Landmarks Unique and iconic Winnipeg locations
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Landmarks is a monthly feature in which columnist Alison Gillmor explores unique and iconic Winnipeg buildings and locations.
Polo Park has weathered the whims of consumer culture
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In a strange twist of design history, the man who helped develop the North American shopping mall, Vienna-born architect and planner Victor Gruen, later repudiated it.
Quirky Fort Garry neighbourhood combines urban planning and nature
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In popular culture, planned suburban subdivisions are often used as a kind of visual shorthand for conformity and rigidity, for the slow death of the soul. Suburbia, at least according to the movies and TV, is bland, beige and uniform.
Circular condo building looks spacey, but shape is grounded in practicality
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I’m always interested in buildings that get nicknames. Usually these monikers indicate affection, occasionally the opposite, but they always mean people are paying attention.
Précieux-Sang church fuses together modernist design and religious renewal
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On my way to visit l’ Eglise du Précieux-Sang in St. Boniface, I got lost. There was road construction, and I somehow missed my turn. I managed to find my way, though, when I glimpsed that distinctive spiralling roofline in the distance.
WAG's angular architecture combines form, function in a building both timeless and of its time
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Asked to talk about the Winnipeg Art Gallery building, Stephen Borys pauses for a moment.
Luxuries, amenities put to many uses during life of Academy Road building
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The Uptown Lofts, once the Academy Uptown Lanes and before that the Uptown Theatre, remind us that buildings can have long, varied and sometimes unexpected lives. The recent mixed-use renovation, which combines commercial spaces and residential apartments, is sleek, clean and contemporary, but it rests on layers of local memory and architectural fantasy.
The Fort Garry Hotel hearkens back to a more glamorous time
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When you’re wedged into a middle seat on a packed airplane, sustained only by bad coffee and a packet of pretzels, glamorous travel can seem like an impossible dream.
Curvy, confident Winnipeg Clinic appears to be reaching for a better tomorrow
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Nicknames can be a sign of fondness and familiarity, so it means something that people often affectionately call the Winnipeg Clinic “the Jetsons building.”
Alison Gillmor
Writer
Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto’s York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992.
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