Staging winter atmospheres across Montreal: the case of winter seasons

by Ariana Seferiades

As places in the city but apart, urban parks are conceived of as spaces to retreat from the hustle and bustle of city life and (re)connect with ‘nature’. They are “carefully-staged natural spaces” (Hasse, 2015) that embody the green promise of nature in the midst of an ever-expanding city. They are increasingly important in the well-being of citizens who converge in parks to do all kinds of activities that conjure up feelings of relaxation, joy and connection. The importance of urban parks to channel the social and cultural life of the city was evidenced in the context of the pandemic. The spike in the use of parks[1] shows that as the majority of activities were forbidden and the encounter with others represented a threat to safety, people gravitated to these public spaces. A survey of the literature on the use of parks in the city reveals an overfocus on green spaces and landscapes. But what about the snowy landscape of Montreal’s urban parks in winter? 

Montreal embodies the reality of a winter city, which is defined by severe winter weather conditions, such as heavy snowfall and cold temperatures. After Sapporo and Moscow, Montreal is the city of over one million people that receives the most snow on an annual basis (Laboratoire de l’hiver, 2021). But the irony of Montreal designating itself as a “winter city” lies in the contradictions of its built environment. A recent research on the use of public space in winter in Montreal has shown that the city's architectural and design choices seem to be made mainly with summer in mind. There is a need for a design that is more mindful of the winter conditions and that incorporates snow in the equation, not as an obstacle but as a creative material with potential (Bider, Campos and Seferiades, 2021). This is what is being pushed in a bottom-up manner by a movement of people and organizations that seek to fundamentally change the way we relate to winter and to influence the city's design decisions. 

In this probe, I will analyze the infrastructure and the assortment of objects in urban parks as snow begins to fundamentally transform the atmosphere of those spaces. I pay attention to how design choices create the conditions for the generation of a singular wintery atmosphere: the creation of a microclimate, the possibility of indoor/outdoor movement to regulate heat/cold sensations (e.g hot chocolate cabins, fire pits, outdoor heaters), the use of lighting and colours, the use of snow as a touch-based and malleable material, the quiet landscape. All of these initiatives are suggested by experts as best practices to “magnify winter” (Olivier Legault, Laboratoire D’hiver, 2021) and to stage an atmosphere that can make us feel at comfort in winter. 

I focus on the case of Winter Stations, as they call the scenes that were set up across the city at the outset of the 2021 winter, in public parks, plazas and vacant parking lots. This project was led by the Design Montreal Office, the organ of the city responsible for the designation of Montreal as a UNESCO City of Design in 2006. A quick look at their website reveals a collection of cases of redesign of public space in Montreal, but there is a notable absence of wintery-initiatives except for the aforementioned project made in partnership with the boroughs. Though they were conceived of as strategies to support local commerce during the context of the pandemic, the idea of Winter Stations according to the people at Design Montreal, was oriented to “finding new places to live in the city well during the pandemic” by “taking advantage of outdoor spaces and adapting them for our current needs” (interview with Emeric Bouchard from Design Montreal, 2021). 

Given the constraints of the pandemic, the stations had to comply with the public health norms of avoiding large gatherings, making the final result be a design more aesthetic than functional, and more for contemplation than for actual engagement. The circumstances seem to have led to the ‘museification’ of these small parks, as they seemed to be made exclusively for the delight of the eyes of onlookers passing by. 

[1] Google Mobility Reports, 2021, URL: https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/ and “50% of Canadians said they had used parks more during winter than pre-pandemic, with 73% saying they expected this use to continue” (Park People Canada) URL: https://www.parkpeople.ca

Bibliography

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Bille, M., & Hauge, B. (2021). Choreographing atmospheres in Copenhagen: Processes and positions between home and public. Urban Studies, 00420980211022966. 

Geroldi, C. (2017). Spectacle Island: From discarded fill to designed landscape, a ‘natural’-looking park. Journal of Landscape Architecture, 12(3), 16-31.

Gobster, P. H. (2007). Urban park restoration and the" museumification" of nature. Nature and Culture, 2(2), 95-114. 

Gunn, W., Otto, T., & Smith, R. C. (Eds.). (2013). Design anthropology: theory and practice. Taylor & Francis. 

Hasse, J. (2015). /On the Atmosphere of An Urban Green Space: Gleisdreieck Park. In Gleisdreieck/Parklife Berlin (pp. 252-257). transcript-Verlag. 

Krenichyn, K. (2006). ‘The only place to go and be in the city’: women talk about exercise, being outdoors, and the meanings of a large urban park. Health & place, 12(4), 631-643. 

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These stations, with their somewhat misplaced aesthetics, evidence the gap of knowledge about winter design and the amount of work that remains to be done in this area. But it has also been an experiment that allowed the city's designers to gather information about people's behaviour in winter, with a view to creating more sensory and sustainable infrastructure in the future. In some ways, the pandemic ironically created an opportunity for learning how people relate to winter and to take steps towards improving the design of the city. 

This probe was intended to contribute to the ways in which anthropology of design may contribute to improving the experience of citizens in public parks. But not everything goes as planned...for personal reasons I had to leave Montreal before the first snow fell. A communication with the Design Office confirmed to me that they were not going to repeat the Winter Stations project this year. I have visited a few stations in the past year that would allow me to add some more ethnographic details, but I don't have that much information. It could end up being a more reflective probe into the prospects for winter design in Montreal, or postpone the piece until I return to Montreal and can do some ethnography of the actual infrastructure and assortment of objects that are in place in urban parks (focusing on the small urban parks instead of the big ones). 

The image below is part of the presentation delivered by Isla Tanaka in an online panel about innovations in winter design. Her presentations discussed the case of Edmonton, and how they substantially modified the principles of design in their endeavours to transform the city’s experience of winter. “We design our cities so we could stay inside as much as possible,” suggested Tanaka, as she explained how they did to influence peoples’ relationship with their environment by means of an alteration in their design choices. This involves careful work of research and planning to design atmospheres of comfort and joy in winter. I’m not sure how this fits in my probe exactly, but what captures my attention is how these atmospheres are designed by manipulating wind, lightning, sunshine, architectural lighting and so on, to make a microclimate 10 to 15 Celsius warmer than the actual outside temperature.

© 2022

Photograph of Winter Stations from Olivier Legault’s presentation - December 2021