectivity has been central to the public exercise of sport in the city. Off the field imagines the re-appropriation of an urban stretch of Omand's Creek, which once meandered through Polo Park in Winnipeg, Manitoba. What was formerly an area dedicated to physical activity and appreciated for its natural landscape, is now a regional shopping district covered in concrete parking lots. The relationship between humans and nature is explored through the physical separation between each other and the outdoors. The project responds to the needs of the site by restoring the urbanized stretch to the diverse recreational landscape it once was.