Forest Pavilion is a four-season structure constructed on Treaty One land in a floodway zone of the Red River in Winnipeg. Situated on an existing knoll in a mature forest at Crescent Drive Park, it is a first civic structure of its kind to apply protective FEMA flood design standards in the city. Forest Pavilion is a multi-functional place designed and built on a tight civic budget over six years. Its program is defined less by conventional notions for a Park pavilion and more by the emergence of cultural and climatic changes around which this Park has evolved.

Apart from providing barrier free and gender-neutral public washrooms for this active city park, there are also three new types of outdoor rooms designed to ponder the impacts of a changing climate on how we will use urban parks. The first of these musings is a Shade Room. This is a roofed hallway over a pathway through the Pavilion. It has a water fountain and provides respite from increasing summer temperatures. Adjacent to the Shade Room is an insulated room that has passive ventilation only. This room provides a tempered space to warm oneself up in winter, lace your skates, or, in summer, get away from a hot prairie wind. When the snow has gone, small community events can be held for dining or meeting in this naturally conditioned room. The third room at the south is an open-sky gathering room. It has a central fire feature where cooking, stories, or family gatherings might take place. With its 5-metre-tall fence-like screens, it is an outdoor/indoor gathering area that is home to indigenous elders much as it is to a family of new Canadians. In this room, Forest Pavilion embraces its hearth, a symbolic gesture of one fundamental human condition – enjoying the company of others around a warm fire, no matter the season, who we are, or where we are from. This is a hub supporting any of the multi-seasonal sports and gatherings that take place at this Park.

No trees were felled in the construction of Forest Pavilion. It is designed to nestle into an existing clearing atop the site’s highest point. By taking advantage of the topography, the city-mandated flood-protection measures were reduced. Sustainable building choices include native planting, the use of durable (and reusable) hot-dipped galvanized steel, mechanically fastened — and therefore easily replaced – rough-sawn fir that was sourced and milled using sustainable harvest practices, super low-flow plumbing fixtures, LED lighting, and occupancy sensors to reduce consumption.

All materials below the flood-line can be completely submerged without decay and water can flow one room to the next as water recedes to avoid the perils of standing water in the event of a severe flood. The concrete base is designed with upstands to raise framing sole plates, and pressure relief strategies, although concealed, are designed to keep water moving. The plan is also designed to shed flowing water by reducing right angles, and large swinging wall panels in the middle of the plan that can be fixed open prior to the arrival of high water. Wall mounted plumbing fixtures, stainless steel doors, frames, and fasteners below flood-line contribute to durability.

A lantern visible to its surroundings, the Pavilion dissolves day to night from form to void. Its vibrant chartreuse interior of venetian-finish plaster emerges at night and it becomes a porch light in the forest. From afar, the form appears solid, but the vertical screen reveals interior exterior rooms and moments as it plays with void, space and light takeover.

• Other credits:
Wolfrom Engineering
MCW Consultants
City of Winnipeg

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