OUT_CROP / CROP_OUT

This seating design was an entry for the Benchmark 2020 competition by Storefront MB.

Pinawa sits at the edge of the Canadian Shield, a large swath of exposed Pre-Cambrian bedrock the covers over half of Canada. Millions of years of erosion and glacial scouring have transformed the once-towering mountains of the region into a gently rolling landscape strewn with rocky outcrops, boulders, and rubble.

These rocky landscape features form a collection of elements that can be thought of as the region’s informal vernacular furniture. Cascading rocks alongside the river become impromptu sitting areas; boulders become places to lie and soak up the sun.

OUT_CROP takes the idea of this informal vernacular language and accommodates the rocky elements more sensitively to the human body, while satisfying the brief’s requirement for certain seating requirements. Boulders are allowed to exist largely in their raw, natural state. Modifications to the boulders in the form of carved-out seating and metal arm and back rests are called to attention using bright colours, thereby differentiating them from the natural landscape while asserting their collective identity as a marker of place.

The project aims to offer an entry point for the uninitiated into this informal vernacular furniture. Once acquainted with OUT_CROP, the entire rocky landscape can be read as a series of affordances that accommodate a wide variety - indeed, the whole spectrum - of movement and stasis.

Contrary to Pinawa, downtown Winnipeg is an urban landscape of human-made mountains, chasms, flowing rivers, and pools of gathering. However, these urban forms differ vastly from their natural counterparts. The human built environment favours efficiency over sensuality, rationality over whimsy, and straight lines over meandering profiles. A muted colour palette of beiges, browns, and greys dominates the visual field.

CROP_OUT attempts to undermine all this.  As with OUT_CROP in Pinawa, CROP_OUT utilizes the same language of the Canadian Shield informal and natural vernacular, but turns it on its head in an urban context. Modifications that facilitate seating are left in their raw and natural state, while the raw and unmodified majority of the boulders are painted in bright colours - a nod to the artifice of placing such natural materials in an urban setting. Colour plays a much more prominent role in asserting a sense of place in the cacophonous city.

Here, the natural is painted with a layer of artifice, while the human-modified is left bare as a kind of new urban nature.