June Callwood Park was commissioned through a design competition, to bring international interest and design excellence to the development of a new downtown park, while commemorating the late June Callwood. The design starts with a simple premise; to physically embody June Callwood’s voice in an intensified urban forest.
The starting point of the design takes a voice sampling of June’s own words— “I believe in kindness”—physically mapped onto the site, its undulations creating the abstract geometric pattern of openings and clearings within the dense groves of the Super-Real Forest. The edge of this voice wave pattern creates a sinewy path, running north to south through five clearings in the forest. Connecting Fleet Street to Fort York, pink granite planks touch the street edges at several points to provide east-west community access into the park.
The Super-Real Forest inhabits the site with native Canadian trees, a sampling of the specimens that would have inhabited the Lake Ontario shoreline when the city was settled. The range of experience invited by the park is rooted in archetypal, timeless themes of human play, rather than contrived mechanical devices or apparatus that can limit their enjoyment to a specific age range.
The surfaces openly invite activity that can be social, recreational or meditative. Support for play and self-directed games is implied in the spaces, open to activities that can range from splashing in the reflecting pool in summer, to hide-and-seek in a maze, to impromptu sports in a pink rubber field.
The acoustic wave pattern creates five distinct clearings in the forest: the Puzzle Garden, the Maze, the Pink Field, Time Strip Gardens, and Ephemeral Pool, each with its own unique spatial character and opportunity for un-programmed play.
Puzzle Garden Extruded organic benches provide a crawlable, modern answer to the conversation pit, an area in which young children can play, and a vantage point from which parents can observe.
Maze The most cerebral of the clearings is the Maze, formed by rows of beach hedge that undulate in plan.
Pink Field The Pink Field takes a place of honour at the centre of the park, the largest and most protected of the clearings. The springy rubberized surface of this open space is made of brightly coloured TPV rubber for games, sports and improvisational play. The tall sculptural forms of Red Oaks frame the field, recalling the grandeur of Toronto’s pre-settlement Oak Savannah forests.
Time Strip Gardens A contemplative space, this series of linear strip gardens explores the theme of landscape through time. The strips juxtapose various species of native landscape and European settlement planting.
Ephemeral Pool The southernmost clearing is an urbanized version of a classic wetland, a shallow expanse of fresh water bordered by meanderings paths and traversed by stepping stones. Trees in this area include Freeman Maple and Red Oak, the hardiest and most salt-resistant species at the busy Fleet Street edge.
