Capturing the Moving and Sensual Architecture of the Urban Park
by Aristofanis Soulikias
Interface, Negotiation, In-forming, Moving Boundaries, Desires, Sensing Cycles, Growth, Earth and Sky, Immersion, Bravery
Figure 1 Traces of movement in the snow
As winter goes by, the parks are taking shape. Some touches are consolidated. Some remain lighter, susceptible to the ever-changing weather. All those walks, all those runs, all those moments of movement and stillness made by the people who had few places left to go to are blended with the traces of the animals and the wind.
The snow may not stay for much longer on the ground but for now, it has much to testify. It is an architecture, a surface, a skin that emits light, radiates its cold, responds with crunching sound for every step we take, and is the plastic matter of our intentions. An architecture of constant place-making, a series of meanings and stimuli that need no walls nor shelter. The curved footpaths and cross-country ski tracks make sense in this logic of growing trees. These indentations, these channels of flow and encounters are constantly being shaped by a series of micro-decisions – resulting in a totality of a collective subconscious – but also give shape to our bodies as they guide what follows.
And then there is the very conscious act to create the place that has been lost. A large group of youngsters have brought their shovels and have cleared a rectangular area of about twenty by ten metres, the minimum space they deem necessary to play pickup soccer. These must be the same kids who used to spend their winter afternoons playing soccer indoors at the nearby YMCA, I think. That building is now closed.
I would sign-up there seasonally and find a place to exercise when the outdoors seemingly forbade it. The time schedule was fixed, the air, temperature and light regulated, the direction of my run on the racing track had to be clockwise on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays and counter clockwise on all other days. The inner track was recommended low speeds and the outer only for overtaking. There was a synthetic floor, glass and metal shielding us from the outside, and the usual concrete. A low concrete parapet protected the runners of this elevated track from falling down into the atrium space where team sports were played. Being able to follow a soccer game below while revolving endlessly upstairs was for me this gym’s great advantage.
Now, in this funny turn of events, I am partially encircling, yet again, perhaps the same group of players. I, too, had no choice but to take up exercising outdoors. The kilometers are the same, but the distance is not.
Each day I adjust my attire to the weather conditions and how I perceive or even breathe is determined by how much of my face is covered by my scarf and by whether on top of my hat I put on my windbreaker’s hood. By whether I will wear gloves and which ones. How many layers. How many socks. The interface between me and the park, my exposure, is regularly adjusted.
The three parks I run through are part of the geography, history, and everyday life of Cartierville. The first is also a natural extension of a schoolyard. The ebb and flow of schoolchildren throughout the day feels like a natural phenomenon to reckon with. The park is filled by their sound, and as their brightly coloured clothes contrast the white landscape, on “shadowless” cloudy days, I see populated scenes painted by Bruegel. My first stop is a concrete fountain, a brutalist one that has the perfect height for me to stretch my legs. As I do this, I slightly touch its granulated surface to reaffirm its existence and store this event in memory, associating thing with task. An outsider would probably not find this fountain interesting, but its meaning seems to be growing along with me. As I stretch, I also feel being lifted by my father on a summer day, a time when I was too small to reach it. Over the years, its spout would be installed and removed, signalling the change of seasons.
My parkour is one of choices. There are the paths that are designed, the ones wide enough to be cleared by the snow-removal vehicles. When those become icy, the narrower paths of snow that are pressed by pedestrians are safer. When snow begins to melt into slush or, even worse, freeze again, then it is time to forge one’s own path into unbeaten territory, exchange convenience with safety and enjoy the sinking of one’s legs into undetermined depths with each stride and with the satisfying crunching sound.
Each entry to a park is an act of taking refuge from the city’s car-trafficked streets, and each exit is a daily choice in how to re-enter the city grid, sometimes boldly onto the boulevard, sometimes timidly from a quiet side street.
In a world without walls, it is the loose imaginary lines, surfaces, and connections between reference points that matter:the third picnic table to the left with the graffiti on it, the large oak tree which was red in late September, the metal stands that face the soccer pitch where with in its carefully cleared patch the youngsters are still defiantly playing, well into the evening.
My last stop is following a path I am making myself. The snow still needs pressing, as I am the only one using it. This path tells of my visits to a young maple tree. It must have been planted a decade or so ago, along with similar trees, in order to form a treeline parallel to the adjacent street. This tree, however, is the only one with an almost horizontal branch, reachable as to be a bar from which I can hold on and lift my body. It is neither smooth as the metallic bars of the Y nor perfectly even nor perfectly horizontal. Its relatively rough bark has hurt my hands in the past and the kitchen gloves I wear before my pull-ups as protection compromise but somehow mark the sensory experience. The trees at the park are generous and, unlike the overused gym equipment, offer plenty of their parts to hold on to without any fear of infection.
Exercising with the tree is a mixture of decisions and experiences. Which way I face depends on whether it is sunny or cloudy or even on simply the way I faced the day before, as I seek variety and alternation. I feel a tree is meant to be climbed, and that impulse takes hold of me momentarily now and then as I try to initiate such a feat. In fact, each reachable branch offers a certain possibility. It is up to me to imagine it.
Nothing now is set on level planes, orthogonal angles, and straight lines. Like branches, the footpaths are lines of the optimal travel, not the shortest. The ground is also the sky and what the latter had in store. It is with the sky that we all negotiate now, we hear it in our steps and breathe it – often through the smell of the fabric we have layered. It is with many life forms, other than our own, to which we must attune. A constant field of improvisation, adjustments, imagination and re-tuning of the senses.
© 2022
Figure 2 Closed YMCA building
Figure 3 A defiant rectangle of play, carved into snow
Figure 4 Geometries of a winter landscape