Penny Lane +15 instructor: Catherine Hamel

A project for a temporary staircase to the +15 link leading to the Penny Lane construction site in the downtown of Calgary. Working in collaboration with Crystal Waddell-Gardiner we tackled the issue of a stair connection between the street level and an elevated +15 link on the site of Calgary's Penny lane (a 'landmark' building razed to be replaced with a contemporary complex). We proposed a temporary installation to be constructed from the rubble found on site during demolition, to address the concept of architectural memory as outlined in the project brief. Extending the idea of memory to the design process, we worked on one multimedia drawing continuously to design the staircase. The project evolved as a scar tissue covering the severed end of the infrastructural system, with the stair as a graft of the pedestrian flow from the street.