The Open East Village Public Washroom and Pickleball Court by Public City

The Open is a public washroom in the East Village of Calgary. It is the winning submission of a national public design competition hosted by the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation. The hybrid landscape architecture and architecture facility marries sport with utility and program with place in an effort to answer one fundamental question: is it possible to transform a functional program into a meaningful urban place?

Yes. Yes was our answer. The competition brief for this public washroom also asked us to locate our design response anywhere between The Confluence (historic Fort Calgary) and 6th Street SE. We chose the gateway condition at the end of 7th Avenue SE, close to existing utilities and intersecting pathways, where it could reinforce the urban edge of both the park and the neighbourhood. The 3,000-square-foot facility houses a new public washroom and a single prototype pickleball court. Designed as a hybrid structure serving both destination and utility, made large enough to have a presence amongst its 12-storey neighbours, yet light enough at street level to feel transparent and safe against the urban park surrounding it, The Open will become an urban hub.

Anchored in utility, animated by activity, the modest piece of public infrastructure has a social place-making element that is intended to serve a multi-generational demographic in Calgary’s burgeoning East Village. With pickleball long reigning as the fastest-growing sport in North America, appending it here in the form of a free outdoor court fuses urban form and utility into social infrastructure. Often seen to be dank, territorial, and in some cases dangerous, the public washroom at The Open has been designed to resist any such interpretation.

In our response to the question of transforming a functional program into a meaningful urban place, we suggested that programmatically, the public washroom itself was likely not enough to make place, and no amount of aestheticization or detailing could resist preconception. The program needed more. We argued that place needs intersections – programmatic, active, formal, and demographic. Our experience with public washroom design over the past fifteen years has shown us that when we isolate these facilities or turn them into indestructible bunkers by design, they tend to become exactly what we do not intend for them to become. If we intend to make amazing public spaces, then we need to start by composing places infused with value, purpose, activity, and delight. One can attract all kinds of activity through design, intentionally or otherwise. The Open attracts habits for liveability and the humanization of the urban realm with a shameless and optimistic view about living together on common ground and enjoying one another’s presence.

• Other credits:
Entuitive
Aplin Martin
Calgary Municipal Land Corporation

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